The Great Indian Football!

It’s a tag – an origin, political, religious – sharp Hindu or Muslim, changes all at the Indo-Bangladesh/East Pakistan border. It changes nationality, political overtones, social identity and the foe and friend.
It’s beyond borders. It vivisects the soul of India. Was it cool calculated for a few dimes by the British trader and its successors?
It alters with where and which police holds one – Indian or Bangladeshi, an inimical East Pakistani Muslim or rabid Indian police with an equally sharp Hindu mindset. A pregnant Muslim woman from India, with her father and other relatives, could be forcefully thrown into the wilderness of no-man’s land branding her as Bangladeshi. The Bangladesh authorities produce documents to prove her Indian nationality. The Indian court calls the arrest and deportation illegal and orders restoration to her family.
The quagmire and slugfest continue. Not all her relatives are restored or reunited. The family remains divided. Since they have a religion, not desirable to some Indians, they are tossed around. Bangladeshis retort the different way – Indians force dumping of unwanted “Indians” on the neighbours’ soil taking advantage of her family’s religion.
Quixotical. Yes, that’s it is. A question that would not have arisen on August 14, 1947 is a valid or vexatious question on run up to August 15, 2026. The Partition syndrome afflicts either side of the border. Who created is immaterial today? It could have been Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League and its call for Direct Action Day – August 16, 1946 – or the Great Calcutta Mayhem, the targeted massacre of the Hindus or the coalition partner of the League, a contra pseudo-religious religious outfit,
That does neither answer nor resolve the vexatious human issue. Who vitiated the atmosphere? Why they did it? Valid questions. At least over 10,000 or more lost their lives in Calcutta and may be more all over Bengal in 1946. The Partition of India claimed 2 million or more lives in the quest for a ‘better life’. And 17 million or more were displaced in the melee of tragic transfer of population El Dorado.
Who benefited? None knows. Generations wailed and still wails. Insecurity remains high not only for those who were immediate victims but millions of their progenies and successors.
Innumerable victims are interned in retributory Citizenship Amendment Act or National Register of Citizenship camps in Assam. They had either wrong religion or inappropriate parenthood both among Hindus and Muslims. Quixotic? Again, yes. The deciders, any or all names of leaders of 1946-1947 to 2026,are material but also immaterial. They can only create the cacophony but not resolve it. Who would be accountable? Most are parts of the history, they ruled, enjoyed their lives and had happy deaths. Their successors in Bengal, Assam, Bihar or elsewhere continue the game.
Many stateless or wanderer or gullible for jobs across the subcontinent are in pathetic conditions. A driver or a maid survives on cut-money commissions either side of the border. They live in shanties of Delhi, Gurgaon, Ludhiana, Mumbai, Cuttack, Raipur, Dimapur, Imphal or Dhaka. They eke out a living, seek patronage of shady religious pontiffs, banding groups or political parties for safety.
Many recall how in 1950s, a man was thrown into the boiler of a steam boat and women accompanying were raped and abducted. Or may be recently a pregnant woman, along with her family was thrown into Bangladesh by security forces along with her family members. Her trauma was for only one reason. She belonged to the disliked religion.
Just the contrary is happening to a family of yet another religion in Dhaka. They are uncomfortable and want to move to India.
Still more interesting. About 300 persons at Dinajpur in Coochbehar facing deportation to Bangladesh on June 7, 2026. They have reportedly valid Dhaka documents. But Bangladesh Guards refuse to recognise their papers. Overnight the BSF on the Indian side shelters them. Next morning they go missing much to the relief of BSF!, who declare they have been pushed back. BDG say they did not go to Bangladesh. Where have they been “footballed” is the mystery.
Since 1946, the great Indian, then it was Indian subcontinent, “football” is the pastime. Names change the game is on. Poorer are kicked back and the richer, religions apart, reap it Laughable? No. Tragic.
The poor are in trauma. No place to live. Despite they belonging to the Indian subcontinent remain officially homeless, roofless and foodless. A Jinnah, Hasina, Zia, Sharma or Adhikari reenact it and the Indian suffers decades after Partition
The trauma is widespread. Even tribal societies of Manipur are segmented. It is not Kukis, Meitis and Nagas, but many more living in neighbouring Myanmar. Intermingling and inter-marriages are not uncommon. Now families are divided. Many mixed marriage couples face forced separations. Some remain away from each other to save themselves from a Kuki or a Meiti.
And woman anywhere is disrobed, raped to save or repay the community “honour” on the hills or plains. Humanity may be one but in violence-ridden society, such scars are lived with.
Yes, that’s the Indian society – apathetic, violent, self-centred wearing religion, ethnicity, caste and sub-caste. A society that after independence had shunned caste names, are into new parochial grooves. Are we devolving to be more demoniac!
The social divides travel deep into the family psyches. Breaking down is easier than emerging as an all-encompassing humanity. Divine they are no more. May God save the new Indians. They could at the least be less demoniac, less religious or less political. Or they are still Quixotic!