Aug 09, 2024 09:07 PM IST
Over the past decade, sport has also become a part of India’s efforts to achieve national glory, great power status and a bid to host the Olympics in future
Every four years, India wakes up to the intricacies of shooting and the differences between pistol, rifle, trap and skeet. It’s not because of its love for the sport of shooting but due to the hope placed on shooters to bring back a scarce commodity: Olympic medals. The interest in somewhat marginal sports — with due respect to disciplines like shooting — is largely fuelled by the prospects of Olympic success and national glory. That holds true for most nations, particularly those like China, and in an earlier era, the erstwhile Soviet Union, that made sporting success a pillar of their nationalism and place in the world.
The connection between sport and nationalism is an old one and runs counter to Olympic founder Pierre de Coubertin’s mantra about competing and not necessarily winning. George Orwell might have been exaggerating when, in the context of the Cold War, he labelled sport as “war minus the shooting.” However, Eric Hobsbawm got it right when he wrote that the “imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people.”
In the first few Olympics, there were participants who did not necessarily represent their nation, but this soon became the norm. Alan Bairner, a sports historian, has written that sport “facilitates flag-waving and the playing of national anthems” more than any other social activity. This is especially true for the Olympics which, as Mukul Kesavan notes, has pioneered a “non-stop identification of sport and the nation.”
This was quite apparent in the badminton men’s doubles finals in the ongoing Olympics when a pair from Taiwan — which competes under the banner of Chinese Taipei to assuage China — was pitted against the Chinese. The venue itself was a teeming mass of flag-waving spectators, unsurprisingly dominated by supporters of China. Supporters of Taiwan were, however, not allowed to carry their national flag but only the specially created Chinese Taipei Olympic flag. Those who tried to the contrary were either ejected or had their flags confiscated. After the Chinese Taipei pair won the finals, the victory was interpreted by many Taiwanese as an affirmation of Taiwan’s international status. The Taiwanese president also later posted on social media that the win had “united” the nation. Such examples of victories being interpreted in nationalist terms and outright political acts abound in the history of the Olympics. The tit-for-tat Cold War-era boycotts during the 1980 Moscow and the 1984 Los Angeles Games are prime examples of the politics around the Games.
Well before the boycott-hit games, there were several examples of the intersection of the Olympics with nationalism and politics. One of the more notable ones was the ‘blood in the water’ water polo match between Hungary and the Soviet Union in the 1956 Olympics in the backdrop of the Hungarian Revolution. And who can forget the iconic black salute by Tommie Smith and John Carlos in 1968 to protest discrimination against African Americans, for which their sporting careers were destroyed?
The desire of most nations, including India, to bolster its medal tally is largely driven by nationalistic instincts and a desire to make an impact on the global stage. In an earlier era, the Soviet Union and some members of the Soviet bloc had done so methodically, even resorting to illegal means to achieve sporting glory. In the contemporary period, China has shown the way.
Unlike India, which won hockey gold before Independence, China won its first gold in the 1984 Games when it re-entered the Olympic fold. Since then, it has risen meteorically to win 48 gold medals in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, placing it ahead of its closest competitor, the US, and has vied with the US for the top spot in subsequent Olympics. Mao Zedong had always made a connection between sport and nationalism. It was only in 2001 after Beijing was chosen to host the 2008 Games, that China began in earnest to chase medals. The Chinese government’s Project 119, so named because it targeted the then 119 medals in water sports and athletics, pumped billions of dollars into its 3,000-plus academies to groom children into champions. As two Chinese historians have noted, China’s “morbid appetite for gold medals placed a heavy political burden upon Chinese athletes, whose mission was to improve China’s international image and satisfy the people’s expectations for national revival.”
India had taken a different approach towards sports in the early years of Independence. Indeed, Jawaharlal Nehru’s message for the assembled athletes during the 1951 Delhi Asian Games echoed de Coubertin’s ideals when he said “athletic contests are good for developing friendly rivalry” and each athlete must “must play his part gracefully” and “enter into the spirit of the games.”
Since then, much has changed. In recent years, the Indian State and corporates have heavily invested in improving India’s abysmal showing in international competitions. There are shades of China’s policy of medal harvesting without the coercive system. This has not always translated into more sporting infrastructure at the grassroots levels and better access to sports and health facilities for children but has paid dividends in terms of high-level performance, if not always in medals.
Over the past decade, sport has also become a part of India’s efforts to achieve national glory, great power status and a bid to host the Olympics in future. Hence the feverish desire this year to better India’s best-ever performance of seven medals in the 2020 Tokyo Games. This has led to self-congratulation at any success and national heartburn over the near medal misses, including the unfortunate disqualification of wrestler Vinesh Phogat before her final match. Indeed, the reaction in India to Phogat’s disqualification and seeing it as a national disaster is a metaphor for both the state of Indian sport and the connection between nationalism and the Olympics.
Ronojoy Sen is with the National University of Singapore and author of Nation at Play: A History of Sport in India. The views expressed are personal
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