Sania shames the bigots and fanatics

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Sania�s decision to no longer play tournaments in India has hopefully sent a strong mes-sage to the bigots and fanatics who have been baying for her blood for some flimsy rea-son or the other. It is time other public personalities followed suit.

CJ: Mukesh Singh Gehlot

Thu, Feb 07, 2008 18:44:46 IST

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Bigots and Fanatics :

SANIA MIRZA has said that she will, even at the risk of hurting her blossoming career, no longer play tournaments in India. She has added that while she loves both tennis and India and not necessarily in that order, she would rather play for her country from outside the country to stay clear of the petty-minded hassles she has increasingly been facing here.

Many, including fellow-player Leander Paes have urged Sania to reconsider her decision. Some others, however, may feel that it is high time that someone had the grit to retaliate against the growing climate of bigotry and intolerance pervading the country by resorting to the time-honoured method of protesting, viz., ’boycott’. Perhaps it’s high time that the tolerant, but silent, majority, which includes most Indians, barring the lunatic fringe of various hues grew in turn intolerant of one and the only one thing, viz., intolerance, which poisons the air we breathe and mutilates the language of everyday discourse.

As different as all these examples of fanaticism are, they have one overriding common denominator: they undermine our age-old civilisational values of inclusiveness and willingness to see the other person’s point of view and they will, if we let them, render untenable our way of life. It’s time to fight back against the bigotry and fanaticism that are encroaching upon the freedom of the individual and Sania has done so by implicitly boycotting India as a tennis venue. By not caving in to forces of repression, Sania may have motivated other public personalities, be they sports stars or movie idols, entrepreneurs or artistes, writers or painters, to follow her example.

Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ envisioned what would happen if the innovators of the world, its movers and shakers and its ’dreamers of dreams’ went on strike against the suppression of creativity - a provocative and challenging proposition born out of romantic imagination.

On a more down-to-earth plane, what could the average citizen, who is not a public figure nor has any pretensions or desire to be an activist does to show solidarity with the victims of intolerance and bigotry? In the days of the South African apartheid, many ordinary citizens, all over the world, boycotted South African goods and services, from cigarettes to banks, in individualised extension of UN trade embargoes. Perhaps it’s time to boycott the bigots in our midst, turn our backs on them via the myriad day-to-day transactions and negotiations that constitute us as an interdependent community. Being intolerant of intolerance is the best way to ensure that it is game, set and match for tolerance.

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