What Virat Kohli And The Indian Cricket Team Don’t Know About Taking The Knee

The Indian cricket team made a mockery of dissenters when they took the knee before an India-Pakistan match, ostensibly to show solidarity with Black Lives Matter, the movement that has become the inspiration of citizens fighting injustice across the world.

Taking the knee means believing in something that’s bigger than you, putting everything on the line like American football quarterback Colin Kaepernick famously did in 2016 when he refused to stand for the national anthem before a game. “If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.”

Speaking up in 2021 means sacrificing something that you hold dear, from your freedom to your privacy and your peace of mind. The Indian cricket team dismissed this sacrifice when they took the knee, for what will surely rank as one of the most opportunistic sports photos of the year.

As the world’s athletes get more political, sports organisations have been forced to change. The International Olympic Committee relaxed Rule 50 ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, which forbade athletes from protesting.

But Indian cricketers have never stood up for any cause that is not in their self-interest. They had zilch at stake—certainly not their earnings, sanity, or freedom—when they enacted this tacky, meaningless publicity stunt that had nothing whatsoever to do with #BlackLivesMatter.

Hilariously, the cricket team didn’t even take the knee during the playing of the national anthem as is usually done, preferring instead to play safe and wait until after. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of colour,” Kaepernick had said when he took the knee. Try explaining this to captain Virat Kohli.

BLM began as a hashtag in 2013 after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting of African American teenager Trayvon Martin. By 2015, it was being cited as the next civil rights movement, and is now a favourite inspiration of those who believe it’s the age to speak up.

BLM’s impact has reverberated through the globe these past years. In India, we repurposed it as #DalitLivesMatter and #MuslimLivesMatter. In Nigeria, it inspired the End-SARS protestors, who have hit the streets to protest the formation of a controversial police unit.

I’ll focus on what Indians could have done.

BLM was a response to systemic racism in the American police force. India’s cricket team could have spoken up against systemic casteism in the police or rising police atrocities in our country. “No other country in the world has killed as many as 796 people in six years [2009-2015] in police firing,” says retired IPS officer NC Asthana in The Wire. “It is clear that the absolutist Indian state is inherently intolerant of any protest and has deliberately retained such colonial laws that, under the cover of the laws, it may continue oppressing the people even to the extent of killing them with abandon.”

A study by the Criminal Justice and Police Accountability Project examined pandemic policing to show how marginalised communities were targeted by the police during the lockdown.

The police has been accused of mishandling the Delhi riots investigation, with courts describing it as ‘lackadaisical’, ‘callous’ and ‘farcical’ among other things. In the Hathras gangrape case, the Uttar Pradesh police hurriedly cremated the body of the victim without permission from her family and contrary to procedure.

If not the police, Kohli and his men could have taken the knee to protest the tsunami of Islamophobia that India has been grappling with in recent years. They don't need to look any further than their own teammate bowler Mohammed Shami who was viciously attacked after the same match where they took the knee.

They could have highlighted the plight of Indian farmers, who will on Nov. 25 complete a year of protesting against unfair farm laws, away from their homes and fields. They could have spoken up for rising atrocities against Dalit women, or for eroding freedoms in Kashmir. They could have taken the knee for the right to love a partner of one’s choice in a country that is determinedly trying to criminalise interfaith marriage. They could even have protested the entrapment of Kolkata Knight Riders owner Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan. Instead, they opted for an empty gesture.

Kohli said after the match that both teams just did what the management told them to do. Now that certainly sounds more like the Indian cricket team we know: an apolitical group of sportsmen, flush with endorsements, high on the country’s love, who never speak up for anyone, even a fellow cricketer. We know they never comment publicly on right versus wrong—and that they are great at doing what they’re told.

Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and is on the editorial board of Article-14.com.

The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of BloombergQuint or its editorial team.