How Caste Interplays In India’s Failure At Olympics
India loses in the qualifying round; the walkers and sprinters failed to make impression; it was a disappointing day for India; India’s Aditi Ashok finishes 41st in the women’s golf; Indian shooters are out of medal contention; Yogeshwar Dutt loses 0–3 in the qualifier….
These notifications gauged the Indian embarrassment repeatedly since the past few weeks. I was heckled to open my eyes to read repetitive notifications of India’s devastating defeats from the Olympics.
India was drowning in an embezzled fame of being the largest democracy with over 1.3 billion people but no ace Olympian at hand.
It has become a routine, wherein after every four years of Olympics performative aberrance, editorials carry scathing criticisms on India’s dismal state of sports affairs. A few medal winners (only one gold winner in the recent past at London Olympics 2012, since 1980) and the rest with non-gold receive hefty government grants, jobs, and few padmas. One silver medalist from the past, Rathore even went on to become a minister in the government.
As some of us were trying to recover from the wounds of this failure by celebrating the world-class badminton champ P V Sindhu, another notification popped up that read, “While PV Sindhu fought hard for a medal, many Indians googled her caste.” This article scored many hits on the viral media. This again glared India’s never-ending and rigidly bargaining capacity over caste virtues. There were many deniers. However, Google analytics proved them wrong.
Along with PV Sindhu, her respected coach P Gopichand was also not spared by the caste guerrillas who went on to unearth his caste affiliation too. This moment of tragicomic blistered many people’s imagination. Caste again proved to be the endorsement for real Indianness.
While other countries especially China has rigorous training programs to handpick select athletes from around the country, the training and adequate mentorship plays pivotal role in nurturing the GenX athletes. The Economist reported China’s intimate interest with sporting events as a political gesticulation dawned it under the radar of champions. India on the other contrasts blazingly. Indian talent for Olympic-like diverse sporting event lies in the undiscovered spaces. India’s climatic conditions, the geological mix, and heterogeneous eating habits could be a boon if due attention is paid. Three-fourths of Indians reside in the rural India; this very productive group is an active agent of running India’s throttled economy. But this class remains under-represented and unnoticed.
The unheard subordinate caste heroes
Subordinate caste heroes have performed very well in international tournaments, in fact, these were some of the pioneering heroes in the history of Indian sports. Take, for example, first class ace cricketers, the Palwankar brothers who have soaring achievements to their record. However, they are not known to most of the cricket-mad nation. Ramchandra Guha describes Palwankar brothers as the juggernauts of social emancipation project who took to sports to relinquish their caste stigmatization.
Even Ambedkar looked up to the Palwankars. During the famous Poona Pact of 1932, P Baloo’s name appears in the list of 23 signatories who were in the delegation to break a deal with Mohandas K Gandhi.
The man as towering as Ambedkar, admired the Palwankars and even took a cue from Baloo Palwankar to join the ranks of being the first among the firsts. P Baloo was a chammar, an untouchable leather tanning caste cricket player who constantly defied every odds presented to him as an untouchable sportsman. Ambedkar looked upon this little-known figure during his early student days. He even organized felicitation ceremony for Baloo and wrote organizing committee’s pamphlets in his honor. Immediately, after this, Ambedkar elevated P Baloo for the seat Bombay Municipal Corporation apportioned to the untouchables. What comes out of this story is that untouchables always looked for inspiration from amongst themselves. It is common for the minority groups that are segregated and stigmatized to look for heroes from among themselves.
Same goes with Kashaba Jadhav, a wrestler from Maharashtra who returned with bronze medal from Helsinki Olympics in 1952. Reportedly, he was the only Olympian who after winning a medal for India was never recognized by the Indian state for his contribution.
Kashaba Jadhav (source: The Hindu)
What does this anecdote serve in the context of Olympics debate? The answer is, Dalit and Tribals who constitute 25% of India’s population are under-cared and not considered as an asset for Olympic-like sporting events. India is the worst performer when the medal tally is calculated according to per capita.
Caste phenomenon adduces in the regimen of selecting an Olympian. Right from training to upbringing of an Olympian.
To find the hidden talent among the untested, Dalit and Tribal sporting academies should be established in every village. Talented ones should be hand-picked and trained with punctilious diligence. Once these selected athletes are trained in a familiar environment that reciprocates encouragement and psychological morale-boosting; then these athletes should be exposed to open competitions. The best among the trained ones will capture the throne.
But in the present scenario, it is totally frustrating for Dalits and Tribals to dream of becoming an athlete on account of immediate needs. The ambitions of Dalits and Tribals are curbed at the very initial stage where the marginalized students are constantly discouraged from partaking into activities other than assigned to their caste profession. Hence, the aspiring talented of the Indian population, the competitive Dalit story is killed in its infancy. The result of such adamant behavior is the humiliation in Olympic and other international sporting tournaments.
In the sprint tournament in Rio Olympics, for example, the best of the best from eight different countries were black individuals of different nationalities. It is evident that once ignored and repressed groups if given adequate exposure will prove their worth. Indian scenario is the ideal laboratory to test these methodologies. The emphasis of being successful is attributed to grades in schools and colleges in an Indian household. This measurement of success undermines the sporting faculties of human endeavors.
Sporitical
The present state of affairs has derailed the potential of such talents. The Hanuman Akharas — gymnasiums that are supposedly training grounds for the sports like bodybuilding, wrestling, and weightlifting are being used as a raw resource in the times of communal riots in the ascent of Hindu militancy. As Nandini Gooptu demonstrates in her book The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India. It is mostly Shudra caste recruits who are continuously used as a violence machine to incite disharmony in the everyday publics.
Sports in the communal sphere is used as political mechanics to arrange the calamitous dysfunction of a caste system. It is a revival of sporitical — an admixture of sports and devout politics. Sports has become a sporting event of political grandam since the eventful launching of Olympics. It is also a channel to expunge the crass of cancerous social ailments. Nelson Mandela used the World Rugby Championship to unite the country in its immediate acceptance of democracy. Black athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos used Olympic victory to defy the violent clashes incited against their oppressed people in the US. Muhammad Ali lived the life of defiance, and so did P Baloo. We need to settle examples of such vagrant defiance.
Sports defines nation’s capacity. If this logic is measured, then India has to fix this prominently. Dalits and Tribals have a due share to contest in the free competition to test the best. This sporting habitat would fix the ideologically inspired social parameters of antinomies of caste.
