This Mughal is a Rajput fan

Today is the big day, when a Rajput king (who was a second class ticket examiner for the Indian Railways in a previous life) rides into battle. His top general is a Tamil Brahmin who terrorizes the enemy with a carrom ball. They also have a die-hard fan who has traveled half the world to say hello. What is so special about him is that he belongs to a tribe which has sworn to fight a thousand year war with the Rajput Tamils.

Normally this would be an unremarkable story, especially so as Mohd. Bashir’s wife is from Hyderabad (India) . Lots of Indians would also support Pakistan if the latter was playing (some “Indians” support Pakistan even when playing against India). But still as Dr Omar says, as long as the 2-nation theory lives out its zombie like life (and it will do so till Kashmir is normalized), these stories do make a few bright splashes against a perpetually cloudy sky that is SAsia.
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There is one thing about Mahendra Singh Dhoni that even his staunch critics will applaud. Whether he is on or off the field, he loves to walk the talk. So, when
he declared that the hostility associated with an India-Pakistan
encounter is long over, Dhoni meant it and his latest act has proved it.

The Indian captain on Saturday arranged a complimentary pass for a
die-hard Pakistani cricket fan Mohammed Bashir, who came all the way
from Chicago to support his team.

Although Pakistan were
knocked out in the group stage, Bashir has stayed back to watch India
play the final and now has become a “die-hard Dhoni fan” having
interacted with the Indian captain.

“I was watching India’s
training session yesterday but I didn’t have any tickets. Dhoni is
familiar with my face as he has seen me before the Champions Trophy’s
Indo-Pak game in Birmingham. I told him that I don’t have a ticket to
watch the finals.

“Dhoni then called some “Kaka” (trainer
Ramesh Mane or ‘Mane Kaka’) and told him to arrange for my ticket. Kaka
promptly gave me a complimentary pass. I am completely moved by his
gesture,” the new “Chacha Pakistani” said on Sunday.

“He (Dhoni) asked about me and I told him that I am settled in Chicago.
Since I was standing there for a long time, he told someone to give me
fruits. I am a Pakistan fan but for today, I am a Dhoni fan. Also I have
another India connection. I am Hyderabad’s son-in-law as my wife hails
from the region,” a proud Bashir said flaunting his final match pass.

During Pakistan’s matches, Bashir, who would be in his early 50’s,
could be seen wearing a giant sized kurta in the design of his national
flag. He has also been a big hit among the local fans after supporting
Bangladesh during one of their matches.

Bashir runs a Mughlai restaurant in Chicago named “Ghareeb Nawaz” which specialises in biryani.

regards

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Razib Khan is a Bangladeshi-American geneticist and writer. He is co-founder of Brown Pundits and runs Unsupervised Learning, a Substack on population genetics, evolution, history, and politics with more than 55,000 subscribers, alongside the accompanying podcast. He has blogged at Gene Expression since the early 2000s. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Review, Slate, India Today, Quillette, and UnHerd. He is Director of Operations at FUTO in Austin, Texas, and co-founder of GenRAIT, a life-sciences platform company. Earlier in his career he developed ancestry algorithms for Gene by Gene, the Genographic Project, and Insitome, and was among the first employees at Embark Veterinary. Born in Dhaka and raised in upstate New York and eastern Oregon, he holds degrees in biochemistry (2000) and biology (2006) from the University of Oregon, and undertook doctoral work in genomics and genetics at UC Davis. He lives in Austin. View all posts by Brown Pundits Archive