Re: Is tolerance a dying virtue?
Jang newspaper briefly put out a news of PU students blocking Lahore’s canal road and protesting against the national cricket team and its captain. “They registered their protest with media teams and retreated to their campus later.” I couldn’t find the news after a while as it was taken offline shortly.
Nevertheless, the news left me wondering as to how intolerant we have grown as a society. Students from one of the finest educational institute could not put up with a defeat in a sport and had to block road to vent their anger. I wonder nobody told them that graceful acceptance of defeat is a dignified act. They are supposed to be educated people, head and shoulder above of those who never passed by a school or a college building. Thanksfully they did not burn tyres or set vehicles afire, but what really was the justification of such a protest over a sport defeat? No player has been contracted to win every single game. They are supposed to play to the best of their abilities and we should set aside a fair amount of concession for them as we do for our own failures.
Despite being emotionally married to cricket — truly, deeply and madly — why it does not sink into our minds that it is still a game that has 99% chances of ending either in a win or a defeat. Which sport has only one resulting dimension? Why we must make gods out of those 11 when they win and why we must ask for their heads whenever they lose? Who said extremism is a purely religious phenomena?
I am not worried about this particular protest or about the T20 defeat. I am worried about the trend of intolerence which has pervaded the society I come from. The supposedly brightest minds of our society seem to be carrying the same stigmas as those camped on the other side of the educational divide. Isn’t it strange that while we unanimously protest against 11 individuals for playing bad for a few days, we remain divided against those who have been playing with the destiny of this nation and have no plan to quit?
18 shias were pulled off a bus and executed yesterday. did it really take a protest against the cricket team to spark this realization about intolerance?