How to rename a stadium

Any doubts that Pakistanis may have had about renaming Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium should have vanished with the broadcast of Qaddafi’s first interview after the unrest in Libya began. Unless there are plans to change the use of the ground altogether, say, to a recreational facility for the terminally bewildered, a new name is definitely in order.

But to get back to the colonel. He turned up in dark glasses. Which he eventually removed to uncover a now permanently creased brow, with its perpetual suggestion of indignation — the kind felt by someone who is about to be abducted by aliens. His answer to the first question put to him — what was he going to do about the uprising? — was: “What was the question?”

There was no uprising. The people all loved him. They would die for him — perhaps with a little help from their leader. Qaddafi has also held the view that the demonstrators were on drugs. Whatever it is they were on, it was pretty clear that our man was on something stronger and has been for some time now.

It is now apparent to everybody except Qaddafi what state the masses are in, and yet, he said something accidentally insightful during the interview. “You don’t understand the system here…. Don’t say ‘I understand’ — you don’t understand. And the world doesn’t understand the system here...”

No we don’t understand. Let’s start with something apparently simple that we fail to understand, like the naming of stadiums or roads or town squares, in places we can call ‘here’. Like Lahore or Delhi.

In the case of Gaddafi Stadium, exactly why the new dictator on the block should be honoured isn’t all that clear. The fellow didn’t pay for it. All he did is make some ‘rousing speech’ on Pakistan’s right to pursue a nuclear programme.

On the other hand, he did put some start-up money on the table so that experimental mushroom clouds would light up Pakistani skies some time in the future. The seed money was very timely — in 1974, India tested its first weapon of mass destruction, an event that apparently made the ‘Buddha smile’.

But that still doesn’t answer the question: Why name a cricket stadium after Qaddafi? Why not a missile? Gaddaf 1 (and so on), or something like that. I suppose if a leading domestic cricket side was later to be called Khan Research Laboratories, then ‘Gaddafi’ Stadium was the beginning of a short trend. Besides, finding a place in the hearts of the Pakistani public is that much easier if you’re on their minds when cricket is being played.

This is true of the subcontinent in general. And this is something that dictators understand. There’s a legitimacy that comes with the naming of a sporting arena — a place where genuine emotions are let out, where we taste freedoms that we forget we have — that cannot be compared with the christening of some market or road.

The best and most recent example of this is the Mahinda Rajapaksa Stadium in the Sri Lankan President’s constituency, Hambantota. There is something about hosting an event like the cricket World Cup, possibly the Commonwealth Games in 2018, in a stadium named after yourself when you’re alive, unlike most others who don’t have the privilege. Presiding over a crowd that has come to watch a wonderful, possibly uplifting Sri Lankan victory at the “Rajapakse Stadium”.

The renaming of Gaddafi Stadium will thus present a nice little opportunity to someone in the near future. When they have decided, and nobody understands why they chose who they did, they can quote brother leader: “You don’t understand the system here. Don’t say ‘I understand’.”

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4^th, 2011.