Indian and Pakistani cricket fans hurled verbal abuse and stones at each other across their countries’ border, injuring five people on the Indian side, a police officer said.
The Indians shouted taunts on Sunday at Pakistanis for their loss to India in a World Cup cricket match in South Africa the previous night. The Pakistanis responded with curses and stones, said police officer Parveen Sinha. It was not immediately known
whether any Pakistanis were injured. Nearly 5 000 Indians and an unknown number of Pakistanis were gathered near the Hussainiwala border post at in Punjab state, about 600 kilometres north of New Delhi. ”India will win the World Cup,” chanted the Indian fans. ”We beat you; down with Pakistan!”
Border guards intervened to stop the melee, Sinha told The Associated Press. In India’s southern city of Bangalore, police wielding batons charged a crowd of Hindus on Sunday to keep them from attacking Muslims accused of throwing stones at a Hindu temple after India’s victory.
Pakistan has a Muslim majority, while India is predominantly Hindu. Many Hindu nationalists in India accuse the country’s Muslims of secretly backing Pakistan.
Police banned the assembly of more than five people in parts of Bangalore to avoid Hindu-Muslim clashes, said T. Madiyal, director-general of police.
Hindu-Muslim violence erupted in India’s western state of Gujarat after India’s win on Saturday night, killing at least one Muslim and injuring two Hindu police officers and one Muslim resident. India’s worst religious clashes in a decade had left more than 1 000 people dead in Gujarat last year. Tension between Hindus and Muslims has simmered since.
During a night of noisy, colourful celebrations on Saturday, millions of Indians thronged the streets to sing, dance and beat drums in a frenzy of nationalism.
India’s passion for cricket, and its five decades of hostility with Pakistan, make an explosive combination. The cricket match ”was a war and we have won it,” said Sanjeev Chhiber, a hotel executive in the northern city of Lucknow. It was India’s fourth consecutive win over Pakistan in World Cup tournaments.
The defeat was emotionally devastating for many Pakistanis. Zafar Khan, a 24-year-old auto parts vendor in Pakistan’s western city of Peshawar, broke his TV set when it showed his countrymen losing.
”The whole nation is sad,” said Zahir Shah, a Peshawar businessman. ”It was a matter of national prestige and honour.”
Some Pakistanis complimented their neighbors, however.
”The Indian team played brilliantly … in the spirit of sportsmanship, the Pakistani team will be the first to acknowledge this,” leading Pakistani columnist Nasim Zehra said.
India and Pakistan nearly went to war last year, as India accused Pakistan of plotting a December 2001 terrorist attack on India’s Parliament. Pakistan denies the charge and accuses India of oppressing Muslims in Kashmir, a Himalayan region claimed by both countries and divided between them by a ceasefire line.
Since they won independence from Britain in 1947, the two nations have fought three wars and tested nuclear weapons. They routinely expel each other’s diplomats, cut train and plane routes, and fire guns across their border.
The last international cricket match between India and Pakistan was in the Asia Cup in Bangladesh in 2000, which India also won. Before that, Pakistan’s team toured India in 1999, just before the two nations fought a three-month war in Kashmir. – Sapa-AP