Calls to build sporting culture in India misplaced.

[VizagRocks]

Brilliant take on why calls for sporting culture is just another nationalistic exercise for the harebrained Indian middle class.

http://scroll.in/article/814511/why-calls-to-build-a-sporting-culture-are-just-another-version-of-jingoistic-nationalism

How did we start to take our measure through success in sporting events? How did the extraordinary strivings of Indian athletes, which cannot be assessed through the undemanding task of medal-counting but, rather, the byzantine hurdles of their subaltern lives, become a crisis of national character? How did poor Indians – running, grappling, boxing and vaulting their way out of their predicaments – become our Mohammad Alis: tasked with securing glory for the nation while being denied basic human comforts and rights? By converting sporting success into contemporary medallions of having arrived and become global, perhaps.

It’s the arrival – always the arrival – that matters, the journey be damned. The despondency over Olympic medals is both marked by an aversion about the journey and a steadfast focus upon brilliant individuals rather than the collective life that produces brilliance. The idea of the brilliant individual feeds into the fantasy of individualism: that we don’t have to undo the structural darkness at the heart of our lives.

 

[VizagRocks]

The remarkable effort that has gone into securing the medals India has won has occasioned well-worn lamentations about the necessity of a “sporting culture”. Sadly, this is another version of jingoistic nationalism, rather than a concern for national life. It is little more than a cruel joke to suggest that India lacks sporting prowess because of the lack of a sporting culture. For the vast number of sports-people in India, sport is a means of escaping poverty and ill-being. It is not a lifestyle activity. This is why the ranks of our athletes are rarely peopled by the daughters and sons of the well-off.

[VizagRocks]

What do calls to build a sporting culture mean in this context? Nothing more, really, than the self-serving thought that the reserve army of the miserable, while continuing to live in misery, should serve the aims of the well-heeled to secure national glory through sporting achievement. Planning their journey is insignificant, since what is important is our arrival.

[VizagRocks]

In one sentence.

Dear middle class people who want more medals in Olympics, pls shut the fcuk up.

[Butterthief]

19 minutes ago, VizagRocks said:

Brilliant take on why calls for sporting culture is just another nationalistic exercise for the harebrained Indian middle class.

http://scroll.in/article/814511/why-calls-to-build-a-sporting-culture-are-just-another-version-of-jingoistic-nationalism

How did we start to take our measure through success in sporting events? How did the extraordinary strivings of Indian athletes, which cannot be assessed through the undemanding task of medal-counting but, rather, the byzantine hurdles of their subaltern lives, become a crisis of national character? How did poor Indians – running, grappling, boxing and vaulting their way out of their predicaments – become our Mohammad Alis: tasked with securing glory for the nation while being denied basic human comforts and rights? By converting sporting success into contemporary medallions of having arrived and become global, perhaps.

It’s the arrival – always the arrival – that matters, the journey be damned. The despondency over Olympic medals is both marked by an aversion about the journey and a steadfast focus upon brilliant individuals rather than the collective life that produces brilliance. The idea of the brilliant individual feeds into the fantasy of individualism: that we don’t have to undo the structural darkness at the heart of our lives.