Cricket, social politics and conflict

Oh what a lovely time this is as we see a budding cricket player post misogynistic content on his FB post which goes viral and the liberals gang up against him and demand his expulsion. But wait this is followed by clips he is not showing respect to the flag and refusing to sing the national anthem. The "pro-liberation" forces immediately go on the warpath and there is a huge noise on social media. And then it becomes a sort of "religious" issue and several Hindu activists start attacking him. Suddenly it's a bigger matter.

However, this is social media and almost any "momin" worth his salt has an account there. On top of that he is close to several Islamic religious leaders, the guardian of faith if you will. They hit back with their prop attacking "feminism" and "defending" Islam.  The quantum of content supporting him is much higher as they are in the majority. In fact, by the end of the day,  "Islamic" content had outnumbered liberal content by miles displaying the power of numbers.  

Soon name calling began and people were by that time identifying others as "razakars"  and "Shahbaghis" and posts were being shared across the timeline. The "shushils" insisted that he be sacked from the team and quoted various ICC documents as per which he would be termed a racist.

The discussion was however about religious identity and practice as well as belief structures and of course misogyny, a by- product per se. The player became a hate figure and so did those who were not asking for his head. While his defenders hated those trashing him.

BCB ARRIVES LATE ON THE PITCH 

Finally about three days down the road, BCB went public on the issue and said the player had expressed regrets -- " Sorry" -- and the player himself had said that he could never hate women as many were saying as "my mother is a woman". Such statements made him another target of more attacks and equating motherhood and liberal values created more confusion and trolling.

Two days later he played again, didn't do too well and injured himself while playing making his resting inevitable and. It drove attention away from him and focused on others who were all playing  badly anyway.

As may be noted none of the parties involved in the debate on either side were in the least interested in cricket and made no comments on that topic. It didn't matter if BD won or lost and that is the point because it was never about a person in sports being offensive, it was about a person being so against the values held by a particular  group. 

The problem is, the haters of the players are not anywhere near as strong as his defenders. And that is the divide none can afford to ignore.

WOMEN AND SPORTS AND SOCIETY 

What this player was trying to do was be an evangelist forgetting that certain issues will create a backlash. He is obviously naïve and brought up to believe in the stuff about women staying home which he had posted.  Point is, most people in Bangladesh are more like him than his critiques, at least in public statements.  And that is what is missed in the conversation.

The group which upholds his values publicly and those who critique them publicly, in their own space occupy the same position. They are the activists who are caught in transition and they sit on the opposite side of the conflict.

The player represented the religious "theological" group while his critics upheld liberal "theology". The socio-economic reality is of neither because in Bangladesh the principal driving force is livelihood not social theology. It's the economic strings that pull society ahead, right or wrong.

Both sides have packaged the issue into boxes which reflect growing anxiety about change rather than reality as Bangladeshi women are more in the workplace than ever before.  Women in general and from the lesser economic space have no intention of listening to either.

A study we did of women in the rmg sector showed that they conduct negotiations with the many forces of society including the two mentioned above at a level not thought of. They are not waiting for a saviour and much less bothered about religious or liberal dictats than we think.

But the most important data is that Bangladeshi women have the highest labour market participation in South Asia kissing almost 43% making all debates about whether women should work or not redundant.

The W cricket team has on the average done much better than the Men's team but is denied privileges and the media doesn't even cover their matches properly. And liberals don't protest this while the religious groups just hope it shuts down entirely. As events show Bangladeshi women probably don't take either group too seriously.

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