3 am. The world was watching England versus Croatia. I was glued to the video of pop star George Michael singing Father Figure on loop.
When the match ended, I did the expected groupie thing on my social media spaces. “Go go Croatiaaaaaaaaa,” I yelled because I wanted to cheer for the underdogs, for a third-world country that had never won the football World Cup. Till a few serious soccer fans caught my fake-ness and informed me that in football terms, Croatia’s players were anything but the underdogs. I started to look online as comments poured in this World Cup. Some said “Out with NATO.” Others said they wanted England to win so it could eventually lose to France in the finals and that would serve the English right.
Too busy to read? Listen to it instead.
Was this football or something much more insidious lurking in the shadows of the game that we in India are overfamiliar with? Nationalism by another name? Football has always been a blood sport. And given that in our country, we play only hard ball, it was perversely refreshing to note how much blood had spilled in the place we’ve borrowed our nationalism from – Europe.
Nationalism Here, Nationalism There
One of my closest friends is English and a hard-core anti-Brexiter. In other words, he was gutted when Britain voted to leave the European Union in a referendum that Brexiters (those that voted to exit) won by a very narrow margin in 2016. Let the English lose everything, was his position. Serves them right. “Let Theresa May totter in the British Parliament and let us lose the World Cup.”
Both dreams came true this week.
And it’s a particularly interesting time to look at European nationalism, Indian nationalism, and also – stripped of its geographical peculiarities – nationalism. Is it about who comes and goes through Europe’s borders? There are too many Polish people and Romanians, Indians and Syrians taking low-paying jobs in England that the English won’t do. Will shutting them out make England a better place to be? Is that nationalism? Is English-ness non-brown, non-Muslim? Is it a homogenous thing?
And speaking of which, what is Indian-ness? The right wing has defined it clearly and narrowly as waving flags, shouting, “our soldiers, our soldiers” for everything, and being essentially Hindu.
Even if you are Muslim, you are originally Hindu, is their contention. Never mind the Constitution, nationalism is about a feeling. God help us if we ever got to a World Cup final and played against Pakistan, I thought. Two ideas of nationalism that mainly exist in relationship with each other. If there was no Pakistan, would there be an India or an idea of nationalism that the popular right wing could cohere around?
Head and Heels of Racism
Should football be more about rich big-boy clubs and not richer, nastier nations? Both are bad but which is worse? I was asking this question while looking at how the other Balkan states, that Croatia was in a bloody ethnic war with in 1990s, dealt with the latter’s win against England.
For one, the tennis superstar Novak Djokovic who is Serbian, was called an idiot by trolls on and offline for cheering for the national enemy, Croatia.
For another, the FIFA world cup governing body is currently investigating two Swiss players of ethnic Albanian origin for making a gesture symbolising the ‘eagle’ on the Albanian flag when Switzerland beat Serbia.
The streets of London were empty after England lost. Zagreb was in over-drive. And there were drinkers and over-enthusiastic nationalists at pubs, some of which were apparently sending Serbs away from the after-parties Croats threw.
But the most heart-rending story of football nationalism I remember is from the 2006 World Cup. The France versus Italy final. French team captain and football God Zinedine Zidane was on the verge of bringing the cup home to France, when the Italian player insulted him on the field. Zidane head-butted him, was given a red card, and the match went into penalty kicks that Italy won narrowly. FIFA ruled that the Italian player’s comments were insulting but did not amount to racial abuse. But various papers reported how the comments alluded to Zidane’s immigrant origins as an Algerian.
Zidane said repeatedly that he “would rather die than say sorry” to Marco Materazzi. That he would not have been able to live with himself if he had not reacted to the slur.
So many football fans commented at the time that this is normal. Provocation of the worst kind – bigotry, nationalist xenophobia, racial slurs are all thrown at players in the nth minute to change the game. Really?
Let’s Kick It Out
That it happens, we all know only too well. But are we okay with it? Or can we be a bit more ‘urban naxal’, to use a new phrase the right wing in India have come up with, to describe people like me? Can we react by wanting our country to lose just to see the ultra-nationalists squirm? Can we throw nationalism away in spirit at least?
My fantasies, I can tell you, are not made up of France versus Croatia. Or even “let the English bastards lose!” Not for me, thank you. I froth over George Michael in his syrupy, heavy bedroom voice, in torn jeans and a black leather jacket, dressed as a taxi driver in the music video from his 1987 smash hit, Father Figure. I don’t dream of the real George. I know the fictional one well. He is making love to an upper-class model played by the cool as ice, unattainable Tania Coleridge. It’s the stuff the Martin Scorsese movie Taxi Driver is made of. The unattainable woman and the rough guy from the Bronx.
Two years after George Michael died, his fans around the world aren’t talking much about his being gay or the son of an immigrant. A Greek cypriot whose original non-popstar name was Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou. If he was playing football instead of singing, “I Want Your Sex,” it would be a different matter.
(Revati Laul is an independent journalist and filmmaker based in Delhi. She tweets@revatilaul. This is a personal account. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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