From Moeen Ali to Ranji:
Hindu-Muslim In Cricketing Diaspora
Saeed
Naqvi
When
he completed his hat-trick by trapping South Africa’s Morne Morkel Leg Before
wicket in the third test match at the Oval with his orthodox off-spin, Moeen
Ali entered the record books on three counts.
This
was the first hat-trick in history at Surrey’s famous cricket ground. The
hat-trick also gave England victory, a record breaking coincidence. Also, Moeen
is the first cricketer of the South Asia origin to have posted such a record –
at least since the princely order faded out. Not since Ranji, Duleep Singh ji
and Nawab of Pataudi, has a sub continental cricketer inserted himself in British
history books.
Asked
if he would ever play cricket in India, Ranji is reported to have grandly
asserted: “Duleep and I are English cricketers.” For that classy disdain, Ranji
Trophy cricket was instituted in India in 1934. The year Ranji died, 1933, was,
by a coincidence, historic for Indian cricket in another way: the first test
match was played at the Bombay Gymkhana. C.K. Nayudu captained India. The
English captain happened to be D.R. Jardine, notorious for his bodyline series
against Bradman’s Australia.
I
find it difficult to resist a non cricketing story about Ranji which I picked
up during my travels across Ireland. After his cricketing days, Ranji took to
hunting as a sport. A Grouse Shooting accident injured him in one eye.
Scouts
scoured the British Isles for the finest spot for angling, which was to be
Ranji’s next hobby. He was informed that there was no better spot for river
salmon than the bend in the river facing Ballynahinch Castle on Ireland’s
Connemara coast.
Other
than being a magnificent castle facing a hillock on one side and a river on the
other, Ballynahinch suited Ranji for another little known reason.
Ranji,
the very “English” cricketer, had a very Indian sister he was fond of. In the male
dominated feudal world, she had to be accommodated within hailing distance. Negotiations
were started with a convent in the vicinity. The convent would receive
endowments. Ranji’s sister would live with the nuns with two non negotiable
conditions: she would not be converted and she would wear a sari, not a habit.
To this day Ballynahinch has a photograph of Ranji’s sister in the convent,
wearing a white sari, rather like Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity.
Had
I not strayed into the Ranji saga, the narrative after the Moeen Ali
performance would have been the obvious one: a few months ago there were as
many as four Muslims in the English cricket team – Moeen, Adil Rashid, Haseeb
Hameed and Zafar Ansari. Why is there no Hindu in the list? Lest I be
misunderstood, my curiosity is mostly sociological. My guess is that Hindus
overseas involve themselves in matters more serious than cricket.
The
phenomenon continues in other cricket playing countries – Usman Khawaja in
Australia; Hashim Amla and Imran Tahir in South Africa; Sikandar Raza who
helped Zimbabwe beat Sri Lanka.
Most
of these players do not lend themselves to significant sociological analysis. They
are immigrants from Pakistan. Hashim Amla is the only one who reflects South
Africa’s social hierarchies going back to Mahatma Gandhi’s 21 years in that
country.
An
overwhelming majority of Indians in South Africa, mostly around Durban, are
children of indentured labourers, a device colonialism invented to circumvent
the abolition of slavery. This class, along with the blacks, was too depressed
to be playing a “gentleman’s” game. But a wave of Muslim Gujarati Merchants,
who turned up to cater to the British and Indian clients, were financially
sound. One of them was Baba Abdullah who invited Gandhi to be his barrister.
Since
apartheid South Africa barred non white students from the better schools, this
elite group helped set up English style public schools in neighbouring
countries like Malawi under the supervision of such arch British toadies as
President Hastings Banda.
It
is the progeny of these Muslim merchants from Gujarat who developed a taste for
Marxism, as well as cricket, later in British universities. Yusuf Dadoo, Ahmed
Kathrada, Essop Pahad, Kamal Asmal, Dullah Omar, Ahmed and Yusuf Cachalia,
Fatima Meer – they formed the backbone of the ANC resistance against apartheid.
Once
apartheid was lifted, their children joined the all white Rand club in
Johannesburg and sundry cricket clubs. That is the kind of background Hashim
Amla would come from.
How
does one explain the fine off spinner, Keshav Maharaj, to my knowledge the
first Hindu in the South African team currently touring England? Maharaj is
actually a contrived title among Indians with a background in indenture.
Brahmins
never accepted indenture. For them, to cross the black waters (Kala pani) was a
sin because useless action was a sin. But the Brahmin was sorely missed for
religious rituals during birth, death, marriage. To make up for this shortfall,
the community conferred the title of “Maharaj” on the most educated and one of “Light
skin”. The most famous of this genre was one of Nelson Mandela’s closest friends,
Mac Maharaj. It was he who smuggled out the manuscript of the Long March to
Freedom from the Robben Island across a stretch of the ocean from Cape Town.
Keshav Maharaj is presumably from this stock.
West
Indian cricket, uninhibited by the class stratifications of South Africa, gave
full vent to a mixture of slavery and indenture to produce the world’s most
scintillating cricketers.
Of
Indian origin were brilliant batsmen like Rohan Kanhai, Shivnaraine Chanderpaul
and Ramnaresh Sarwan – all from Guyana.
It
has remained something of a puzzle why Fiji, most loyal to be British crown,
never took to cricket in a big way. An average native Fijian is taller than a
professional basketball player in America. He is also stronger of built. This
oversized human machine hurtling the ball from palm tree height would have led
to bloodshed in days when helmets were not known. Is this why the Anglo Saxon
never encouraged cricket in Fiji?
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