Why Stuart Broad isn't a cheat

The first Ashes Test between England and Australia featured some fascinating cricket, but all the talk has been focussed on one incident rather than the fantastic individual pieces of cricketing skill we saw from both teams. When Stuart Broad refused to walk when he was caught by Michael Clarke at first slip, he reopened a fascinating debate on morality in sport.

I've always maintained that sport is more than just about who won and who lost; it’s about skill, determination and the will to succeed. These are very noble things, and therefore, Sportspersons have always been feted; their names sung by grateful fans, generations weaned on stories of fantastic performances on the field of play. So when an issue of morality is raised, it is deeply troubling to the human psyche which is accustomed to treating Sportspersons with a great deal of respect. There are some who will argue that this logic cannot be extended to modern day sports. Today, the business of sports is just as important as the action on the field of play, probably even more. Keeping with the theme of an age where the market extends to every part of human life, sports today is a very “corporate” being. Like it or not, “Karbon Kammal Sixes”, “Aon Training Centre”, “Etihad Stadium” and the rest of it are a here to stay. In an age where who sponsors whom is just as important as the players on the field of play, can we really expect Sportspersons to behave in a way their predecessors did? When love for the game results inbeing robbed, why should we expect sportspersons to be bound by a moral code that simply does not exist?

That does not mean it can be argued that anything goes on the field of play, as long as you win. Winning may be more important than it was in the past, but there are limits to the complexity of this debate: match fixing, doping and the like cannot be justified. The fact is that sanctimony is always directed at the opposition. When Greame Swann calls a Sri Lankan player a cheat for not walking and defends Broad for the same, he is doing what we all do. I laugh when a Man United player “dives” in order to get a penalty, but scream obscenities at the referee when the boot is on the other foot.

Therefore, the Gary Neville argument in his master class on diving is probably more apt than the moral pronouncements that have been expressed since the Broad incident. To quote Red Nev, it would be very harsh to call these players cheats for not abiding by somewhat dubious expectations with regard to morality. They work so very hard for one moment; that moment will provide judgement on years of hard work. Can we then expect them to throw it all away in order to abide by some unrealistic standards of morality? Of course Broad would eke out the smallest advantage; he’s there to win matches for his team, not the Fair Play Award. It was the job of the Umpire to judge whether he was caught or not. When the Umpire is not sure, can we really expect Broad (or any other sportsperson for that matter) to go back to his teammates and say that Fair Play is more important than winning the game?

There are some who say that Sportspersons are idols and therefore, will always be expected to have higher standards of behaviour than us mortals, lest our kids be taught that it’s OK to cheat. That argument certainly has traction when it comes to match fixing or doping. Is diving or not walking when you are out as bad as doping or match fixing? I don’t think anybody is saying that diving or not walking is a virtue, it’s just a part and parcel of the modern game. It will happen, it cannot be stopped. Fighting it is a lost cause. We would be better off evolving a mechanism to deal with it. The “Spirit of the Game” is tosh; it exists for everybody but our team. When England were at the receiving end, they were fighting for this infinitely virtuous quality. When they stand to gain an advantage, they forget about such sanctimony and try to win the game. Let us not pretend that the rest of us are  any different.

In football, if a player dives, he/she is in danger of receiving a yellow card. Cricket has a similar precedent of players being banned for not walking when they are clearly dismissed (or so the web tells me). Let the authorities apply this penalty when such an incident occurs so that it is dealt with, instead of mourning endlessly for a quality which belongs to the past. By holding sports hostage to qualities of a bygone era, we are deluding ourselves. Sportspersons are products of our society. Expecting them to abide by a moral code none of us would follow if we were in a similar position is unrealistic to the extreme.

India: A nation of idiots (Part 2)

Talking of institutionalized corruption, what happened to the Anna Hazare movement? As much as a disagree with the argument that one institution can magically eradicate corruption, the idea of people demonstrating against corruption was much welcome. To quote Winston Smith, if there is hope, it lies in the proles. As much as the Outer Party (middle India) fancies itself to be the crusader of everything moral and right, unless the poor fight the machine that is the status quo, nothing will change. After all, a politician is a shrewd specimen. If he/she feels that reform and change is what the people want, that he cannot play the people and trust the poor to put him back to power on the back of the usual packet of biryani and the packet of desi daaru, why should he/she prescribe to the idea of change when he has much to benefit from the status quo? And why will the poor protest, when his life is dependent on drudgery which does not include the luxury of worrying about the poor?

But why will any of us protest when the machine can simply bring up the glitz and glamour of the Hindi film industry? We are so enamoured by smut and fluff (while ignorantly claiming our culture to be the greatest in the history of mankind, since it apparently looks down on the same smut and fluff that the “culture-less” West propagates) that it distracts us from thoughts of the future. The best example of this is Sanjay Dutt. Logically, if it were a poor Muslim youth who made the same choices, he would rot in jail with all of us baying for his blood, and we will take great joy in the inevitable hanging to death. We’ll take rallies, celebrate the event as if it was the greatest in the history of mankind, and distribute sweets. In fact, the facts of the case show that the people accused of the same crime, who weren’t Sanjay Dutt, have been charged under TADA, while the Gandhian Munna Bhai is charged under the Arms Act. The irony of somebody who lauded Gandhian thought in a movie being charged under the Arms Act might be right up there with Arundathi Roy’s laughable “Maoists are Gandhians with Guns” logic. But since it is Munna Bhai, he’s a sweet guy. What did he do? Allowed his house to be barrack for a terrorist who cut Mumbai into a thousand pieces, even if said master could not fulfill his master’s dream of bleeding India into a thousand pieces. He’s suffered for 20 years! His suffering: a number of crores a year, special treatment, the adulation of the brainwashed and other luxuries which most of us can only dream of. Such horrid levels of suffering must be the most any individual has suffered in the history of the Indian Republic. Pity and mercy in this country exist only for the powerful. Talk of taking death sentence off the books; you are accused of being a wishy-washy liberal who bleeds for the criminal but not for the victim. The hypocrisy is astounding.

There exist a few holy cows in this country and the biggest of them is the Armed Forces. We are all grateful for the men and women who put their lives on the line so that we can sleep in peace. However, even the gravest crime they commit is almost excused. We have a brave woman who has been fasting for 10 years for the withdrawal of AFSPA, which clearly has no place in any decent society. Apparently, raping women, torture, random arrests are all prerequisites for fighting terrorism. The idiocy of this argument is never contested by the presumably educated. Another holy cow is religion. Despite our claims of being liberal, we are the farthest thing from a liberal society. I reject religion even though I come from a religious family. The idea of a God, as comforting as it may be, is nauseous when we demolish another religious structure in His name; kill, maim, loot and commit the worst crimes. An entity in whose name hatred is propagated, to me, is not an entity worth going gaga over. If a believer says that this God is a deeply merciful entity and then goes on killing in the name of the same merciful entity; it this believer cannot respect his/her beliefs, why should I? If we see the history of religion, we see that religion is more an army of killing, hatred and injustice; not the entity it presents itself to be. Even more nauseous is the hatred propagated by these purveyors of God. The homosexual is a deviant and the female is a second rate commodity. Equality is a concept alien to religion, and by extension, alien to a nation which is obsessed with religion. How many of us refuse to acknowledge the existence of the Caste System? Those of us who belong to the privileged castes will argue that we are different, that caste does not matter to us anymore. We will then make excuses for the caste system; that “blood matters”. How can any society which even in the slightest way excuses such barbaric thought claim to be a liberal society? We are constantly brainwashed into a state of considerable apathy.  Whether Sachin Tendulkar will retire or not is a matter of national debate. That one in six families in Urban India live in slums, with mobiles but no sanitation, public health facilities, safe drinking water housing or decent education is worthy of a footnote in the bowels of the newspaper. The philosophical conundrum of modern day capitalism: where the private sector is the solution for all problems is roundly ignored. We fail to note even the most basic criticism of our economic model; that the private sector will only solve problems where the possibility of a profit occurs, not in the most basic duties of the state (health, education and housing). To us, history is a playlist of YouTube videos; myth and propaganda is dressed up as history. One look at the bestseller list in books shows our fascination with mythology: the trilogy of Lord Shiva by Amish sells more than books which force us to think and to question the world around us. There is nothing wrong with reading books on religion, in fact, one of my most treasured gifts is a book titled “Am I a Hindu”, gifted to me by my father. However, mythology is one man’s fiction. It matters just as much as those Mills and Boon romance stories.

It is very easy for me to fall victim to the lazy assertion that there is no political party which is truly liberal, that prescribes to the ideals enshrined in the constitution (laughable how the right denies the existence of the idea of India. One can only pity the deluded for suffering so much delusion so as to not see the obvious). I refuse to do so. Politicians are representative of society. Unless society changes and moulds itself in the way our founding fathers wanted, there will not be liberal political parties. In conclusion, we are a nation of idiots. To borrow the famous line from Justice Markandey Katju, 90% of Indians are idiots, and I include myself in this. For far too long, I have been victim to myth and propaganda. I choose to move towards the 10%, and unless the rest of us do the same, we will remain a nation by, of and for idiots. 

India: A nation of idiots (Part 1)

With a year left for the Lok Sabha elections (or less than a year, if you choose to believe the media driven hype of early elections), the media is going to go all out with opinion polls, articles presumptuously titled “State of the Nation”, as if a sample size of 1000 people represents the opinions of the millions that constitute the Indian electorate. Presumptuous or not, one must admit that speculating the results of an election is a deeply satisfying activity, especially in a country as diverse as India. There are a million contours to every election in India; admittedly, this article can only capture a few of them: the ones that appeal to a middle class, liberal youngster.

To say that Narendra Modi has emerged on the national stage would be an understatement. Young India’s fascination with Narendra Modi enthralls me. We might not uniformly agree on Modi’s qualifications to lead this great nation, but we cannot ignore the fact that he is a serious candidate. Young India’s stand on whether Modi’s record on development trumps the serious accusations he continues to face vis-à-vis 2002 is a larger sociological debate which invariably involves the facets of class and religion. All I can say is that as a resident of Ahmedabad, I cannot deny Modi’s record on development or the many desirable elements of his administration. Despite seeing Modi’s development first hand, I will not vote for him come the election. The reasons for this will be apparent as we go on.

Another habit the media gets into when covering any general election is the habit of declaring that the coming election is “one of the most important in the history of the Indian republic”. I fail to understand the logic of this argument, since every election is by definition a crucial one. The winner gets to decide policy for a considerable amount of time, and every policy has the potential of changing the fortunes of the nation one way or the other. However, it cannot be denied that India is at a crossroads. The problems facing the nation need not be stated again; they have been repeated ad nauseam in the climate of pessimism that has persisted over the last few years. My memory of the last general election was the theme of change that underlined it: young people, qualified people would finally get into politics and try to make a change. Reform would come, and India would be transparent, a slightly better place than the competitive race to the bottom it is at this time. Then the same old faces got elected, and those of us who held hope in change and reform pointed out to the presence of young MP’s (especially in the Congress), naively ignoring that most belonged to dynasties. The irony of pointing to the inheritors of a dynasty as evidence of upcoming change and reform was lost on us. The election of 2009 was about the status quo, with some smatterings of change tossed to us deluded liberals to keep quiet until the next election. And the cycle is set to continue…

For me, too much of talk on this election has centered on individuals: Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi (at least until Rahul baba virtuously declared that he wasn’t interested. That was an act of renunciation unseen in mankind’s vast experience with elected or unelected royalty) or any of the other names that have propped up. This points to the idiocy of the discourse on our polity, that we choose to focus on individuals rather than the ideas they represent. What is Narendra Modi’s idea for India going forward? Or Sushma Swaraj? Or Chidambaram? Of course, there is no point in asking for Rahul Gandhi’s idea for India since his ideas include silence, or few words spoon-fed by his MBA coterie or Mummy’s lieutenants. To be fair to Modi, he did express an idea for India; an “India first” form of secularism which unfortunately is illogical because secularism and nationalism are independent of each other. We might have a unique definition of secularism in this country (where it is synonymous with tolerance), but even tolerance and nationalism are independent of each other. History has shown us that focus on nationalism is deeply intolerant. I abhor the idea of a nationally imposed rigidity on our consciousness. The idea reminds me of the dystopia wonderfully illustrated in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty- Four. Besides, the idea of a civilization which embraced liberal thought when the rest of the world embraced savagery choosing to embrace rigidity is troubling (as it should be to anybody with the slightest historical knowledge of the Indian civilization, very different from the myth propagated by the tilak, chaddi and lathi types).

What then, of the economy? For a nation which gobbles reports which prophesize an economic superpower (at least the sections of our country which can read, and afford the luxury of reading reports which can simply be termed as prophecies), we have a tremendous amount of economic illiteracy. Notice the collective angst when petrol prices are increased. While there is an argument for a transparent mechanism (one of my aims when I started my MBA course was understanding how petrol or diesel is priced. I am about to finish the course and have a wonderfully exciting  job to look forward to, but I am no closer to understanding what goes behind the  price that we all have to pay for petrol), the bouts of irritation middle India shows is immoral. Why should the government subsidize my petrol when millions go to bed hungry? Surely, when I can afford the latest gizmos or religiously buying the latest Manchester United jersey, I can afford to pay more for petrol. The culture of subsidies in this country can be a good thing if the needy actually benefitted from it. Like most things in this country, something ostensibly for the poor is actually for the middle class, which calls itself aam aadmi without an ounce of shame. How do we balance the needs of development, the compulsion of sustainability and the need for transparency (which should be a basic requirement for a country calling itself the world’s largest democracy)? Which politician has answered this question apart from the usual kow-towing to big business? Not to mention the massive behemoth in the room that is institutionalized corruption.