Jyothi Yarraji from Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, performed heroically in the 2024 Paris Olympics finishing fourth in the repechage round heat one. As she was in Paris fighting for a medal in the 100-metre hurdles, a Telugu TV channel went to her semi- slum house to interview her parents. Her father, who looked old, perhaps hardly in his early fifties, said when she was studying in a Government school they used to beat her telling her not to go for games, leaving classes. They wanted her to pass tenth and get married. Her mother said in the interview, ‘we opposed her in the beginning but now we are looking for her to improve our economic life. When she is in the Olympic Games we are more happy’. Of course, her mother was hoping that her daughter would get more money with a gold medal from the world’s biggest games competition. She won many national and international gold medals earlier. Most of them hang on the walls of that slum house.
The TV shows the sickly father going to guard a multi-storied building being built by his employer, obviously a rich builder. The national media wrote about her, “Jyothi Yarraji, the girl from Andhra Pradesh is set to debut in Paris. It’s an evolving tale of sheer grit, determination, and hard work. Jyoti Yarraji, the daughter of a security guard, is all set to run the race of her life in the 100-metre hurdles at the Paris Olympics 2024”
Jyothi reached that stage with the support of Government school teachers. Her teachers were playing a double role in her childhood life: convincing her poor parents telling them “your daughter has a great sports grit in running and jumping hence allow her to play”. And also they were taking her to various competitions in the state and outside, with their money spent on her. This is something unusual for Government school teachers.
Jyothi’s mother said “whenever she went out to play she was getting a gold medal and also some money”. Thus she began to become their hope. Since she missed a medal in the Paris Olympics she did not become a celebrity. Even Chandrababu Naidu and Pavan Kalyan Government did not felicitate her, did not even offer to take her family out of slum and provide a decent flat, at least, for her restful life when she is with her parents.
Jyothi’s life and struggle raise a major nationalist question.
India quite ashamedly lifted only 6 medals. It did not win a single gold medal. Our rank in the world in medal tally is 71. This Vishva Stithy (world status) in sports, which is a marker of our nation’s physical strength along with the general situation in sports, tells about the RSS/BJP attitude to sports. The Vishwa Guru was employing foreign coaches for Indian girls and boys even to get those 6 medals.
Vinesh Phogat praised her foreign coach for taking care of her in the most difficult times of her life in Paris after she lost a chance to wrestle in the final. Her praise for a foreign coach in the background of her long struggle against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, a BJP MP, who was president of Wrestling Federation of India, on several charges against him, is a serious pointer to cultural conditions within RSS/BJP.
AFTER TEN YEARS OF RSS/BJP RULE
The global status of 71 in the Paris Olympics is after the RSS/BJP ruled India for ten years with a full grip on the system, with a lot of money in RSS/BJP coffers with big offices in Delhi and Nagpur. The monopoly capitalists during RSS/BJP rule are competing with American and Chinese capitalists in exploiting people and competing to get first, second and third position amongst the global rich. But unlike other nation’s monopoly houses the Indian monopoly houses do not establish charity coaching centres for the poor children like Jyothi Yarraji to train themselves in sports. They do not sponsor, at least, the poor sportsperson’s training and travel. But they take cinema actors, political leaders to marriage parties to foreign trips in chartered planes. RSS/BJP leaders also get their luxury seats and berths in those tours. This is the new nationalism of RSS/BJP Raj.
For the last hundred years the RSS has been blaming the Congress for keeping the nation weak in everything, including sports. But even after its ten years uninterrupted rule with an iron grip the sports strength of India has not improved, rather it became worse. Why is it so? Where has their commitment to nationalism been shown in action on the world scene with a victorious self-avowal?
Unlike the Congress the RSS has its own very well spread private school network. Why did not their schools produce world champions to showcase on the world sport platforms?
WHY THE VISHWA GURU FAILED IN PARIS?
Sports is one area where their school system and drill culture in morning and evening, what they call shakha kavaths would have shown the world with a victorious nationalist brand, if their school kids or their shakha boys, of course, there are no girl in the nationalist shakhas so far, were to walk out with more gold medals than China or Japan. At least, these two countries as they too are Asian nations, the RSS nationalism with a vision of vishwa guru would have made sense.
The RSS leadership speaks a very contradictory language. They want to make India Vishwa Guru and at the same time protect the parampara of Puranas . That parampara does not consist of any strength in sports? Did the Brahminic Gurukulas teach gymnastics to all caste children? Their only focus was to teach Sanskrit slokas from Puranas and also teach banavidhya? Olympics as a global platform of sports came into existence from gymnastic culture of ancient Greece.
For example, the classical texts written by Plato and Aristotle asked for rigour in school education along with rigorous gymnastics. Where is such education in ancient parampara of Sanskrit Brahminism? When the children of agrarian forces of ancient and medieval India called Shudras had no entry to Gurukula education even to learn Sanskrit, Bana Vidya and Kattisamu (knife rolling skill), how could a collective and competitive sports culture take shape?
Europe particularly Greece allowed even the slave children to enter gymnastic education and it was that culture of human competitive spirit that allowed to evolve the Olympic Games. The rest of the Western world share the same sport cultural ethos. They allow the talented persons in their schools—whether they are black, white or brown– to train themselves and compete at global Olympic level. The rich in the West invest in sports along with general education.
China, which is also an ancient nation as India and Greece, had a strong sports culture. That is the reason why it now competes with America. What kind of sport cultural parampara Indian Brahminism developed? When the RSS schools keep operating with such good financial resources with a slogan that India should become Vishwa Guru in every field, it should have produced great sports talent from its nationalist schools. But there is an anti-collective competition culture in their history of parampara.
Look at the reality. The few that brought medals for India so far: P.T.Usha, P.V.Sindhu, Sania Mirza, Mary Kom to Neeraj Chopra, Raj Kumar Pal, Nikhat Zareen and so on did not come from the RSS school system.
The Indian topmost wrestler Vinesh Phogat was also from a village Government school, with a family background of rural wrestling. In Haryana the Khap panchayats train their own wrestlers and her heritage came from there but not from the RSS/BJP kind of Hindutva nationalist school system. What she faced was a roadblock to her talent by their MP.
If Jyothi were to have the Vidya Bharati kind of wealthy school atmosphere, financial help to train herself she would have brought a medal for the nation.
The nation’s physical energy and mental capabilities grow in properly designed school gymnastic education. Have the schools that the RSS network runs shown any capability in producing high quality sport power and also intellectual power? There is no evidence as of now.
WORLD’S BIGGEST AND RICHEST ORGANIZATION
The RSS is the world’s biggest and richest social organization working across India for hundred years. As per their own admission it’s a para military power capable of reaching the borders much faster than the nation’s regular army. But its sports power is not reaching the Olympic games at all. It now controls the central and several state Governments. But what kind of national capabilities is its cultural heritage presented in the most watched and discussed by children, youth and old across the world: Olympic Games?
It claims that it runs thousands of schools, which are divided into two branches. In urban areas they run several Vidya Bharati schools and in the rural areas thousands of Saraswati Shishu Mandirs in the villages and tribal areas.
According to one source “Vidya Bharati, the education wing of the RSS, which controls more than 12,000 schools catering to nearly 32 million students across India”. An article written about its educational operations in West Bengal said “ West Bengal has roughly 92,000 students receiving an education in RSS-run 300 schools”. Where is sports strength coming from Vidhya Bharati schools and Saraswati Shishu Mandirs?
How many well trained sports girls and boys came out of these schools who reached the Olympic Games in 2024?
The carefully crafted Vidya Bharti objective says “ To instil a sense of nationalism, social equality and communal harmony. To inculcate a sensitivity to the concerns of the environment. To help students advance technologically without compromising our rich values and our cultural heritage. To prepare students for advanced academic study.”
What cultural heritage are they talking about? Whether the sports culture is part of it or not? Can they inform the nation in which age and in what kind of school system the sports culture of inclusive competition among all caste children existed in ancient India?
In the future what is the nation’s course for improving the sport strength of the nation? All ruling parties of India must think and unite in order to come out with a policy to strengthen our rural and urban sports strength.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author of many books.