Each sport becomes a fiefdom without tenure and comes with benefits. A gravy train of public funds to dip into and the chance to earn IOUs in exchange of overseas trips…On one hand there is power without responsibility, and on the other, responsibility without power…If politics consists of major scams around stamp papers, cement and fodder, sports scams revolve around public money—yours and mine—being frittered away under the guise of awards and training expenses…
Everything that stems from administration—forward planning, the quality of coaches, training, preparation, facilities—is at the mercy of the strongman of the national federation, whether it is the long-term secretary or the all-powerful president.24
In the popular perception it is this ‘long-term secretary or the all-powerful president’, more often than not a politician, who is at the crux of the problem of Indian sporting failure. So why are these ‘strongmen’ virtually permanent in their power and why is it difficult to dislodge them?
At its core, sport in any society is about the nature of power in that society and the patterns of control by politicians have followed the dominant patterns of Indian politics. A quick glance at the Indian political firmament confirms that the longevity of strongmen/women and their cliques is a feature shared by virtually every political party in every state of the union. The Nehru-Gandhis have controlled the Congress since independence, the firm of Advani and Vajpayee has held sway over the BJP since the mid-1970s, Farooq Abdullah’s family has controlled the National Conference since its inception, the Chautalas’ sway over Haryana’s INLD remains unchallenged, Mayawati’s iron-clad grip over the BSP is as solid as her mentor Kanshi Ram’s, Chandrababu Naidu continues to define the TDP like his father-in-law N.T. Rama Rao, Mamata Bannerjee’s Trinamool Congress is inseparable from her persona, the Left in West Bengal and Kerala has been defined as much by personality politics as other parties, Karunanidhi has controlled the DMK since at least the 1960s and Jayalalitha has successfully taken on the mantle of MGR in the AIADMK. Indian sport, in that sense, follows the political culture that mixes democratic processes with older forms of feudalism and organization. As early as 1970, Ashis Nandy had perceptively observed this fusion of culture and politics, arguing that:
It is possible…to interpret the political process in India as a continuing attempt to reconcile older categories of thought and social character to the demands of nation-building and political culture as a complex of continuities in the style of response to the changing relationship between society and politics.25
At a deeper level, while India has undoubtedly grown more democratic with the growing empowerment of hitherto marginalized groups—OBCs, Dalits etc.26—the structures of political power even within these new groupings remain bound in tightly controlled immutable hierarchies.27 To quote Nandy again:
Authority in India was traditionally not so much a concentrated source of power and coercion, open to competition, pressures, and threats of dislodgment. It was a passive, apolitical, ascribed role which could not be contested by anyone from within the system. The pattern was validated by the absolute patriarchy of village and caste elders in group decision-making and by the history of distant arbitrary and political authorities who rarely interfered with the day to day living of their subjects. In present day Indian politics too, authority continues to have its ‘natural, substantially hereditary seats’ and cannot be dislodged without radically modifying the entire hierarchical structure within which it operates. This is expressed in the fear of and unconditional acceptance of established authority… (remember for example, the long history of collaboration with alien rulers…), the widespread faith in the supralogical intuition of accepted political leaders, and the manner in which individuals wield political charisma on the basis of their nonpolitical authority.28
Cultures are not fixed and it’s important not to essentialize, but Nandy’s explanation accounts for the continuance of feudal structures of power in most Indian political parties. It also explains the deeper social factors that drive the autocratic and closed political corridors of Indian sporting bodies. Seen in consonance with the rules governing such bodies, helps put it into perspective the political authoritarianism of individuals who seize control. For one, all sporting bodies are supposed to hold regular elections. Like political parties, these elections are mostly not held, or when held, they are largely a sham orchestrated by those in power. Once entrenched in power, it is virtually impossible for anyone to engineer the throw-out of a political satrap.
There is a crucial caveat though. While political parties are subject to five-yearly performance reviews by the electorate, which unleashes its own internal dynamics, there is no such mechanism to temper the behaviour of those who control sporting bodies. They operate in splendid isolation, as private bodies answerable only to the rules and strictures of the global bodies they are affiliated with. To illustrate this point further, the BCCI, responding to a PIL against its functioning, famously argued in court that it was a private body and did not represent India. It is impossible for the government to intervene — and its intervention may be worse than the problem — because all Olympic sporting bodies are governed by the Olympic charter, which militates against governmental intervention. This is why the IOA had to intervene in Indian hockey. Had the Government of India done so, Indian hockey could well have been disaffiliated from the global system. So, is change an impossibility? Are we condemned to a sporting system that will remain locked in place forever with no hope for change? Perhaps not. As the example of the hockey sting operation shows, the wider forces driving Indian society—in this case the media and the economic incentives of liberalization—do exert their own push and pull, so change, though not easy, is still possible. Sport, after all, is only a mirror in which to see the deeper imprint of a society.
As we gave seen, India’s Olympic encounter has been a battleground where an emerging nation’s internal dissensions were given full play: issues of national representation, colonial and post-colonial resistance, women’s empowerment, the north-south divide, sports diffusion, the fight for the control of sporting organizations.
In the final analysis, the essence of Olympism does not reside in medals won, records broken or television rights sold as ends in themselves. The Olympics, and its relevant records and statistics, are important for the way in which they can affect societies surrounding them. Thus, when the Puerto Ricans march in the Olympic opening ceremony even when they don’t have a representative in the United Nations, or when an unknown Anthony Nesty of Surinam wins gold by defeating the favourite Matt Biondi of the US, or when an Indian hockey team wins gold after defeating its former colonial masters in 1948, the significance of such acts stretches far beyond the narrow confines of sport.
Postscript
Sport Does Matter: Delhi and the
2008 Olympic Torch Relay
Seven security checkpoints, 21,000 security personnel, the heart of India’s capital almost at a standstill, an attempt to storm the hotel Le Meridian—where the Olympic torch was kept since its arrival from Islamabad at 1.10 a.m. on the night of 16 April—and finally a series of peaceful, synchronized democratic protests by Tibetans and human rights groups from 8 a.m. in the morning across the country: the Indian leg of the Olympic torch relay was extraordinary in every sense. For the record, international legs of the Olympic torch relay have often been mired in controversy. While some say that the 2008 edition of the torch relay has witnessed unprecedented turmoil the world over, Olympic history demonstrates otherwise. The situation in Islamabad and Delhi was unusual in that the relays weren’t open to the public and only invitees were allowed to attend, but this too was not without precedent.
The only other time that sections of the torch relay were completely closed to the public was during the flame-lighting ceremony at ancient Olympia for the 1984 Los Angeles Games. Armed Greek troops had closed off the sanctuary, refusing entry to the Greek public and to the hundreds of demonstrators who had vowed not to let th
e Americans have the flame. They were protesting the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee’s decision to sell the rights to be a torchbearer, a decision that many Greeks saw as an insult to Greek national sovereignty. The traditional public relay and key ceremonies in Greece, as John MacAloon points out, were cancelled. The Olympic priestess lit the flame in spite of death threats. The Americans took the flame out by helicopter to the Athens airport and left immediately for the safe haven of their own shores.1
Such protests lie at the very core of what is widely understood as ‘Olympism’. As the popular saying goes in Olympic academic circles, ‘Take sports out of the Olympics and you still have the movement to fall back on’. While this is certainly an exaggeration, it is time to accept that the Olympics and the torch relay are never only about sportspeople. The relay is not restricted to countries that win the most number of medals or those that have the best sports facilities for its athletes. Rather, it is meant as a mechanism to garner mass support in the poorest of countries, among men and women who will make it to an Olympic sports contest. That is why, traditionally, attendance at the Olympic torch relay is free. While Olympic competitions are prohibitively expensive, enthusiasts don’t need tickets to attend the relay. For countries that can’t even dream of hosting the games in view of the escalating costs, the torch relay remains the point of participation. It is this aspect of the Olympic movement that makes the world’s biggest sports spectacle relevant for us in India. The flame, unlike the torch, can never be commercialized and is one of the most powerful symbols of peace in the modern world. The meanings attached to it belong neither to the IOC nor to local organizing committees. It has emerged as an enduring symbol of global harmony and mobilization, a fact evident on the streets of Delhi on 17 April 2008.
Before every summer games for the last 25 years, the Olympics have provided a forum for issues of international concern. While Seoul highlighted the Korea crisis, Barcelona brought to light ethnic differences within Spanish society. Atlanta drew world attention to the race issue in U.S.A. and Sydney highlighted the Aboriginal crisis Down Under. When Cathy Freeman lit the flame at the Sydney Games in 2000, it was much more than a sporting ritual. It symbolized the recognition of the tensions at the heart of modern Australian society, augmented further even when she later wrapped herself in the aboriginal flag in full view of the world’s cameras. Similarly, when the Tibetans organized a parallel relay in Delhi in 17 April 2008, the Tibet crisis became the focus of international attention.
Prior to the Indian leg of the torch relay, there was considerable debate on whether New Delhi would allow Tibetan protesters to carry on with their demonstrations. With the West Bengal and Kerala governments, states ruled by communist parties, adopting a hardline approach towards such protests, the issue had assumed added significance. But in the final reckoning, the world’s largest democracy could not be seen to be muffling dissent, even if this dissent was opposed by those who were advocating a closer strategic engagement with China. Also, it provided a subtle mechanism to the Indian government to call attention to the million square metres of Chinese occupation in Aksai Chin and China’s reported illegal intrusions into Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim. It was New Delhi’s way of remonstrating against the Chinese decision to call the Indian Ambassador at 2 a.m. in the morning in Beijing, threatening her with dire consequences over India’s failure to check alleged Tibetan attacks on the Chinese embassy in New Delhi. It was a delicate balancing act: allow the Tibetans their fundamental right to protest in full public view but guard against a diplomatic incident by ensuring that the torch relay itself, guarded by Chinese commandoes, was not disrupted. The price tag was the excessive security and the huge inconvenience caused to Delhi’s residents on the day of the ritual.
A MINI-TIBET IN DELHI: FOLLOWING THE AGITATORS
It was an incredible experience. Following the Tibetan protesters from Rajghat to Jantar Mantar in the scorching Delhi heat, trying to make sense of their slogans, was to go back into an older, idealistic world where agitations and public dissent of this kind still had meaning. It was to be reminded of the simple idealism of agitational politics, of the basic principles of civil action, where the participants were aware that they were marginal but found power and agency in simply making themselves heard.
For us, the experience of the relay had begun on the night of 16 April when we watched Tenzing Tsundue, a noted activist and leader of the Free Tibet movement, on Times Now. Soon after the show, Tenzing, we were later informed, was dropped off at a secret location since the police were desperate to detain him. The Times Now driver, Amjad, who ferried him to his hideout and who was with us the following day, took us there at the stroke of dawn. It was cloak-and-dagger stuff—a trip that led us to a hideout where 200 or more Tibetans were busy planning an assault on the flame. A group of senior Tibetan leaders were in attendance and were keen to ensure that 17 April 2008 turned into a day of international impact for their cause. Knowing full well that the police would outnumber them, they were planning guerilla attacks on the flame while it was on its way out of the Meridian on Janpath Road and travelling along India Gate. That such meticulous planning resulted in little tangible gain in the end is a different matter altogether. The police clampdown on central Delhi put paid to all their plans but to be to see the cold determination of the protestors—the steely look in their eyes, the idealism in their venture and the vociferous arguments over tactics—was enlightening. While these Tibetans were determined to make a mark and weren’t averse to violence, others, who had already made Jantar Mantar their home, were single-minded in their determination to keep things peaceful. For them non-violent protest was the way to capture world attention and hence lifesize cut-outs of Mahatma Gandhi were juxtaposed with those of the Dalai Lama at the forefront of most of the protest rallies.
For these and thousands of other Tibetans who had arrived in Delhi the night before, things got underway in the early hours of the morning of 17 April with an assembly at Rajghat. This was a giant venture that needed planning and coordination on a national scale. When we reached at 7.30 a.m., we saw groups of men and women bracing themselves for the day’s events by writing out posters or painting placards. Some were busy packing pouches of water and food, while others, who had travelled thousands of miles to be part of the movement, were catching up on a few hours of sleep. Young Tibetan girls and boys, mostly students from leading Delhi colleges, wrapped themselves in ‘Free Tibet’ flags and were busy distributing ‘Free Tibet’ T-shirts to anyone who wanted to join the assembly. Members of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile, key organizers of the rally, were busy putting final touches to preparations for the protest march. ‘We wanted the Dalai Lama to be visible alongside Mahatma Gandhi for both are messiahs for global peace’,2 was their reasoned answer to our query on why most posters had the Tibetan leader sharing space with the father of the nation.
Just as the clock struck 10, there arrived at Rajghat a slew of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh religious preachers for joint prayers in solidarity with the Tibetans at Gandhi’s Samadhi. It was truly surreal, a motley mix of preachers from varied religious backgrounds coming together to pray for a cause of global significance. It was good event management to be sure; but only the most cold-hearted cynic could remain unmoved by the solemnity of the occasion or fail to observe the fact that the global appeal of contemporary sport was what had made this possible. With the prayers over, the Tibetans lit their own parallel flame. This was different in shape to the Olympic torch and was more in the nature of a diya that was subsequently placed inside a round frame. They had been told that only a ‘non-official’ torch of this kind would pass official muster. As chants of ‘Karuna ki jyoti amar rahe’ and ‘Shanti ki jyoti amar rahe’, shattered the silence, the assembled leaders from all the major religious groups came together to carry the flame out of Rajghat. This was the point at which the huge police contingent, men and women who had been entirely cooperative until then, began to look tad jittery, until the rally l
eaders assured them that the march would be kept peaceful. So powerful was the group dynamic that some security men too were caught up in the emotionalism of the moment; a couple of those standing nearest to the protestors had tears in their eyes.
Once out of Rajghat, the rally began its 4 km long march to Jantar Mantar, the site which the Tibetans had made theirs for the day. Thousands of Tibetans from Varanasi, Mcleodgunj, Bangalore and Dharamshala had already assembled at Jantar Mantar the night before, carrying with them the bare minimum supplies. The location was not unsurprising. Jantar Mantar is the permanent protestors’ corner in Delhi. For years it has been the site where people come to present their woes before the national media, hoping for greater visibility with the powers that be. And so the Tibetans came, jostling for space in this parliament of the oppressed, alongside stalls set up by the Bhopal gas victims, the Vishwa Dalit Parishad, the Foundation for Common Man, Justice for Nithari and even the Group 4-Securicor Mazdoor Union, asking for better wages.
Olympics-The India Story Page 39