The country is abuzz with excitement over the ICC Cricket world cup 2019 matches which are scheduled to begin from today. The opening ceremony for the same had taken place yesterday in England, which is the host country. During the ceremony, Malala Yousufzai proved it does not matter if a person is an advocate for human rights, those very rights which were denied to her by her own country in the first place, a Pakistani national’s petty digs at India must always take priority.
The ceremony saw the introduction of the captains from the 10 participating teams followed by a 60 second cricket challenge in which former cricketer Anil Kumble and actor Farhan Akhtar represented India and ended up performing poorly. They scored a mere 19 runs and Pakistan, performing marginally better scored 38 runs, stood in the 7th position. While the Indian team took the event in good spirit, Malala wanted to justify Pakistan’s poor performance by making jibes on India. She stated, “Pakistan, we were okay, not too bad. We came seventh. But at least we were not last like India.”
Malala Yousufzai statement has been highly distasteful. After the remark, she added that she hopes that the game unites people and is played in the right spirit. How on earth can Malala expect the people to be united by the game if she herself is going on and creating differences and unhealthy competitive spirit over small friendly games? She was present there in her capacity as an advocate of women’s cricket and somehow forgot that and attempted to prove Pakistan’s superiority in the friendly game. The fact that she is a Nobel Laureate for peace makes the situation even more deplorable as such statements are definitely not preaching peace in any case.
Demeaning India on Pakistan’s behalf is something intolerable and Malala Yousufzai is being quite the hypocrite by indulging in it. Pakistan is a country that had denied her the basic right of education, which is a fundamental right in India and being a peace propagator (certainly accepted the laurels for it), she should be condemning Pakistan for its atrocities rather than defending it by putting India down. Moreover, with all the terrorist associations that have recently come to light, Malala being the Nobel Laureate for peace should altogether denounce the country.
But she hasn’t done so. Malala apparently is quite in awe with Pakistan and is obvious that she still respects the country, despite the fact that she almost got murdered there. However, one can accept her overt nationalism and if this is truly the case, she should go and live in Pakistan, rather than living luxurious life in London.
