Irfan Yusuf: Games frippery a nuisance amid gritty reality

Opinion

God bless technology. Thanks to the dish on his roof, my father didn't have to travel to his home town to watch the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games.

All he had to do was switch on the TV and stay up until 3am (Sydney time) to enjoy the dancing, colour and puppetry on display at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.

He wasn't the only one watching the spectacle on the box. Millions of Indians too poor to afford tickets to the opening gala also huddled around their TV sets.

Many must have been wondering what all the fuss was about. After all, no cricket would be played at these games. And in India, cricket (or kirkit, as they call it in Delhi) is almost the official religion.

Western media reporting has focused on the absence of first world comforts for the athletes. No doubt most of the athletes would not be able to afford the five-star hotels where so many international reporters are holed up.

There was talk about Islamist terrorists blowing up stadiums and shooting people at random. But if the opening ceremony was anything to go by, the only explosions were the fireworks.

Oh, and shooting is an official Commonwealth Games sport.

Speaking of terrorism, many Western journalists missed the really big story that was frightening more Indians than stray monkeys in the athletes' village.

It is true that India has seen dark days of communalist rioting and terror. Yet rarely did we read about the source of so much tension in India and the resolution of that particular source on the eve of the Games opening ceremony.

Since 1992, competing Hindu and Muslim groups have been fighting over the remains of a 16th-century mosque built by the Emperor Babar in the north Indian town of Ayodhya. According to the Hindu epic, the Ramayana, the town was also the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama.

After a group of Hindu chauvinists tore the historic mosque down, cities such as Delhi and Bombay (as it was known then) went into lockdown.

Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, describes meeting with one of the rioters involved in the 1992-93 massacre: "Those were not days for thought ... We five people burnt one Mussulman. At 4am after we heard of Radhabai Chawl, a mob assembled, the likes of which I have never seen. Ladies, gents.

"They picked up any weapon they could. Then we marched to the Muslim side. We met a [baker] on the highway, on a bicycle. I knew him; he used to sell me bread every day.

"I set him on fire. We poured petrol on him and set him on fire. All I thought was, 'This is a Muslim.'

"He was shaking. He was crying, 'I have children, I have children!'

"I said, 'When your Muslims were killing the Radhabai Chawl people, did you think of your children?' That day we showed them what Hindu dharma is."

Now, in 2010, with India's biggest international event since its independence celebrations, the Allahabad High Court decided to finally deliver its judgment. The court didn't see any point in delaying the matter further.

Politicians and religious leaders across virtually all divides agreed. Most have accepted the decision, which awards one-third of the property to the Muslim religious trust and two-thirds to two Hindu groups.

Some will no doubt argue that the decision effectively rewards the fanatics who tore the mosque down and went on a rampage of violence and looting. Others will feel the Muslims shouldn't get one inch of the land where Lord Rama was born.

Such dissenting voices are not going on the rampage. Instead, they are using appeal mechanisms granted by Indian courts.

Hopefully, readers will appreciate that the dust-sensitive backsides of foreign athletes don't rate highly when the prospect of communalist violence is very real.

India may be portrayed as disease-ridden and backward but Indians have shown a far greater degree of maturity in response to a hotly contested decision over sacred ground than many Americans have in relation to the so-called Ground Zero "mosque".

Anyway, back to religion. Australian cricketers seem to be enjoying themselves.

By the time this column is published, we'll find out if Mitchell Johnson's five-wicket spell will be enough to enable the Aussies to win the first test in Mohali.

The Aussies haven't raised a fuss about monkeys or terrorists or dusty dunnies. And their game hasn't cost the struggling Indian taxpayer as much as the Games.

Amol Rajan wrote recently in the Independent of "the cruel irony" that "most Indians don't care about the Games, because it will have such little effect on them ... they care about cricket, not athletics.

"To them, the event is above all an expensive nuisance and a distraction from the daily grind."

I can just imagine wealthy Indians at the Games stadiums feigning interest while using their iPhones to keep up with the latest cricket score. Less wealthy Indians would have their eyes glued to TV sets or their ears glued to radios. Who needs the Commonwealth Games when there is kirkit to enjoy!

* Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and author of Once Were Radicals: My Years As A teenage Islamo-fascist.