India wins!

 The Indian Team won the World Cup match by seven runs, and, boy, did the country erupt in to frenzied joy! There were crackers exploding for almost half an hour. The WhatsApp messages and statuses started overflowing with congratulatory descriptions of the match, of the team effort, of the win that proved yet again the traditional beauty of cricket as a game of 'glorious uncertainty'. Why, just five minutes back, in our lane, zoomed past a car with girls screaming "chak de, India"!

In our cricket-crazy country, cricket always ascertains that there IS an India and an Indianness, however much the interested 'parties' want to divide it along fault lines such as caste, language, region, creed or religion, not to forget the rich/poor rhetoric! 

Well, in the run-up to the 2024 elections, there were harsh hard-hearted notes that almost sounded as if India was on the brink of balkanisation. Very senior, and supposedly sensible, leaders from the South were hinting at a separate South, as it is, according to them, discriminated, despite generating better tax collections, and yet getting penalized by the Center with fewer and lesser fund allocations, not to mention the supposed imposition of Hindi, and the impossible Aryan invasion gobbledygook! Better not mention the Bengali 'khela' or the Punjab da panga, right?

The very idea of the ' federal republic' of states appeared so threatened that in a way I was happy that the TDP is going to continue being part of the NDA coalition! Thus was proved what J. Sai Deepak often reiterates, "I am an Indian from the South, and not a South-Indian". Anyways, Chandra Babu Naidu Garu appears to be development focussed, moreover. 

In brief, when 'India' wins, whether on the sports field or as the aftermath of elections, one feels assured that "Saare Jahan se Achcha" is our nation, to reiterate the Iqbal quote repeated by Rakesh Sharma, our first astronaut, who thus answered when the then Prime Minister, Indiraji, asked him how India looked from the space! India wins!

Pratima@The erstwhile USSR and the Balkan countries, not to forget the riots involved during the demands for different statehood's, amply prove the dangers of balkanisation!