With over a billion cricket fans around the world waiting impatiently for the match between India and Pakistan scheduled for October 24, politicians in India have already started issuing divisive statements and given calls for India to boycott the game.
The latest call has come from All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi, who asked the government whether playing Pakistan was the “right thing to do” under the current circumstances.
The AIMIM leader was addressing a crowd in Hyderabad, where he said that Pakistan is playing T20 with the lives of the people of Kashmir each day.
Speaking about the recent spate of violence in occupied Kashmir brought about by Indian atrocities in the region, Owaisi said nine soldiers had been killed in the area.
On the recent violence with Bihari immigrants in the occupied territory, he lashed out at the Indian intelligence agencies, wondering “what is the Intelligence Bureau and (Union Home Minister) Amit Shah doing?” He said this is “a failure of the Centre”.
A couple of days earlier, Union Minister Giriraj Singh had cited recent tensions in occupied Kashmir, saying that the match between the two Asian cricketing giants should be “reconsidered” as relations between the two countries were not good.
India’s Punjab Minister Pargat Singh had said the same a few days earlier, calling for the match to be cancelled because the situation at the border is “not ideal”.
“[The] India vs Pakistan match in [the] T20 World Cup shouldn’t be held because the situation at the border isn’t ideal and both countries are currently going through a stressful period,” he had said.
He had said it was of the utmost importance that “we guard humanity and not do anything that may end up putting further stress on the relationship between the two countries”.
