[This article will likely generate some ire as though I am being a bit too harsh on Indian sports, and in particular on the bane of Indian sports in my opinion- cricket. But I believe all those who have suffered through endless decades of dismal Indian presence in the international sports scene, this article will make some (if not a lot of) sense.]
Here was a recent event (see YouTube URL attached and please peruse Leander Paes’ acceptance speech) which brought me much gladness, as if a much-awaited honor for an extraordinary Indian athlete, whose achievements may only be compared with that of Viswanathan Anand in chess or perhaps Prakash Padukone in badminton in terms of truly bona fide topmost international accomplishment, was finally accorded to Leander Paes (LP) (along with Vijay Amritraj (VA) as the only two Asians to be so honored), thankfully in an international setting- regardless of whether his own Motherland accorded him the honor he deserves or not. Both were inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in the presence of the highest tennis stalwarts.
Let me put matters in some sensible perspective. Before LP changed the very history of Indian sports, especially at the individual level, honestly, the best we from the subcontinent ever achieved was a 4th place, time after time. And 4th place winners were national heroes. Forever, it was Milkha Singh in tracks, PT Usha from LA 1984, Ramanathan Krishnan in two consecutive Wimbledon semifinals (I am not counting two Gland Slam quarter finals by VA). We athletically poverty-stricken Indians held on to these comparatively measly milestones for dear life.
The above for me was particularly humiliating since, as a relatively freshly-arrived student in the US for graduate studies (1980 onwards), I would ride University campus buses which carried Olympic medalists (gold, silver, bronze) as ordinary students, some of whom I myself served as senior Teaching Assistant in engineering classes. Many of them were wrestlers on the University of Iowa national championship team, which had built up a dynasty, led by their legendary coach, Dan Gable, whom I would meet rather often on campus. Back home, our national dishonor at such contrast, such obvious poverty was beyond measure.
Note I am not counting the Olympic golds in field hockey- the only other claim to fame we held on to forever, or the two Olympic Football semifinals achieved by Chuni Goswami, P.K. Banerjee and other genuine legends from the 1950s and ‘60s. What irked me to no limits (and it still does) was the obscene, pathetic obsession with cricket, a colonially derived sport which for the longest time barely extended beyond the erstwhile British Commonwealth. For a country of subcontinental physical size and (now) the most populous in the world- to be proportionately at the rank bottom in the world, and yet invest untold resources, stardom and a daily media adoration to one single sport at the expense of all else- to me has always been pathetic, deplorable, and rather often, heartbreaking. And this especially because India resides in the deepest recesses of my heart as a civilization of pure wonder unlike any other in vision, uniqueness and history.
Recall how an Indian young lady competing in the Miss Universe pageant (cautionary note: I do not personally care about these beauty pageants- they minimize the fundamental dignity of the human being by creating artificial measures of beauty, and lessen the higher human ideals) in the early 1990s- Madhu Sapre lost in the final stages of the competition- the rather ridiculous Q&A response (where they and their responses are all expected to be like the next Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela) when she responded (to me most understandably and admirably) that she would use her title and visibility to build up major sports facilities across the country. Guess what? Few understood the poignancy and relevance of her answer. To me, she gave a championship-worthy answer. But it was not the “Mother Teresa” answer, and Madhu Sapre was eliminated. I still admire Madhu Sapre for her deeply empathetic response.
While all this went on, the cricket virus has gone unchecked. A never-ending, round-the-year thing, mentally and visually tiring, going on endlessly. And the cricket players accorded disproportionate star status (and immeasurable stashes of money). Cricket, in my country, was Bollywood’s equivalent in sports. At the expense of everything else.
Therefore, it should be amply clear that any isolated athletic accomplishment by any Indian in any sport outside cricket has to be largely through almost 100% their individual effort and talent, with minimal support from the region, the state or the nation at large.
Next, let me cite one or two instances of how grossly disproportionate stardom has been accorded to cricket and cricketers in a country most pathetically behind just about any other country on the United Nations list.
Even though I have observed many instances of the inexcusable neglect of sports and athletes in my country for decades- the misplaced “stardom” accorded to cricketing figures and neglect extended to genuinely top-notch international athletic super star in something other than cricket was made starkly clear to me one summer while I was traveling back home. Note that the Wimbledon tournament was going on in England right then. It is worth noting that Leander Paes (a fellow Kolkata resident with a particularly exemplary heritage), whom I had first watched play in a Grand Prix tournament on the campus of SUNY Binghamton (where I was a faculty member at the time) was then a long way from creating absolute history at the very highest level of sports for our athletically impoverished country.
Imagine- in an athletically impoverished country where attaining world #4 had hitherto been a matter of national hero-worship
(I have alluded to several examples earlier)- LP, first in partnership with Mahesh Bhupathi, and later with an exalted array of the very best tennis players in the world (including Martina Navratilova and Martina Hingis), reached the hitherto unimaginable pinnacle of national prestige in tennis- no longer #8, or #4- but actually world Grand Slam tournament champion in doubles – multiple times- setting unmatched, unimaginable records along the way. Something so staggering, it should normally have shaken India into a state of awakening that such dazzling achievement was actually possible in a country of 1.4 billion human beings.
He had made the hitherto impossible and unimaginable a reality.
That summer, it turned out that LP had just won the Wimbledon doubles (probably also the mixed doubles- a Google check may readily verify). Winning Grand Slam doubles championships had become fairly routine for LP (and likewise for equivalently inspired Sania Mirza and others) by this time, and for several years since. Yet- the very day after LP’s latest Grand Slam victory, I distinctly recall reading the front-page news headline in 1-inch bold letters in Anandabazar Patrika (ABP, the leading Bengali newspaper in India)- I am paraphrasing from the Bengali: What did Dada have for breakfast this morning? BTW- Dada is the reverential appellation given to erstwhile cricket captain Sourav Ganguli. And a smiling photograph of Dada at his front gate. Even when out of the cricketing years, his waking up and eating breakfast was headline news in Kolkata (and likewise I am sure the rest of India). By contrast, the news of LP winning the Wimbledon doubles was relegated to a smaller “oh by the way” part of the sports page. Absolutely, utterly misplaced priorities which perfectly explained to me why the state of sports in India was so dreadfully low. Even winning the Wimbledon championship was not good enough to displace Dada and cricket trivia from the front page!!
Little wonder, then, that untold millions in India (almost pathetically but gladly) proclaim (and even compete with each other) proclaiming their allegiance to Brazil, or Argentina or (take your pick) some other country, when rooting for an obviously non-Indian team in World Cup Football, or very likely other sports. Nothing could be more demeaning and disgraceful for a culturally and intellectually leading nation.
While I could definitely go on discussing the frightfully lowly status of Indian sports (while acknowledging some marginal improvements brought about by the efforts of a handful of committed individuals of athletic renown (such as Padukone, Anand and others)), since there is little effort to raise the visibility in international sports at the national, government level- let me bring this article to its conclusion here by offering my salutations to LP and VA (especially LP, whose individual excellence has brought amazing prestige to his Motherland, as have a few others such as P.V. Sindhu, Abhinav Bindra and Neeraj Chopra). Incidentally, the citation accorded to LP (at the ceremony attended by Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, among others) mentioned how the government of India had “honored” LP with the 3rd highest national civilian award (which is the Padma Bhushan). This to me added insult to injury, since I am aware that our government had awarded the cricketer Sachin Tendulkar (who, I acknowledge, had set several records in cricket) the highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna. The bewildering bias is self-evident. I withhold for the time being my views on these national awards, which are often truly disgraceful; however, in this instance, I think the national civilian award to LP is without any doubt a national insult inflicted on someone whose achievements will long be enshrined in the highest echelons of world sports.
Dr. Monish R. Chatterjee, a professor at the University of Dayton who specializes in applied optics, has contributed more than 130 papers to technical conferences, and has published more than 70 papers in archival journals and conference proceedings, in addition to numerous reference articles on science. He has also authored several literary essays and four books of literary translations from his native Bengali into English (Kamalakanta, Profiles in Faith, Balika Badhu, and Seasons of Life), and contributed to several literary anthologies. Dr. Chatterjee believes strongly in humanitarian activism for social justice
© Monish R Chatterjee 2024
