Sania of the Times

I’m amazed that this recent news story regarding Sania Mirza’s decision to drop Shahar Peer as a doubles partner for the Bangalore Open didn’t get more traction in the press.

Sign of the times, I guess.

I’m going to say right up front that this is such a sensitive topic these days that I’m going to suspend my customary habit of reacting to what I see as really dodgy behavior with the (theoretically) hyperbolic, biting wit of the satirist. It isn’t just that I never cease to be amazed at how literally so many TW readers take my words; I also think that letting it all hang out when it comes to Mirza is apt to exacerbate a situation that must be very difficult for her.

So I’m not going to ignore or smugly underestimate the stakes in Mirza’s actions and words these days, just because I live in an open society where I can say anything I like with consequences no more serious than getting dirty looks from the angry lefty heiress who owns the entire penthouse floor in my apartment building and reads The Nation.

Mirza’s problems as an individualist and “liberal” Muslim are real (punch her name into the search box to track previous posts on this issue), and composed of stuff we Westerners are not likely to have to deal with, at least for some time yet.

Still. It makes me feel hollow and creepy to contemplate what Mirza did. For there’s only one real way to interpret this: She is deferring to the Muslim faction that believes that the sole significance of the person called Shahar Peer is that she is Israeli, and therefore not just beneath contempt, but worthy of annihilation. A Muslim woman is too good to play with an Israeli, isn't that the point? In this, Mirza is denying her friend’s humanity. What a strange position to take, by someone as conspicuously given to expressing her “individuality” as is Mirza.

Look, I know how easy it is for me to take the moral high ground on this. Trust me, I know. But at what point does silence, even if it’s out of consideration for Mirza’s dilemma, become complicity? We aren’t talking about cartoons denigrating Muhammad and enflaming the passions of millions of the downtrodden here. And didn’t two men, Israel’s Amir Hadad and Pakistan’s Aisam Ul-Haq, make a huge statement about Muslims and Jews—and sports—by playing doubles at the U.S. Open just a few years ago?

It’s funny, but just this morning, I was forced to make some changes in my credit-card billing information. I engaged the Citibank “service representative” on the phone in conversation (one of my secret vices is this penchant for initiating personal conversations with the unfortunate human beings I end up reaching after touch-toning my way through 16 different menus). Of course, I knew full well that the SR was sitting in a cubicle somewhere in New Delhi or Calcutta.

He said he liked and admired Mirza, and sympathized with her position. I asked if he was Muslim; it turns out he was Hindu. And at the end of our friendly chat, he said, “Sir, we always appreciate art and culture, this is why I like Sania Mirza. And we encourage all kinds of religion. That’s the best part of being Hindu!”

What a far cry that is from Muslim fundamentalists who also constitute a significant segment of the Indian population. Yet they’re the ones to whom Mirza is kowtowing.

There’s another dimension to this, which is the debate about the wisdom of mixing sports and politics. I was never in the camp that holds that sports and politics can be kept apart. Politics, not sports, is the dominant and pre-emptive reality of our lives, and there comes a point where sports inevitably are influenced or enslaved by that—would you be comfortable with the Anti-Jew Games, just because it's a sporting event? How about a no-Jews doubles team, featuring Sania Mirza?

What we have, really, is a kind of gentleman’s agreement that we shouldn’t mix sports and politics, and like all gentleman’s agreements, it’s been shown to be worth the paper it’s written on. Sometimes we break with the gentleman’s agreement for good reasons. Does anyone really believe it was wrong—at least in theory—for some nations to refuse to play Davis Cup against South Africa because it officially embraced apartheid (ironically, India lost a great chance to win the Cup because it did just that)?

Sometimes we break with the gentleman’s agreement for insupportable reasons: Mirza refuses to play with a girl, a friend no less, because she's an Israeli. A Jew!

It’s a sad, sad story, this one, and, I suppose, a sign of the times. I have to confess, I really liked Sania Mirza when she first popped onto the scene last year. Since then, just about everything this girl has done has rubbed me the wrong way. But until now, it's just been silly, transparently self-absorbed stuff.

At the very least, it seems to me, Mirza could have chosen not to play doubles at all. Instead, she capitulated, and gave the fanatics a PR coup. It's a sad day for women's tennis and the WTA. Mirza, I guess, will work it out for herself.