The defeat of India by West Indies in the T-20 World Cup triggered a controversy at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Srinagar between Kashmiri and non-Kashmiri students. Some Kashmiri students have been accused of raising anti-India slogans and burst firecrackers upon India's defeat. The Kashmiri students, in turn, allege that the violence was started by non-Kashmiri students the next day when a group waving tricolour and chanting 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' attacked a group of Kashmiri students returning from Friday prayers. Police used lathi charge to control students in which some non-Kashmiri students were hurt and subsequently the Central Reserve Police Force, actually a paramilitary force, has replaced the Jammu & Kashmir police on campus. NIT has been shut down and students asked to vacate the hostels.
 
Since the RSS-backed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has come to power in New Delhi, the academic atmosphere of one more campus has been disturbed. It really is a pity that people associate their nationalistic ideals with cricket teams and are ready to clash over victory or loss in their matches.
 
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) itself claims to be a private body inspite of its rather pompous name. How can a team constituted by it be at all considered a national team?
 
The Supreme Court has recently reprimanded the BCCI for its arbitrary functioning and refusing to implement the Lodha committee recommendations. That refusal by the BCCI to have a representative of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on its governing council reveals an obdurate and obstinate unaccountability, where the body simply does not want to be held accountable to the people at large, who are contributors to its funds. There are states like Gujarat and Goa which have received preferential treatment by the BCCI in the form of disproportionate funds when, on the other hand, states like Bihar don't receive any funds at all.
 
Is it any surprise, then, that Bihar doesn't have a single player in the BCCI constituted Indian team? How could or can, then, BCCI claim to represent the country? Imagine if more such private bodies came into existence and each fielded their separate teams. Which team would then be considered to represent India?
 
Students from both sides whether they raised pro or anti-India slogans have demonstrated an immaturity in asserting their nationalistic preference(s) based on the outcome of a game of cricket. It is also astonishing that pro or anti-Pakistan slogans were raised at the NIT, Srinagar when Pakistan was not even one of the sides playing during the match in question!
 
This sloganeering shows how people can easily get carried away when jingoistic slogans are raised. There are much more serious anti-national activities going on within the country, for example, corruption, about which we need to be worried. Similarly, there is lot of good work going on within the country, about which we can feel proud.
 
It is a real pity, then, that – rather than concerning ourselves with real issues on ground – we let our emotions get fired up entirely based on the results of game of cricket and get carried away in sloganeering to the point where the situation can turn violent.
 
The intention of this government seems to be precisely this: divert people's attention from real issues, like price rise and an absence of any quality governance, to emotional issues like nationalism.
 
The Indian Premier League (IPL) has, to some extent, done the job of dissociating feelings of nationalism from being associated with cricket teams by making players from different nationalities play as part of a single team. The IPL has also highlighted that these are professional players who can be bought and sold, which implies that they play for money.
 
Within the IPL, players can switch teams, depending on who pays them more. Similarly, even when they play in ‘national’ teams the prime motivating factor for the players is money. It is unthinkable that any player would play for his national team merely out of a feeling of patriotism without any payment in exchange. In fact, if players had any nationalistic feelings they would not indulge in match fixing, sometimes deliberately causing their teams to lose a match.
 
With the game of cricket and its management becoming so highly commercialised does it make any sense to associate nationalistic feelings with these teams? In fact, it is these very commercial interests that exploit our nationalistic feelings. If we agree that sports must be played with a sportsman or sportswoman-like spirit then we should appreciate that, whoever plays the better game, wins, irrespective of their nationality.
 
When Arundhati Roy was once asked to convey her best wishes to the Indian team before an international event she said her favourite team was the one from Sri Lanka. Why should every Indian be expected to endorse the Indian team in a sporting event and worse why should this determine out commitment to nationalism?
 
Just recently, the Mumbai High Court has also reprimanded several Cricket associations for using huge volumes of water to maintain their pitches while the state of Maharashtra is suffering from an acute drought. People and cattle are dying because of water shortage. In the context of recent debate on nationalism it may be interesting to ask what is more nationalistic – to play cricket or to save people and cattle?
 
The senior BJP leader and BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur has said that Maharashtra will lose Rs. 100 crores if IPL were to be moved out of Maharashtra. He suggested that this money could be used for tackling the drought situation and for relief for affected people. It has also been emphasised by the Cricket associations and the government that potable water is not used for maintenance of pitches, which is estimated to require 60 lakh litres of water this season.
 
What people like Thakur don't realise is money cannot be a substitute for water or food. If you have money but there is no potable water left, how would you quench your thirst? The situation is gradually becoming more and more serious and we cannot adopt a complacent attitude. We need to save even non-potable water which can be used for other, far more necessary activities like irrigation, sanitation (toilets), washing of clothes, etc.
 
(Sandeep Pandey, a Magsaysay awardee for emergent leadership has trained in Mechanical Engineering but has been working on social justice issues; he is co-founder of Aasha)

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“Ms Sushma Swaraj [the Minister for External Affairs] has categorically assured the delegation that Fr Tom Uzhunnalil is safe and that the government is adopting all possible means for the quick and safe release of Fr Tom,” the Catholic Bishops Conference of India said in a statement earlier this month [April 2016] after a meeting with her.

The CBCI delegation, led by its deputy secretary general, Monseigneur Chinnayyan, had little more to add on the fate of the Salesian priest who was kidnapped on March 4 from a home for the aged and disabled run by the Missionaries of Charity in Aden, Yemen. Sabrangindia has been following this story over the past three weeks, since Good Friday this year.

Four Missionaries of Charity and 12 others were murdered in the attack by militants reportedly connected to ISIS, as was widely reported in the media. Reports later went viral when someone wrongly quoted Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna saying in an Easter Vigil homily that the ISIS had crucified Fr Uzhunnalil on Good Friday. Till the moment of the writing of this piece, there is no further information, either from the CBCI or from the Indian government.

Hopes for Fr. Tom have waxed and waned with divergent “news” going viral on social media, and even usually reticent web portals. In a communiqué on Easter night, Bishop Paul Hinder, in charge of the Catholic Church in the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Yemen, indicated that the priest of the Salesians of Don Bosco order was alive though “no information can be given about the efforts to get Fr. Tom free.’

The bishop asks “not to decrease the prayers” for Fr. Tom. Bishop  Hinder said  he had “reason to believe that the man in robes was alive and in the hands of the kidnappers.” Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, who had earlier reportedly confirmed the execution of the priest, later told the Kathpress news: "There is still hope."

The reports of the crucifixion of Fr Tom first flashed when Cardinal Christoph Schönborn was quoted reportedly mentioning it during the Easter Vigil at Stephansdom. The Dominican prelate was quoted saying the 56-year-old Salesian was crucified by ISIS on Good Friday. Polonia Christiana carried  the news, based on Austrian media reports. Catholic News World carried the report on Easter, March 27. Church sources now say the Vienna cardinal might have based his statement on a WhatsApp message. 

Last year, Fr Alexis Prem Kumar, a Jesuit from Tamil Nadu working in Afghanistan looking after schools in remote areas, was abducted by one faction of the local Taliban and released many months later. He remains silent on the months of his captivity when every moment was an uncertain pause between life and death as he was handed over by one group to another, taken long distances blindfolded, and kept in caves and huts.

In Iraq, it (India) really has no more has any political and diplomatic clout, or even a dialogue route, to the local powers…. India has to depend on the Saudi route, and, of course, Washington.”

His release was the result of much diplomacy of course, and complex negotiations between the Jesuits, the Vatican, the Saudis, Pakistanis, Afghan government and private armies, and the Pakistani army, surely. The Americans, who have much clout with the Saudis who in turn have a running financial, theological and political relationship with all Islamist groups worldwide, according to the international diplomatic and security establishments, also played a role. And so did money. No one is talking, and therefore no one will know.

This is the way it has always happened. If Fr Tom is alive, and I hope and pray he is, this is the way he will be released. This has happened even with the ISIS where a lucky few have found their way to freedom. A very few, one may add. The gory pictures of beheadings, incineration, hangings and firing squads serve a wider psychological purpose for the terrorists.

Bishops in India’s north eastern states know a thing or two about negotiating with armed political ethnic and religious groups in that region, who routinely abduct civilians, run a parallel taxation structure, and make some cash through abductions. In the past, such groups have also abducted, or kidnapped as they say, the occasional priest, diocesan or religious.

Rarely have the clergy been killed, though this too happens, in the North East as much as in Orissa. But when the priest is set free, one can be quite sure it is not because of a change in heart of the militant group.

The church is helpless on the face of terrorism. Within India, we have seen it in Kashmir, Punjab, the Naxalite and Maoist movements, and of course the myriad shapes militancy takes shape in Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Nagaland.

We also see it in the context of the Hindutva terror and violence, where the state machinery is either complicit or guilty of impunity. Religious and diocesan men and women are even more helpless. And the individual Christian man or woman who ventures into these dangerous zones can trust only in God, for he or she  does not even have the financial resources that are so much a part of escaping the brunt if militancy.

India as a country is particularly vulnerable when its citizens are abducted. Unlike in the past, or at the beginning of the US misadventure in Iraq, it really has no more any political and diplomatic clout, or even a dialogue route, to the local powers. It cannot have a connect with the Islamic State, or with its allies in Pakistan-sponsored groups that target either Afghanistan or India itself. At the end of the day, India has to depend on the Saudi route, and, of course, Washington. The Vatican too can really operate only through the Saudi rulers or Washington. It has failed to make any impress on the current crisis in Syria. The Vatican and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation have been reportedly working with Mid East groups for Fr Tom Uzhunnalil’s rescue.

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