Anyone but India
Isms and schisms
In homage to the late, great, American Marxist Mike Marqusee’s Anyone but England (1994), in this piece I reflect upon my ‘conversion’ from fan(atic) of the Indian cricket team throughout the 90s and 00s, to now (2024) supporting anyone they play against, even England. England?! (lord have mercy!).
Having recently concluded a Sikh Panjabi Scholars project (2022–23), and especially through discussion with sociologists Prof. Gurnam Singh and Prof. Virinder S. Kalra, Benedict Anderson’s critical exploration of nationalism, Imagined Communities (1983), is at the forefront of my mind. This, combined with recently listening to the audiobook of Jassa Ahluwalia’s ambitious and enjoyable Both Not Half (2024), I acknowledge the arguments in favour of different types of nationalism; including that of the oppressed, and that of the oppressor. This is messy. So messy that I 100% wanted Pakistan to win their match against India during a recent encounter at the cricket World T20 in New York. Pakistan should have won, but as is their legacy in these match ups, sheepishly grabbed defeat from certain victory. That I supported Pakistan probably doesn’t matter to most readers, but it might surprise those who’ve grown up with me.
Dharmender is only ten letters long
I was born in London under Thatcherism, a product of a ‘love’ marriage between different caste East Panjabi parents. Raised by an extended family, I grew up speaking Panjabi, only learning English when I started primary school. Between the ages of 5–10 I survived in Gloucester, a 99% white English west country city. Compared to London, in this culturally homogenous backwater even my friends would refer to me as a ‘paki’. I found myself trying to convince my melanin deprived classmates that I too, was white: ‘look at my palm, it’s pale like yours!’ Or, ‘Sure, Dharmender (my birth name) is a long word, but it’s actually one letter shorter than Christopher, so it’s not that weird, is it?!’
The teachers at Harewood Primary were a mixed bunch. Most were kind and encouraging, others slightly less so. Take Mr Ellis, whose thick stubble matched the coarseness of his roast potato smelling elbow patched blazer. He would forebodingly shadow over me as I sat to eat in the dining hall — unfeasibly long nose hairs in their full glory for me to look up to — as he aggressively corrected the way I held my cutlery. He showed almost admirably consistent annoyance at my very being. But, that all changed when he saw me perform well on the rounders field. He alluded to my Indian heritage, and was delighted he’d found someone that could partake with a modicum of skill in the primary school’s cricket team. It was the only time I remember him smiling at me! Ethnic stereotyping? Sure. Did I care? Did I fuck. I was elated! His smile even seemed to make some of those nose hairs recede upwards — win, win!
Finding pride in one’s ethnic identity was tricky, but cricket was one way to do so. With no footballing heritage to call upon, in an attempt to connect to my Indian origins, it was whilst surviving in Gloucester with the likes of Mr Ellis that I developed a love of the Indian cricket team.
Socking it to the ‘man’
Aged 11 and thriving back in the curry smelling comfort of Southall, it was regularly waking at 3:30am to watch the Indian cricket team, and especially the then 23 year old wonderkid, Sachin Tendulkar, at the 1996 world cup in South Asia that sealed the love affair. There were posters on walls, graffiti on school books and desks, face paint, flags, feverous jingoism, and an active dislike of other teams, with special disdain reserved for arch rivals Pakistan. In Tendulkar, there was a cool looking 5’ 5” Marathi: curly locks, sunglasses, goatee, earring, socking it to fearsome 6’+ bowlers the world over. He imbued me (and over a billion others!) with pride, and inspiration of giving it back to the ‘man’, even if his regular heroics would be outdone by the mediocrity of his teammates, leading to agonising defeat most of the time.
I feverously supported Sachin and the Indian cricket team until his career ended in 2013. Hell, I even chose to name our son after him (my cricket ignorant partner, Vikki, acquiesced because she really liked the name — phew!). In the year of Tendulkar’s retirement, my jingoism had well and truly waned. Attending an India vs. South Africa contest in summer 2013, just a short walk down the road from my home in Cardiff, I found myself wanting to just enjoy an entertaining and hopefully close contest, unconcerned with the result. It was when India played former colonial masters England, or the arrogant Aussies, that my support would be partisan. The South Africans, West Indians, New Zealanders, Sri Lankans didn’t offend me. The Pakistanis didn’t either, really, but they were still the ‘enemy’. When Pakistan thrashed India in the final of the ‘mini world cup’ in London 2017, I was indifferent. I wanted India to win, but didn’t begrudge the Pakistanis the win, especially given the ban on their players being able to partake in the lucrative Indian Premier League since 2008 owing to strained political relations between the countries.
Bat drop moment
At the 2019 world cup, I found myself actually actively wanting Pakistan to beat India. They lost, as usual, but I was no longer ambivalent: I not only wanted Pakistan to win; I wanted India to be embarrassed by their comparatively impoverished neighbours in this jingoist pissing content. The previous summer (2018), during India’s enthralling ding-dong battles in the multiples series against England, I began by wanting India to win, but found myself as the summer drew on becoming less invested in such a result. Sure, England were still the historical colonial bullies, and I relished how a Shai Hope inspired West Indies beat them in an epic Headingley encounter over August bank holiday 2017, but I found it uncomfortable to rally behind a brash Virat Kohli led Indian outfit. The Indian players’ seemingly obligatory designer beards, hair fades, diamond earrings and sunglasses no longer seemed so cool as they had on Tendulkar in 1996. The indomitable pocket rocket Rishabh Pant aside, I found it hard to warm to the majority of the Kohli brigade. His batsmanship wasn’t under question — he is glorious to watch in full flow and had an excellent Test series that year — but it was his brashness and Australian-esque arrogance that was impossible to warm to. Compared to his cheeky grinned, bat dropping celebration, English counterpart, Joe Root, there was no contest in terms of likability.
The following summer in 2019 when India arrived in England for the world cup they came across similar to most Brazilian football teams over the past three decades. There was a smugness, and an expectation that they were worthy winners by virtue of turning up. But England had also been in red hot ODI form leading up to the tournament, and despite never winning it before, were one of the favourites. However, they faltered throughout, and left themselves needing a run of four in a row to win it, starting with India. It was during that game that the bat dropped. My ‘conversion’ from India mad fan, to indifferent, to actual ‘hater’ was confirmed. I started by wanting India to stick it to the former colonial master, but as the game progressed, I found myself increasingly warming to the rag tag of ‘English’ players, over half of which had origins in former colonies. It was easy to warm to the likes of Moeen Ali, Adil Rashid, Jofra Archer, and the northern lads Root, New Zealand born and raised Ben Stokes and tee-total, happy-go-lucky Mark Wood, all of whom were led by Irishman(!) Eion Morgan. The gruff (always reviews an LBW decision) Johnny Bairstow was, admittedly, less likely to warm to, but even he was preferable over multi-millionaire misogynist Hardik Pandya!
Dog eat dog
In the epic 2019 world cup final between England and New Zealand, I began by wanting the underdogs, the Kiwis, to win. But by the end, I didn’t begrudge England, and even though the tie was decided in farcical manner over boundaries struck, that England comprehensively beat New Zealand in the group stages justified the eventual outcome for me. Like most other non-complete bastards, I have a soft spot for an underdog: in sports, politics, life in general. The Indian cricket team in the 90s (AKA whipping boys inc.) were easy to like: stylish, occasional winners, predictably unpredictable, and led by the best batsman in the world. The team’s rise coincided with India’s increasing neoliberal ‘development’. Tendulkar’s career (1989–2013) spanned over four decades of rampant economic growth, as well as increasing social and wealth inequality. After Tendulkar retired, Narendra Modi — a politician once blacklisted by G8 world leaders owing to his part in enflaming religious based violence against Muslims in the Ahmedabad atrocities in 2002 — was elected in 2014 as Prime Minister through leading his right wing Bharat Janata Party (BJP) to election victory.
Modi has led top-down, state sanctioned violence towards all except orthodox Hindus, exemplified by pseudo-academic claims to ownership of lands belonging to minorities. Hindus aghast at ubiquitous jingoist rhetoric, policies and actions are labelled by sycophantic power brokers as HINO (Hindus In Name Only). The recent Dev Patel revenge flick, Monkey Man (2024) (think Ghayal meets Kill Bill), set in the fictional Indian city of Yatana (seemingly loosely based on Mumbai, with its stark juxtaposition between wealthy and poorer neighbourhoods) was a no holds barred sociopolitical critique of contemporary Modi led BJP India. The indie flick was considered too incendiary such that it was blacklisted by the otherwise opportunistic Netflix, who didn’t want to risk the wrath of a significant number of right wing nationalistic power brokers. Whilst previous Congress governments were hardly bastions of progressivism, I will not be travelling to or supporting India as long as it is under Modi’s leadership.
Don-key-ote
When first travelling to India aged 14, in 1999, with millennium fever abound, I landed and kissed the ground. I was making a pilgrimage to my motherland, this was going to change me forever more (see pp.40–41 of my interview with Prof. Balbinder S. Bhogal) Asides from stomach pains so nauseating that the English and Panjabi languages combined lack the vocabulary to describe, it was an enjoyable trip, and one that solidified my feelings of Indian pride. I’ve only been back once since, in 2006, which was a more turbulent visit:
- I was the plaything of a stomach virus so ghastly that it resulted in me projectile puking and pooping simultaneously for what seemed the length of a Test match, and I only made it onto a plane home courtesy of injections in my ass;
- I attended every minute of an Indian test match defeat to the old enemy England, during which Tendulkar made 1 of 22 in the first innings and was roundly booed for the one and only time in his illustrious career, by his home Mumbai crowd, no less;
- I underwent some sort of Marathi coming of age rite of passage, along with a Keralan friend of a friend who I’d only met that day, as we were transported from rikshaw to moped to plush Merc during a 12-hour night long mission through the Mumbai underworld to secure tickets to all five days of the above described shit show of a match. Eventually, the tickets were granted to us courtesy of a bigtime Bollywood director. My memory is hazy, there was definitely a plush Indo-Chinese restaurant involved, a secret cinema, and I’m not sure why I found a gimp ball in my pocket the next morning;
- I went on a pilgrimage to a Sikh holy site via an overnight sleeper train with my dad, during which I shat on a moving train directly onto the track. I wasn’t being weird; that’s how it was designed, I think. Eating at a dhaba late one night in the Wild West village of the pilgrimage, continuing the S&M theme from my rite of passage described above, I was treated to the sight of donkey being hit full force by a speeding rickshaw turning a corner. Dropping my parantha into my yoghurt, I screamed and wanted to check on the poor donkey. My dad, of cricketing wisdom fame, was sat opposite and not privy to what I had just witnessed. He turned to face the dazed equine and calmy reassured me: ‘look carefully, son!’ The donkey, post impact, now sported an erection the size of my arm. We concluded with some satisfaction that the donkey was most likely into S&M, and probably waited at the corner each night for his rickshaw hit.
In sum, India was chaos. It enacted unspeakable violence on my stomach, was home to horrific inequality, routinely presented sexual proclivities in public, but it was still my spiritual home, and I was always going to support its cricket team. I couldn’t even countenance never doing so.
And we all like vindaloo?
Identity is fluid and contextual. I know this. I feel this. Even so, I occasionally struggle to fathom how 2024 me can be so aggressively opposed to a team I once was unfailingly emotionally invested in as a fan(atic): face paints, time and labour consuming homemade flags, flying across the globe at vast expense to watch them take on the Aussies in their backyard, the list continues… If I compare my relationship towards the Indian cricket team, which has become a sporting symbol of political wealth and corruption, to that of my beloved Arsenal football club, I’ve experienced nowhere near the same ‘conversion’ of any kind. Whilst I refuse to purchase anything emblazoned with the Emirates sponsor, I still support an ethically compromised sporting entity that is exclusively owned by an oligarch. I support Arsenal as much as I ever have, but actively want the Indian cricket team — my earlier and much more intoxicating love — to lose to anyone, even England! (lord have mercy again, please!). Not one of my peers have had anything remotely similar occur that I can talk with about this. Some Sikh cousins have expressed their ambivalent relationship towards the team and the wider political context in term of Sikhi and Panjab, but still continue to support them.
‘Here in England the global village the consequence of a global pillage’ (Asian Dub Foundation citing Ambalavaner Sivandandan) I find myself actively supporting anyone but India, even England. England?! Three lions on the shirt? La la la? What have I become?! In late summer 2016 after the Brexit referendum — that was won predominantly along outdated notions of nationhood and ethnic homogeneity — multitalented Riz Ahmed confidently (and since much cited having gone viral) asserted in an interview with Stephen Colbert that he: (me being reductive here) a brown man of Pakistani and Muslim origin from a Muhajir family that had been forcibly relocated from India during partition, was what contemporary British looked like.
Whilst I may thus look the part, and can Joe Root for the England cricket team against India, I still cannot bring myself to support either of its main football teams (lions or lionesses). Here the cognitive dissonance casts a shadow of hypocrisy. The England men’s football team are poster boys for diversity (not the women, though!), and count Arsenal representation with origins overseas among their star players (Nigerian Bukayo Saka and Irish Declan Rice). So, being the walking contradiction that I am, unapologetically and fanatically support The Arsenal, vehemently want the Indian cricket team to fail, and hold a similar disdain towards the English football teams (I’m 50–50 when they play the French — that’s a whole other essay!). The fanfare and media circus that surrounds the Indian cricket and English football national teams leaves me queasy. However, take the frenzied coverage and claims to grandeur of the England men’s football team, and times that by at least 20 (in terms of population) to reckon with the coverage of the Indian men’s cricket team. The players are deified, the administrators run world cricket (see this excellent documentary by American-Indian-Muslim comedian Hasan Minhaj during the 2019 world cup). The odds are so heavily stacked in their favour, that (at the time of writing) they’ve failed to win an international tournament since 2013 provides me with much schadenfreude!
India’s arch rival Pakistan is a political mess. It’s also no safe haven for Sikhs or non-Sunni minorities, but its cricket team is chockfull of Panjabis that look like, and speak the same language, as me. It feels more familiar, and much easier to root for than an Indian team that cheerleads for Modi. Similar to the ‘plastic Brits’ phenomenon that haunted the likes of Mo Farah, the Mohammed Siraj, Mohammed Shami and Arshdeep Singhs of the current Indian team have their integrity routinely questioned on a national scale. Whilst the team’s leadership have often been commendably quick, and clear, to shut down such discrimination and hate speech, the puppet show that took place online during the farmers’ protest in 2021 did little to make me feel any better about the power dynamics that frame the Indian team.
In 2021, our soon-to-be son was going to be named after Sachin, my childhood (and adult!) hero. But Tendulkar was one of the most high-profile tweeting puppets (alongside the inspiration for my name, Sunny Deol). It led to a serious reconsideration of name for our little one. My partner, however, free from any cricketing allegiances, held firm. For that, I am grateful; our boy is definitely more of a Sachin than a Cuthbert.
I’m still trying to come to terms with the contradictions in the mess of my perspectives. Having wrestled through this piece, I feel a little bit clearer on where my loyalties lie. Building on the Sikh Panjabi Scholars research, I mostly feel comfortable wearing a British-Panjabi hat, but with a scroll full of caveats. If, reader, you’ve had a similar experience with either the Indian cricket, or any other sporting, team, please do get in touch…
