The Great Game
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
Westfield, IN
If you ask a Midwesterner (American) about the great game, he would probably first think of the ball game (baseball), and then include the World Series in his response. (Americans are so full of themselves).
A liberal who is exposed to different cultures and ethnicities in the Northeast may think outside the box and include the Super Bowl (American football finals) in his list of possibilities. Some university students would consider the question to be unmistakably related to college basketball, and, therefore, would start bragging about the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) Championship and their favorite team. After listening to all of them, one realizes that most Americans from California to Massachusetts do not see the world beyond New York in any kind of game — recreational or otherwise.
Europeans, who are not as ignorant about geography as their cohorts across the Atlantic are and have generally less been obsessed with themselves as their American peers have, might think of a football match between the world number one team, Spain, and its rival, Italy in response to a similar question about the great game of the 21st century. They might even share their ‘strategy’ to deal with the possible victory (of the opposite team) after the match, which may include setting up the fire in the stadium, throwing their beer bottles on the supporters of the rival team, and rioting with the police. A sophisticated English may include the 2012 Wimbledon finals between Roger Federer and Andy Murray in his thought process.
In India, the response of the people, as they are almost as occupied by their own image nowadays as the Americans, would definitely be about cricket, their god of cricket (Sachin Tendulkar), and their recent victory in the World Cup. During the discussion, they would invariably bring up the issue of the semifinals 2011 in which they won against Pakistan; and would definitely criticize the involvement of Pakistan army in the Indian-occupied Kashmir without any context. Clearly, after their recent successes on the ground (even beyond cricket), they have learnt to attack Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the military in every debate, even if the topic of discussion is clearly irrelevant like the content of salt in the Atlantic Ocean or the sand dunes in the Gobi Desert. Before his article was published in The New York Times, they might have considered ‘Chak De Phatte’ and the ‘King Khan’ to be included in their response concerning the great game (or a great movie about the game). But now, obviously, there is no reason to put Shahrukh Khan — who is almost a suspect and a paid agent of the ISI — in any list that is remotely related to greatness in any way, shape or form.
In South America, if the same question was brought up, the most likely response of people would revolve around the soccer World Cup or some other soccer-related event. They cannot imagine the future of humanity depend on the outcome of this question, and definitely miss its geopolitical, financial and religious consequences. We can graciously excuse their ignorance because of their relative lack of importance in the world affairs. Since, they are never a part of any grand international scheme in our minds, therefore, deserve both our compassion and apology.
Only when it comes to Afghanistan-Pakistan, where college education is less than 10 percent and the elementary school education, at best, is no more than 50 percent that people understand what the long-term political, economic and social implications of the plan are. Even a 13-year-old boy, living in a remote village of Afghanistan, can explain how Islam is directly under attack by the ‘infidels’. He knows that Afghanistan alone has billions of dollar worth of natural resources. If the country was not guarded well by the people of faith, the ‘non-believers’ would set up large industries to steal their wealth.
Similarly, a teenager Baloch would describe in great detail the estimated worth of natural gas reserves in the province, the value of gold and copper mines; and the significance of the Gwadar port. A ten-year-old living in Malakand can share his thoughts about the Central Asia energy resources and the importance of a gas pipeline passing through Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. A young Punjabi would present a convincing argument about the growing energy requirements of India and its impatience to cut a deal with the Russian states to secure its future. Someone would also add about the role of China in the next couple of decades when the US economy would have shrunk and the Chinese had grown to be the largest in the world.
In short, you will get a clear idea about the international relations and the economic interests of the world powers from the people who apparently have minimum formal education but obviously have developed great insight and intellect, which is far superior than that of an average Joe in the USA. With the conventional scoring system, their intelligence quotient level may be marginal but their understanding is far deeper; and their mannerism may be brusque but their thought process is far more refined and sophisticated. Their sagacity has helped them defeat every superpower in the world throughout history in Afghanistan except Chandragupta Maurya, Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan (to name a few). Overall, this is a classic example of our conscious effort to encourage a collective delusional mindset in a greatly wounded nation, a strategy that can and will probably backfire to hurt us even more.
(The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com )
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