Sonia or Sania

Read the news of India's tennis sensation Sania Mirza is getting married to Pakistan's tainted former cricket captain Shoaib Malik in April. I read this news on rediff and also read the comments from lot of people on the same forum. Most of the Indians were bashing Sania for her decision of getting Married to this guy. There were some Pakistani people also writing on rediff forum and they were kind of normal to the news. After reading to the news the other person which came into my mind was Sonia Gandhi. Two Indian celebrities, having similar sounding names, doing 180 degree reverse things and getting the same treatment from the people of India. Sonia Gandhi, born in Italy to a common man, marrying to an Indian celebrity but not completely accepted by the nation. On the other hand Sania Mirza, an indian by birth marrying to a pakistani (enemy nation) and rejected by the nation.

There are following two angles from which I thought about whole of this:

1. In both the cases only the female member is rejected by the indian society, either a foreigner female marrying to an indian male or an indian female marrying to a foreigner male. No one bashed Rajiv Gandhi for marrying a foreigner and same is the case with Shoaib also (going by the comments I read from pakistani people on rediff). Although there are some justifiable reasons for this from a common indian's point of view, like India is having sore relationship with Pakistan but not with Italy. So I will leave this angle for some feminist thinker (may be my sister :-) ) and move to my the second angle.

2. I think logically speaking as a nation we can not reject both Sonia Gandhi and Sania Mirza. Sonia left her country for an indian man and Sania is marrying to a person from another country. So there are two completely reverse cases and any logic of abandoning Sonia may serve pretty well to accept Sania and vice versa. My personal view goes with Sonia than Sania. Sonia left her own country came to India and is now an indian citizen. On the other hand Sania is leaving India and is planning to get settled in Dubai with her future husband. Although going by her recent interviews she is not planning to surrender the indian citizenship. But Sania's choice of her life partner is going pretty against her, first of all he is a pakistani, a nation which is involved in so many anti India activities. Secondly who can forget his famous (or rather infamous) statement after Pakistan's loss to India in a cricket match in 2007 saying that its a matter of grief for the muslims all over the world. How, the person who thinks that all the muslims in the whole world should support Pakistan against India, would help Sania to maintain her spirit towards India. Sania said in a recent interview, that in future matches of India and Pakistan she will support India but will also support her husband. Which is pretty contradictory statement and I don't think that it carries any practical relevance. On the other hand Italy had never anything against India so Sonia should not be having any problems in maintaining her commitment to the nation.

I may be wrong in selecting Sonia over Sania, that is just my personal opinion but I am sure about one thing which I mentioned above, "The nation should accept one of them". Its time to think.

This is the classic case of reaching the same point by two completely reverse path. The world is round :-).