Nationality is not bound by religious identity.

Nationality is independent of religion and this had been proved again and again.
Pritpal Kaur
ICC world cup T 20 is happening in India right now. The teams of many countries are here. After many speculations and reservation finally Pakistan team too is here to fight it out for the world cup.
We at the national level politics have witnessed a lot of turmoil recently. At one point there was this whole debate about the nationalism after charges of sedition were leveled against JNU Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar.

Later there was state wise agitation in the state of Haryana by Jaats demanding reservation for them in government jobs. How devastating and ugly it turned out is another story altogether. It raised many questions about the nationalism at large.
In the same way but definitely at a different level another very serious series of questions were raised on the issue of Kanhaiya Kumar's arrest and the charges against him. The video which showed him raising anti-India slogans turned out to be a doctored one, apparently he never raised any anti-India slogans at any given time during the course of his president ship of JNUSU.
As he clarified after he was bailed out that he did talk about 'aazadi' from certain elements not from India. He insisted that he is very much an Indian and loves his country like all other countrymen and women.
I will not talk about how correct or not Kanhaiya's argument is or he should or should not have been arrested on sedition charges. What I am writing this article is about the nationalism of team members of the counties like Australia and Oman.
Australian team has one Muslim player by the name Usman Khwaja. Whereas Oman's team has four Hindu players in it. Jatinder Singh, Ajay Lalcheta, Rajesh Kumar Rampura and Vaibhav Wategaonker.
So when Usman Khwaja plays with his team i.e. Australian team does he think on the lines of being a Muslim or simply as a cricket player or to be more precise as a wicket keeper?
Does he play less cricket than he would've played if he were playing for any Islamic country or for that matter does his Islam get affacted by playing for a Christain majority country? Does he stay as Muslim as he would've been if he had played for any Islmaic country or for that matter for any Hindu country like for instance Bhutan or Nepal?
Similarly when any of these Hindu cricketers from the team of Oman play for their country do they think being Hindus or do they think on the lines of being cricket players?
Would they have been better players if they had been playing for India? Or do their Hinduism gets lowered in some way by the name of their country?
Obviously the answer is same in all these situation.
No, when they do play for their country they play whole heartedly. Neither their religion nor their identity is affected by the name of the country they are playing cricket for. They make every effort to win the game. Moreover the religious identity of the opposite team too does not affect their will to excel at the game on the ground.
What excels at the game is their love for the cricket. And love has this quality inherent in it. The quality to surrender. The surrender in love is complete. When you love nothing else matters.
Nationality, religion, caste; evrything becomes negligible in comparison to the love for the team you are playing for. When you are playing for Australia or Oman or for that matter India, you are completely a citizen of that country. You fight for the honor of your country at any cost. You fight for the honor with every inch of your being. The love for the game takes over you.
The need of the hour is to understand this love and inculculate this in our lives. We need to understand the meaning of love and surrender and that will help us in being better citizens of our country too.
You travel to any country in the world and wherever you happen to find any Indian you most certainly feel an affinity towards them and they too feel that.
No wonder when P.M. Modi visits U.S., thousands of Indian origin's Americans throng to see and meet him in person. He holds massive rallies there. Same happens with Indian movie stars and other celebrities all over the world.
In all and all we can safely say that nationality is not bound by religious identity. Nationality is independent of religion and this had been proved again and again. Almost all the countries in the world have mixed population of major religious identity people. And each one of them are proud nationals.
Normal sane and law abiding decent citizen never choses religion over nationality.