There is a liar masquerading as a super fan, and his name is Tiger Robi. He lied the day before yesterday, saying he was assaulted in Kanpur. When his falsehoods were exposed by the police and hospital authorities who conducted all tests on him, he conveniently changed the narrative to him “feeling unwell and dehydrated”.
I have since read a number of his Facebook posts. He has a follower base of 1.3 million, which makes him an influencer of some sort. And let me state this – he is a peddler of hate. He provokes fans and says a lot of things, which aren’t remotely true. He was granted a visa on the grounds that he needed treatment and is now misusing it to target Indian fans. Deportation is the least that such an individual deserves.
One option is to ignore such people. That is something that can be done. But at a time when the political and diplomatic relations between the two countries are on the edge, influencers peddling lies is a dangerous thing. Had the police and the hospital authorities not intervened in time, Robi could have gone ahead and added meat to his assault story. And people like us would have bought the tale and felt ashamed of such behaviour by Indian fans. It could have had further repercussions because his posts are read by people in Bangladesh, who could have reacted by doing something dire.
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The truth is that he is certainly no cricket fan. Rather, he is a sensationalist hate-monger who doesn’t deserve his place in any sporting arena. In Chennai, he was on record saying he was abused. He doesn’t understand or speak a word of Tamil. When confronted about that, he said a few Bengalis translated for him and hence he knew. Clearly, it was a lame explanation to tide over another string of lies.
He said what he did because he knew it would resonate well with extremist sentiments in Bangladesh. With a section, anti-India sentiments run high and his comments that one can support Afghanistan but never India, because Indians hate Bangladesh, went down really well with these fundamentalists.
Robi is one of those ‘fans’ who are harmful for the game. Rather, he uses the sport to make himself known and peddle hate. To add to the growing distrust and animosity. Fans are as much ambassadors of the sport as players. They are as much representatives of what we stand for in India as Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and the rest of the team.
Robi’s behaviour in Kanpur was abominable. Such toxicity has no place in stadiums and some action has to be taken with immediate effect. It is time to act against such people. Stop this once and for all. Peddling hate can’t be allowed in cricket grounds. It is not what we believe in, and we will not tolerate this in India. Second, and this is a seriously dangerous trend, people have started to feel that they are entitled to say anything, and get away with doing so.
It is as if dispensing abuse is an entitlement. While this is outrageous and vulgar at one level, it is alarming on another. It shows the deep anxiety and anger that people have, which makes them vent at just about anything. We have already let this persist for way too long, and Robi’s behaviour is a reflection of the mess we have gotten ourselves into.
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