By Izeth Hussain
(March 18, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The focus of this article is on what looks like discrimination against Sri Lankan Muslims in the field of cricket. This might seem to the average reader to be a matter of parochial and marginal importance, something of interest to Muslims and cricket fans, and therefore not a matter of national importance. I want to make a few preliminary observations to suggest that what looks like anti-Muslim discrimination is indeed a matter of national importance because it seems to show that the Sinhalese majority is not prepared to offer any political solution over our ethnic problems on any internationally recognized basis.
One way of solving ethnic problems is through devolution. It applies when a minority ethnic group claims to have a homeland, which can lead to a demand for autonomy or outright separation. Sri Lanka came to terms with India to solve the Tamil ethnic problem through devolution in the form of the 13th Amendment, which has in fact become part of the Constitution. What requires to be done in the aftermath of the total military victory over the LTTE is to apply 13A fully or with some modifications, and extend its application to the North. But the Government is not giving that option any priority at all, nor is the opposition making an issue of it. The prospect is one of endless vacillation over a political solution on the basis of devolution.
What really is the problem? I believe that the problem is that the Sinhalese, or more particularly the Sinhalese at the power elite level, are deeply allergic to the notion of sharing power with the minorities. In fact the farcical application of 13A up to now suggests that the Sinhalese at power elite levels are deeply allergic to sharing power even with their fellow-Sinhalese. How then can they be expected to jump with joy over the prospect of sharing power with the Tamils after the LTTE has been right royally whacked? The problem about a policy of vacillation of course is that Tamil Nadu, Delhi, and the Tamil diaspora have not been whacked by our troops. Furthermore the international community – meaning really the powerful Western countries – will see our vacillation as morally ugly prevarication. The situation could become rather nasty, perhaps even very dangerous, to Sri Lanka, a point that I have been making ad nauseam in earlier articles.
However devolution, the sharing of power, is not the only internationally recognized way of solving ethnic problems. There is also the way of giving fair and equal treatment to the minorities. According to widespread popular perceptions the world is chock-a-block with ethnic rivalry and dissension, leading too often to conflict which in turn can lead to the setting up of separate states. It is an accurate enough perception in terms of one perspective, but if you change the perspective another picture emerges. There are in the world no more than four ethnically homogeneous states, meaning states in which the minorities are so minuscule that they can under no circumstances constitute any significant problem for the majorities. According to some criteria there are twelve such states. The rest of the globe pullulates with thousands of ethnic minorities, over four thousand of them if we go on the linguistic criterion. In terms of this perspective the surprising thing is not there are so many ethnic conflicts leading to separation, but that there are proportionately so few of them. What is the explanation? It is that in the comparatively few cases in which there are claims to a homeland the separatist drive is halted through devolution, while in the rest the minorities are given by and large – though there can be many cases where the fate of the minorities is ghastly – fair and equal treatment.
The fundamental reason why our major ethnic problem, the Tamil one, has proved to be an imbroglio over so many decades is that the Sinhalese power elite has been allergic to sharing power with the minorities, and therefore cannot bear the thought of devolution, and also because it has been allergic to giving fair and equal treatment to the minorities. The historical record shows that it was in fact this second factor that drove the Tamils to demand devolution and then separation. I will now give some material to illustrate what looks like a failure to give fair and equal treatment to Muslims in the field of cricket. This particular field has a very special importance because of the widely prevalent notion that at least in cricket we have a Sri Lankan nation, a field of activity in which all our ethnic groups have come together. This notion results largely from the fact that a Tamil, Muralitheran, has been given the status of a national icon. But one Tamil icon does not constitute a nation. Our failure to build a nation – as shown by anti-Muslim discrimination – is total.
The immediate provocation for this article are some observations made recently by Trevor Chesterfield about the strange case of Ferveez Mahroof who has not played cricket at the national level for about a year. But I will first go into earlier material suggesting anti-Muslim discrimination. There is not much of such material because the preferred games of the SL Muslims have been rugger and football, not cricket, producing in Ashy Cader a ruggerite who is regarded by many aficionados as Sri Lanka’s greatest. I am not aware of charges of anti-Muslim discrimination in rugger etc; only in cricket.
The first case I have in mind is that of M.A.Wahid who in the pre-Second World War days established himself as an outstanding spinner, and also a steady batsman. I am told that he was so outstanding as a schoolboy that Dr C.H.Gunasekera went to watch him bowl as part of the program to promote SL cricket. But even though his performance in club cricket was consistent, Wahid rarely made it to the national team. However he was chosen for a tour of India in the late ‘thirties or very early ‘forties. Five matches were played, in all of which the SL side fared poorly. Wahid was chosen only for the last match, in which he put up an excellent performance including a half-century as an opening batsman. I.H.Walbeoff, the solitary Burgher in the team, was not chosen for any of the five matches. The Muslim perception, I distinctly recall, was that throughout his cricketing career Wahid was often the victim of anti-Muslim discrimination.
In the subsequent period up to the time we got test status three Muslims made it to the national team without any undue difficulty, namely the two openers Makin Salih and A.C.M.Lafir, and the spin bowler Abu Fuad. There were no complaints about anti-Muslim discrimination during that period. After we got test status the situation changed abruptly with the strange treatment accorded to Uvais Karnain. He had what the newspapers called a "dream debut" with both bat and ball against New Zealand in a one-day match. He failed in the next match, and perhaps in another as well, and was quickly dropped from the national team, never I believe to be given his opportunity again. Was that axing due to anti-Muslim prejudice?
A possible answer is suggested by a newspaper letter written by Hamid Kareem. In the latter half of the ‘nineties a newspaper had some material on the charge that SL Muslims used to cheer the Pakistan side against the Sri Lankan one, a familiar charge around that time. In his letter Kareem stated that he was present on the occasion when Uvais Karnain failed with his bat, and his return to the pavilion was greeted with howls of racist execration – Thumbia! Marakkalaya! And so on. That could have been perhaps the most disgusting eruption of rank racism among cricket spectators anywhere in the world at any time. Yet, there was no public reaction reported in the newspapers. It may be that the exclusion of Karnain from the national team was not racially motivated. But the episode to which Kareem referred certainly attests to a maniacal anti-Muslim racism among some Sri Lankans.
My next exhibit is the contrasting treatment given to Marvan Attapattu and Navid Nawaz, both of whom had been identified as future batting stars while they were still youths. I recall Gamini Goonesena, who knew his cricket, writing of them in those terms. Attapattu began his national level cricketing career spectacularly with something like six ducks in a row. But the selectors persisted with him, quite rightly as it turned out because he established himself as a world class batsman and proceeded to captain the national team. Navid Nawaz, on the other hand, was tried out a few times at national level cricket, he failed, and was dropped for many long years. But as he was a consistently impressive performer in club cricket, he was again given his opportunity in the national team. He failed again, possibly because by then his nerve had been shattered. Was the contrasting treatment due to anti-Muslim prejudice? I don’t know, but most Muslims are convinced that it was so.
I will now refer to a rather amusing development. Dilshan, while still a fledgling in national level cricket and still uncertain of his tenure there, suddenly changed his first names from the Malay Tuan Mohammed to the Sinhalese Tillekeratne Mudaliyansage. He may have been taking on names from his presumably Sinhalese mother because – for entirely private reasons which had nothing to do with his cricketing career – he thought it fit to declare a partial Sinhalese identity. But my fellow Muslims were convinced that the intent behind the change was to secure his place in the national team. Some time later a Muslim who as a schoolboy had shown promise of becoming a national cricket star scored a dazzling century in Australia. An Australian reporter asked him whether he had hopes of playing for the SL national team. The reply of the young fellow was that to qualify he would first have to change his name. More recently another cricketer who has been hoping to qualify for the national team also changed his name to a Sinhalese one.
Many Muslims have been convinced that Ferveez Mahroof was subjected to discriminatory treatment during the last World Cup series. Another bowler, it was alleged, was suddenly and suspiciously being built up as a greatly improved bowler when that was not apparent at all, and was included in the World Cup Final in preference to Mahroof. It was even alleged, and came to be widely believed both by Muslims and non-Muslims, that a top politician had asked the SL captain, "Why do you want to include a Thumbia in the World Cup Final?" The story was put out in pamphlet form by a well-known Muslim politician, who like other politicians was not famous for veracity, and distributed to Muslims on a large scale after Jumma prayers. I myself believe that the story was apocryphal, an Opposition stunt typical of our utterly unprincipled politics. Unfortunately the preferred bowler fared badly and came in for much criticism, including by Sunil Gavaskar. It came to be held that we could have won the World Cup if not for the racially prejudiced exclusion of Mahroof.
I come now to my final exhibit, Mahroof again, who has been included in the provisional squad for the ICC World T 20 series. Trevor Chesterfield wrote in the Island of March 8 as follows:- "His omissions from the Test and ODI squads in the past year have had the selectors claiming injury. What an interesting excuse. As he has been playing all season in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, which makes anyone who follows the game closely whether selectors are doing the same, or whether certain coaches have a difficulty with the lanky Wayamba all-rounder, so apt are they in giving faux reasons by failing to explain the extent of the mysterious injuries." Every single Muslim to whom I have referred Chesterfield’s article has responded immediately with the remark that Mahroof has been the victim of racist discrimination. But I must emphasize that Chesterfield himself has not implied anything of the sort, and therefore he should not be drawn into any controversy arising from the present article.
I must make an important clarification before concluding this article. What looks like racist discrimination could well be susceptible to valid explanation on other grounds. We must remember that every society under the sun has injustices in it to varying degrees, and some fields of activity have more injustices than others. For some reason that I cannot fathom Sri Lanka cricket is a field in which some of our greatest virtuosos in injustice have flourished. Some of the victims were driven into premature retirement, causing incalculable loss to our cricket. I mention the following names more or less at random:- Anura Ranasinghe, Brendon Kuruppu (now and in the past), Roy Dias, Sidath Wettimuny, Asanka Gurusinghe, Attapattu, Chamara Silva, Graeme Labrooy, and so on. But at this point I must caution against excluding racism as a possible explanation for injustice in addition to everything else. Too often Sri Lankans who are not racist at all are prone to make that exclusion.
In this article I have focused on discrimination against Muslims only in cricket, a tiny segment of our national life which however has as I have pointed out much significance for nation-building. On the broader picture of anti-Muslim discrimination I can do no better than refer to veteran Muslim journalist Latheef Farook’s book Nobody’s People published in 2009, an outspokenly courageous and detailed exposition of his subject. As I cannot here go into details about it I will mention a few details from just one page, details of which the general public is mostly unaware:- non-Muslims in Negombo and elsewhere who were not affected by the tsunami were provided tsunami aid and also housing facilities while Muslim tsunami victims in and around Kalmunai were ignored; in August 2006 around 60,000 Muslims from Muttur were driven out totally empty handed because of the war, their plight being given only belated recognition; under various pretexts Muslim-owned lands in the East were arbitrarily acquired for colonization by Sinhalese brought in from the South.
What should be done? It seems obvious that the Government will go on vacillating and prevaricating over devolution with consequences that could be unpleasant, even dangerous, to Sri Lanka. It is a situation in which it becomes all the more important to show that the Government is willing to resort to the other method of dealing with ethnic problems: give what the international community can recognize as fair and equal treatment to the minorities. We have to work out what precisely has to be done by way of practical action. An evident lacuna to be filled is legislation to deal with the multifarious manifestations of racism – such as the yells of racist contempt and rage when Uvais Karnain failed at the crease. We need grass roots institutions such as Race Relations Boards which in many countries have proved to be very effective in scotching racism. Minister Moragoda’s initiative over an Equal Opportunities Bill is most welcome. When it was originally mooted by G.L.Peiris in 2000, it was aborted through sickeningly rank racist opposition. At that time I wrote several articles about it, and predicted that it would be resurrected. I hope now that Minister Moragoda will get going with it, and ensure that we have a Bill that is not emasculated into total impotence.
(March 18, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The focus of this article is on what looks like discrimination against Sri Lankan Muslims in the field of cricket. This might seem to the average reader to be a matter of parochial and marginal importance, something of interest to Muslims and cricket fans, and therefore not a matter of national importance. I want to make a few preliminary observations to suggest that what looks like anti-Muslim discrimination is indeed a matter of national importance because it seems to show that the Sinhalese majority is not prepared to offer any political solution over our ethnic problems on any internationally recognized basis.
One way of solving ethnic problems is through devolution. It applies when a minority ethnic group claims to have a homeland, which can lead to a demand for autonomy or outright separation. Sri Lanka came to terms with India to solve the Tamil ethnic problem through devolution in the form of the 13th Amendment, which has in fact become part of the Constitution. What requires to be done in the aftermath of the total military victory over the LTTE is to apply 13A fully or with some modifications, and extend its application to the North. But the Government is not giving that option any priority at all, nor is the opposition making an issue of it. The prospect is one of endless vacillation over a political solution on the basis of devolution.
What really is the problem? I believe that the problem is that the Sinhalese, or more particularly the Sinhalese at the power elite level, are deeply allergic to the notion of sharing power with the minorities. In fact the farcical application of 13A up to now suggests that the Sinhalese at power elite levels are deeply allergic to sharing power even with their fellow-Sinhalese. How then can they be expected to jump with joy over the prospect of sharing power with the Tamils after the LTTE has been right royally whacked? The problem about a policy of vacillation of course is that Tamil Nadu, Delhi, and the Tamil diaspora have not been whacked by our troops. Furthermore the international community – meaning really the powerful Western countries – will see our vacillation as morally ugly prevarication. The situation could become rather nasty, perhaps even very dangerous, to Sri Lanka, a point that I have been making ad nauseam in earlier articles.
However devolution, the sharing of power, is not the only internationally recognized way of solving ethnic problems. There is also the way of giving fair and equal treatment to the minorities. According to widespread popular perceptions the world is chock-a-block with ethnic rivalry and dissension, leading too often to conflict which in turn can lead to the setting up of separate states. It is an accurate enough perception in terms of one perspective, but if you change the perspective another picture emerges. There are in the world no more than four ethnically homogeneous states, meaning states in which the minorities are so minuscule that they can under no circumstances constitute any significant problem for the majorities. According to some criteria there are twelve such states. The rest of the globe pullulates with thousands of ethnic minorities, over four thousand of them if we go on the linguistic criterion. In terms of this perspective the surprising thing is not there are so many ethnic conflicts leading to separation, but that there are proportionately so few of them. What is the explanation? It is that in the comparatively few cases in which there are claims to a homeland the separatist drive is halted through devolution, while in the rest the minorities are given by and large – though there can be many cases where the fate of the minorities is ghastly – fair and equal treatment.
The fundamental reason why our major ethnic problem, the Tamil one, has proved to be an imbroglio over so many decades is that the Sinhalese power elite has been allergic to sharing power with the minorities, and therefore cannot bear the thought of devolution, and also because it has been allergic to giving fair and equal treatment to the minorities. The historical record shows that it was in fact this second factor that drove the Tamils to demand devolution and then separation. I will now give some material to illustrate what looks like a failure to give fair and equal treatment to Muslims in the field of cricket. This particular field has a very special importance because of the widely prevalent notion that at least in cricket we have a Sri Lankan nation, a field of activity in which all our ethnic groups have come together. This notion results largely from the fact that a Tamil, Muralitheran, has been given the status of a national icon. But one Tamil icon does not constitute a nation. Our failure to build a nation – as shown by anti-Muslim discrimination – is total.
The immediate provocation for this article are some observations made recently by Trevor Chesterfield about the strange case of Ferveez Mahroof who has not played cricket at the national level for about a year. But I will first go into earlier material suggesting anti-Muslim discrimination. There is not much of such material because the preferred games of the SL Muslims have been rugger and football, not cricket, producing in Ashy Cader a ruggerite who is regarded by many aficionados as Sri Lanka’s greatest. I am not aware of charges of anti-Muslim discrimination in rugger etc; only in cricket.
The first case I have in mind is that of M.A.Wahid who in the pre-Second World War days established himself as an outstanding spinner, and also a steady batsman. I am told that he was so outstanding as a schoolboy that Dr C.H.Gunasekera went to watch him bowl as part of the program to promote SL cricket. But even though his performance in club cricket was consistent, Wahid rarely made it to the national team. However he was chosen for a tour of India in the late ‘thirties or very early ‘forties. Five matches were played, in all of which the SL side fared poorly. Wahid was chosen only for the last match, in which he put up an excellent performance including a half-century as an opening batsman. I.H.Walbeoff, the solitary Burgher in the team, was not chosen for any of the five matches. The Muslim perception, I distinctly recall, was that throughout his cricketing career Wahid was often the victim of anti-Muslim discrimination.
In the subsequent period up to the time we got test status three Muslims made it to the national team without any undue difficulty, namely the two openers Makin Salih and A.C.M.Lafir, and the spin bowler Abu Fuad. There were no complaints about anti-Muslim discrimination during that period. After we got test status the situation changed abruptly with the strange treatment accorded to Uvais Karnain. He had what the newspapers called a "dream debut" with both bat and ball against New Zealand in a one-day match. He failed in the next match, and perhaps in another as well, and was quickly dropped from the national team, never I believe to be given his opportunity again. Was that axing due to anti-Muslim prejudice?
A possible answer is suggested by a newspaper letter written by Hamid Kareem. In the latter half of the ‘nineties a newspaper had some material on the charge that SL Muslims used to cheer the Pakistan side against the Sri Lankan one, a familiar charge around that time. In his letter Kareem stated that he was present on the occasion when Uvais Karnain failed with his bat, and his return to the pavilion was greeted with howls of racist execration – Thumbia! Marakkalaya! And so on. That could have been perhaps the most disgusting eruption of rank racism among cricket spectators anywhere in the world at any time. Yet, there was no public reaction reported in the newspapers. It may be that the exclusion of Karnain from the national team was not racially motivated. But the episode to which Kareem referred certainly attests to a maniacal anti-Muslim racism among some Sri Lankans.
My next exhibit is the contrasting treatment given to Marvan Attapattu and Navid Nawaz, both of whom had been identified as future batting stars while they were still youths. I recall Gamini Goonesena, who knew his cricket, writing of them in those terms. Attapattu began his national level cricketing career spectacularly with something like six ducks in a row. But the selectors persisted with him, quite rightly as it turned out because he established himself as a world class batsman and proceeded to captain the national team. Navid Nawaz, on the other hand, was tried out a few times at national level cricket, he failed, and was dropped for many long years. But as he was a consistently impressive performer in club cricket, he was again given his opportunity in the national team. He failed again, possibly because by then his nerve had been shattered. Was the contrasting treatment due to anti-Muslim prejudice? I don’t know, but most Muslims are convinced that it was so.
I will now refer to a rather amusing development. Dilshan, while still a fledgling in national level cricket and still uncertain of his tenure there, suddenly changed his first names from the Malay Tuan Mohammed to the Sinhalese Tillekeratne Mudaliyansage. He may have been taking on names from his presumably Sinhalese mother because – for entirely private reasons which had nothing to do with his cricketing career – he thought it fit to declare a partial Sinhalese identity. But my fellow Muslims were convinced that the intent behind the change was to secure his place in the national team. Some time later a Muslim who as a schoolboy had shown promise of becoming a national cricket star scored a dazzling century in Australia. An Australian reporter asked him whether he had hopes of playing for the SL national team. The reply of the young fellow was that to qualify he would first have to change his name. More recently another cricketer who has been hoping to qualify for the national team also changed his name to a Sinhalese one.
Many Muslims have been convinced that Ferveez Mahroof was subjected to discriminatory treatment during the last World Cup series. Another bowler, it was alleged, was suddenly and suspiciously being built up as a greatly improved bowler when that was not apparent at all, and was included in the World Cup Final in preference to Mahroof. It was even alleged, and came to be widely believed both by Muslims and non-Muslims, that a top politician had asked the SL captain, "Why do you want to include a Thumbia in the World Cup Final?" The story was put out in pamphlet form by a well-known Muslim politician, who like other politicians was not famous for veracity, and distributed to Muslims on a large scale after Jumma prayers. I myself believe that the story was apocryphal, an Opposition stunt typical of our utterly unprincipled politics. Unfortunately the preferred bowler fared badly and came in for much criticism, including by Sunil Gavaskar. It came to be held that we could have won the World Cup if not for the racially prejudiced exclusion of Mahroof.
I come now to my final exhibit, Mahroof again, who has been included in the provisional squad for the ICC World T 20 series. Trevor Chesterfield wrote in the Island of March 8 as follows:- "His omissions from the Test and ODI squads in the past year have had the selectors claiming injury. What an interesting excuse. As he has been playing all season in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, which makes anyone who follows the game closely whether selectors are doing the same, or whether certain coaches have a difficulty with the lanky Wayamba all-rounder, so apt are they in giving faux reasons by failing to explain the extent of the mysterious injuries." Every single Muslim to whom I have referred Chesterfield’s article has responded immediately with the remark that Mahroof has been the victim of racist discrimination. But I must emphasize that Chesterfield himself has not implied anything of the sort, and therefore he should not be drawn into any controversy arising from the present article.
I must make an important clarification before concluding this article. What looks like racist discrimination could well be susceptible to valid explanation on other grounds. We must remember that every society under the sun has injustices in it to varying degrees, and some fields of activity have more injustices than others. For some reason that I cannot fathom Sri Lanka cricket is a field in which some of our greatest virtuosos in injustice have flourished. Some of the victims were driven into premature retirement, causing incalculable loss to our cricket. I mention the following names more or less at random:- Anura Ranasinghe, Brendon Kuruppu (now and in the past), Roy Dias, Sidath Wettimuny, Asanka Gurusinghe, Attapattu, Chamara Silva, Graeme Labrooy, and so on. But at this point I must caution against excluding racism as a possible explanation for injustice in addition to everything else. Too often Sri Lankans who are not racist at all are prone to make that exclusion.
In this article I have focused on discrimination against Muslims only in cricket, a tiny segment of our national life which however has as I have pointed out much significance for nation-building. On the broader picture of anti-Muslim discrimination I can do no better than refer to veteran Muslim journalist Latheef Farook’s book Nobody’s People published in 2009, an outspokenly courageous and detailed exposition of his subject. As I cannot here go into details about it I will mention a few details from just one page, details of which the general public is mostly unaware:- non-Muslims in Negombo and elsewhere who were not affected by the tsunami were provided tsunami aid and also housing facilities while Muslim tsunami victims in and around Kalmunai were ignored; in August 2006 around 60,000 Muslims from Muttur were driven out totally empty handed because of the war, their plight being given only belated recognition; under various pretexts Muslim-owned lands in the East were arbitrarily acquired for colonization by Sinhalese brought in from the South.
What should be done? It seems obvious that the Government will go on vacillating and prevaricating over devolution with consequences that could be unpleasant, even dangerous, to Sri Lanka. It is a situation in which it becomes all the more important to show that the Government is willing to resort to the other method of dealing with ethnic problems: give what the international community can recognize as fair and equal treatment to the minorities. We have to work out what precisely has to be done by way of practical action. An evident lacuna to be filled is legislation to deal with the multifarious manifestations of racism – such as the yells of racist contempt and rage when Uvais Karnain failed at the crease. We need grass roots institutions such as Race Relations Boards which in many countries have proved to be very effective in scotching racism. Minister Moragoda’s initiative over an Equal Opportunities Bill is most welcome. When it was originally mooted by G.L.Peiris in 2000, it was aborted through sickeningly rank racist opposition. At that time I wrote several articles about it, and predicted that it would be resurrected. I hope now that Minister Moragoda will get going with it, and ensure that we have a Bill that is not emasculated into total impotence.
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