The
Political Burden Of “Team India”
By Badri Raina
29 March, 2007
Zmag
I recall
that some two decades ago Frederic Jameson noted how literary/creative
productions from the “third world” tend to become “national
allegories.” And I also recall some noted Indian intellectuals
taking umbrage at the suggestion that third worlders should have been
thought, after all, to be parvenu nationalists, when in fact we, in
India for example, existed and produced within an unassimilable multiplicity
and plurality of identities and allegiances in true federal fashion.
The irony being that the umbrage in itself constituted an instance of
hurt nationalist pride.
I thought then and I think
now how right Jameson was. Not so paradoxically, as the Indian ruling
classes float the myth of our imminent approach towards super-powerdom,
this pretence to a global destiny remains equally embedded in a parvenu
nationalism. Lacking any accreted self-confidence, we, even in this
day and age, continue rather to think as did the American nationalist
icons of the middle of the 19c. Walt Whitman then instructed his people
that a democratic America should acquire the self-confidence to transcend
that feudal Shakespeare, (claiming that, even as he wrote, some “two
dozen Shakespeares walked on either side of the Mississipi”);
we want the world to know that a Kalpana Chawla or a Sunita something
may well have been born and bred as American citizens but must be understood
to reflect the glories of India. Some right wing nationalists of course
go far further to claim that even as early in history as the Ramayana
(if that be historical), India knew all about nuclear secrets and flying
machines. How else would one explain the occurrence of Ram flying back
from Lanka in a Pushpak Viman (literally a flying object).
If, then, today India is
in mourning at the failure of our cricketing gods, the phenomenon needs
to be contextualized within the sort of parvenu sensibility suggested
above.
Three clearly differentiated
orders of involvement seem apparent: at the level of the state, the
corporates, and the common masses.
In city and town, effigies
of “team India” are being burnt, as the widespread breast-beating
suggests the observance of a national Moharram—not celebratory
of the event in Karbala, but as castigation of a loss of national self-esteem
and expression of national shame. The gods having failed, a national
wake is underway. A happening that after all testifies to the successful
penetration of parvenu nationalism among both India’s newly educated
but illiterate middle classes and emulating, what if impoverished, masses.
The houses and other luxury
waterholes of “team India” are under police protection.
The mobs that were the other day berserk with glee at “team India’s”
record-making victory against that unheard-of Bermuda are today manaical
in frenzy at our losses, first to Bangladesh (a country the size of
a medium Indian province—indeed a country that we, in the first
place, had brought into being; imagine child being the father of man!)
and then against Sri Lanka (several sizes even less).
The galling ignominy of it
all; it is as though the Pentagon had prostrated to Peru and to Surinam,
not to speak of Iraq or Vietnam, and at a point in our national destiny
when India’s super-power credentials are just about to be ratified
by a so-exclusive one-off nuke deal with that political Yehova of our
times, America. What may the latter now think of us, when “team
India” cannot vanquish even a Bangladesh or a Sri Lanka. It is
as though the Indian emperor has been discovered to have infact no clothes
whatsoever.
II
For a while now India’s
virtual sense of its super-power eligibility has rested on four pegs:
its rate of economic growth; the burgeoning number of billionaires;
the power and potential of Hindu heritage as daily projected by sundry
sadhus, management gurus, spiritual counsellers and other godmen; and,
not the least, by the ubiquitous images of “team India”
(which, if you still do not make out, refers to the Indian cricket team,
and cricket, which if you still do not make out, being a game played
with bat and ball between two teams of eleven members each).
It is on basis of this four-fold
credit-worthiness that Indians have been schooled to look away from
farmer’s suicides, abysmal child labour, horrendous atrocities
on women and dalits, incrementing joblessness, absence of potable drinking
water or electricity for some 60% of the population, a stinking lack
of sanitation, millions of easily avoidable deaths by waterborne diseases
and a concomitant absence of health services for more than two-thirds
of citizens, fleecing corporates and corrupt politicians, fourishing
criminal mafias, thick-skinned bureaucracies, brutal superstitions,
inter-community massacres, a collapsing parliament, and much else.
Now, that famous growth rate
of 9% that never seems to touch the lives of some 70% of Indians seems
castrated by inflation and price rise, rendering even the middle-income
sections chary and wary; the billionaires recede further and further
into planetary isolation from the beleageuered commoners, even as the
forex reserves sit like that proverbial pile of inert gold over which
the state watches over like a King Cobra, letting not a brick be put
to any general use; and, the ultimate rebuff that “team India”,
the icons of many a commercial enterprise as well as quotidian homestead
dream, cannot hold a bat straight when it matters, or move a nimble
foot, or run with nationalist alacrity between wicket and wicket. Thus
the shame, the drowning shame of it all!
As to the godmen etc., whatever
happened to all the pujas and yagnas that were everyday performed in
all corners of north India to seal the victory of the eleven good men
and true? Not all the jagrans seem after all to have awakened the somnambulant
deity to the frustrations and aspirations of doting millions. And what
may be said of all the astrologers who have been appearing in flowing
robes on TV channels to pronounce the imminent glories of “team
India”? A great big question mark thus hangs over the prowess
of Hindutva which, to obviate the failure, will surely now be pressed
into service in the forthcoming elections where it may have more success,
as life and limb come to be at stake. To wit, now that the World Cup
of Cricket is lost, atleast the assemblies at home might be subdued.
Then there is the other thing—oh,
the money behind and before it all! Not only have “team India”
failed the masses and the middle classes, more to the point they have
brought unforgiveable losses to the corporate state and the media channels
that make it visible and potent. Indeed, the damage to advertising revenues,
and to the plethora of ancillary employments generated thereof, must
be unendurable—certainly more unendurable, it seems, than rapes,
caste atrocities, or farmer’s suicides. No “terrorist”
or organized or unorganized labouring class, it must be concluded, has
done more harm to corporate earnings than our eleven knights in shining
blue, whereupon the national logo (or is it some sponsor strip?) now
hangs limp in hang-dog perfidy.
As to the BCCI (namely, the
Board of Control for Cricket in India)—a set-up (the pun intended)
whose revenues must exceed those of some Indian states—what does
it now do, with no victors to burgeon its kitty? Indeed, wait till India’s
rumbustuous parliament, routinely stymied with street-level in-house
mobocracy, meets again: “team India” will be its main agenda.
Its weak-kneed surrender to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka cannot but be read
as another aspect of the state’s indifference to national security.
And the poor minister of Agriculture, co-terminously head also of the
BCCI, will need all the protection he can get. There is no telling what
forms of chastisement will be recommended for the errant minister-head;
that he will be asked to resign may safely be assumed. Will the CBI
be directed to enquire into the weakening allegiance of “team
India” to the national interest? Entirely conceivable. And, as
to the foreign coach of “team India,” will he only be sent
packing, or will a diplomatic row with his home country, Australia,
be also warranted? After all, should Australia win the Cup, as is more
than likely, could “team India’s” Australian coach
be up for charges of internal sabotage? Who knows, this is India.
Meanwhile, you may be thinking
what is this all about? You may think cricket a mere sport; you may
raise eyebrows at the quality and status of India’s self-perception,
counseling that we rather forget about a lost game or two and begin
to attend to matters of more substance. Indeed, you may do all that
and prove yourself, thereby, if not an enemy of the people, then of
the corporate state. In which case you will become a suspect at home,
or a candidate for extradition.
The point is that with so
little else to fall back upon, “team India’s” anti-national
surrender leaves a whole nation in limbo. And what if even the 123 nuke
deal with uncle Sam should fall through? How then do we persuade the
world that we are a super-power? And, remember, there are no free lunches.
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