Caste
Manages Sports
By Amit Chamaria
05 October, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Commenting
that the games like football and volleyball belong to reserve categories
like SCs/STs may sound silly. But if one goes by the conclusions of
the Thorat committee's recent report, it is not far from the ground
reality. The committee constituted under the chairman of University
Grants Commission (UGC), Prof. S. Thorat has recently submitted a comprehensive
report on differential and discriminatory treatment being meted out
to SCs and STs students by the upper caste people in the country's premier
institute like All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). The
report carries details on how SCs and STs students are being given differential
treatment in various echelons of the life that include sports too.
Certainly, the discrimination
against dalits at the level of sports is not a new thing but it has
always been kept shrouded. The mythological story of Eklavya, the Adivasi
archer with his Brahmin guru Dronacharya has enough evidences of the
discrimination against dalits. As per some bits of the story, Guru Dronacharya
refuses the request of Eklavya for making a chance of competition with
less talented Kshatriya-disciple Arjun. Even the story of Karna, half
brother of Pandavas in the epic Mahabharata, is deemed lowborn, echoes
similar sound.
Undoubtedly, sports are
the vital part of life and entail the cultural aspects of society. Many
dalit students have been quoted in the thorat's report alleging that
they were excluded from the games like basketball and cricket. A bitter
reality is that basketball, as a game, has been exclusively domain for
the general category students in AIIMS's cultural events, christened
as 'PULSE'. The report mentions that only 68 percent SCs / STs students
participate in various capacities in the PULSE. Of them, about 80 percent
participate as observers and volunteers and
only 11 per cent as competitors and 7 percent as representatives in
any committee. The reason, reported for the lower participation in the
categories of competitor and representative is two fold. One is the
lack of representation of SC/ ST on the organizing Committee and second
is it's the unfair working. The committee works in a biased manner to
ensure that the SCs/ST students are not given due participation.
Broadly, the reach of dalits
and rural society to the sports is almost synonymous. The games which
are easily available and do not attach much paraphernalia are popular
in the rural society and so as among the dalits. Interestingly, the
game like football and volleyball never attract a mass appeal and not
even due attention of the media. Even the government does not give proper
care towards these games even the country has a great potential in it.
No doubt, adivasi and dalit can truly excel in these games. Since the
games like cricket and tennis are elite sports so they easily hit headlines
in the media. Cricket manages a big market and also commands a far greater
influence in the media.
In India athletics, hockey,
football and some others are physically intensive but deglamourised
sports that invariably secure the participation of the people mainly
from the under-privileged section. As situation prevails in the country,
only upper class people can, truly, enjoy sports and Tendulkar and Sania
Mirza like sports personalities can become icons and brand ambassadors
for the products. The forgotten Indian archer, Limba Ram manifest such
indifferences. It could not be characterized as a naïve comment
that many dalits and adivasi can become icons in the events like archery
if they were trained properly. India hardly manages a medal in this
event in the Olympic games. Ironically, the sacking of Saurav Ganguly
from the post of the captain of the Indian cricket team can rock the
Parliament but the issues related to inaccessibility of a large promising
population to the sports, hardly attracts any attention of the Parliamentarians.
In the nutshell, the report
of Thorat's committee is enough to display the prevailing caste bias
in the field of sports too. And it should be highlighted to understand
that if these types of biases are evident in AIIMS, what one has to
say about rest of INDIA.
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