Defining Sania Mirza: The BJP-TRS battle over who belongs to Telangana

Hyderabad: “I have visited Hyderabad, the city of Sania Mirza,” declared George W Bush, then President of the United States of America, to a packed audience amid lusty cheer at Purana Quila on 4 March, 2006. He was on an official visit to the City. When the glamorous tennis star married Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik on 12 April, 2010, a part of India stayed glued to television sets to catch a glimpse of the couple although all they could manage was flashes of swanky cars driving into the five-star venue, Hotel Taj Krishna. Her popularity as a sports icon was so overwhelming that no one ever raised questions on her identity as a Hyderabadi. It also overshadowed questions on her marriage to a Pakistani national. But all of a sudden her identity is under a cloud. While Chief Minister K Chandrashekhara Rao called her a ‘true Hyderabadi’ and claimed she was the right person to be the face of Telangana in India and abroad, the decision of the Telangana government to designate Sania the ‘Brand Ambassador’ of the state is throwing up questions she never had to confront earlier. The objection to her latest assignment – it carries a price tag of Rs 1 crore – comes from the usual quarters. The floor leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Telangana assembly and legislator from Musheerabad K Laxman has questioned the prudence of the government in appointing a non-Telanganite for the coveted job. Laxman sought to know what makes Sania a Hyderabadi and a Telanganite. He said Sania’s father migrated from Maharashtra to Hyderabad and the tennis star is the daughter-in-law of a Pakistani. The BJP leader linked Sania’s background with the avowed stand of the chief minister on students pursuing professional education in local colleges. KCR has been asserting that he doesn’t want to reimburse the fees to students, who are otherwise eligible, on the grounds of their place of birth. He has also put a benchmark for deciding on the identity of Hyderabadis or for that matter of Telanganites. He has said that only students whose parents or grandparents have been living in Telangana prior to November 1, 1956 – the date of creation of Andhra Pradesh on linguistic basis –an stake claim for fee reimbursement and only they would be recognised as “locals”. [caption id=“attachment_1632525” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Sania Mirza in action during a tennis match. Reuters[/caption] The Sania development has added fuel to the ongoing bitter battle between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The latter has sent an all-party delegation under the aegis of three of its ministers to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on this issue on Wednesday. The delegation raised a serious objection to KCR’s conditions. “You are a citizen of a country if you are born here, but to be a citizen of Telangana, your grandfather too should have been born in the state,” said Ganta Srinivasa Rao, a minister in Andhra Pradesh government. Telugu Desam Party’s student wing leader Jimmy Babu, too, questioned the appointment of Sania Mirza as Brand Ambassador, especially in the light of the ongoing controversy over student fees. While the fee reimbursement is a separate issue that has kept the relations between the newly created States of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on the boil, the controversy over Sania’s appointment peaked with the BJP’s Laxman stepping up the offensive on her on Thursday morning. His questioned why KCR had not chosen cricketer VVS Laxman for the job. Rohit KV, head of IT cell of BJP’s Andhra Pradesh unit, quipped in his tweet: “Sania mirza is the ‘brand ambassador’ for #Telangana, not these tribal kids who scaled Mt. Everest. Good.” He asks in another tweet: “An Italian who marries an Indian becomes “Hamari Bahu”, but an Indian who marries a Pakistani doesn’t become ‘Daughter-In-Law of Pakistan’?” When asked whether LK Advani, who was born in Pakistan, was not an Indian, Laxman said that the Union Government has not put any cut-off date for deciding the citizenship of people. The general perception here is that the BJP leaders have hijacked the row with an eye on the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections which are slated for the year-end. However, the irony in the objection to Sania’s new role is obvious. When Narendra Modi can have Amitabh Bachchan as Brand Ambassador of Gujarat, the latter’s Gujarati-ness was never under question. The Chandrababu Naidu government, in its earlier stint in united Andhra Pradesh, “hired” players from other states to play for Andhra Pradesh. The questions being raised in Sania’s case has confounded many.