Srinagar, December 02: Are you from Jammu and Kashmir? Well, then you can be a national hero in no time! Now, you’ll be wondering how? No, you wouldn’t be required to conquer the world or do anything that takes years of hard-work. It is simple: you need to play any sport and participate in a private paid event. That would be all!
You must have laughed after reading the first paragraph. Yeah, it is laughable. But I didn’t crack a joke. I am dead serious.
In Kashmir, every other day, you hear about a “sports star”! The headlines from national media read: “Meet Kashmir’s new face, star, hero, blah, blah!” (You can add up as sensational a word as you wish, no questions asked).
There is no doubt that Jammu and Kashmir is full of talented sports persons but most of them do their job silently, without making much noise. However, most of these “national heroes” you hear about are fake! They participate in a so-called ‘international event’, which is most of the time a paid one, and get all the mainstream media’s attention.
The media publications don’t give a damn about whether it really qualifies to be featured or not, because everything that has “Kashmir” in it sells and sells well. Politicians and propagandists only add up to it with their tweets and social media posts. They declare these fake sports persons the “heroes”, using the Kashmir conflict narrative to gain support.
I have written about this earlier as well. But being tired of these manipulated stories, I couldn’t control myself from writing about it again. I have been covering sports in Kashmir for the last five years and I really feel helpless when I see these fake stories. The real athletes toil hard, day in and out, but these “fake stars” take away all the spotlight.
If nothing, the mainstream media should at least run a basic research before declaring someone a hero or a star, because it takes a lot to be one.
ALSO READ: Why winning a medal is easier than making a meme in Kashmir