Another Olympics is behind us. Some questions surface: Why only two medalsIJ What’s going wrong whereIJ Is the system wrongIJ Is there a problem with the Indian mindset that does not see sports as a viable option for the youthIJ Is it the background of an inadequately well-off nation where indulgence in sports loses out in priority to decent and assured bread and butter pursuitsIJ I think it is a combination of all these factors but the predominant issue is lack of will to be world number one in anything, whether sports or any other activity.
Basically, we are not hell bent on beating the whole world and sitting on top of the heap. The nations that have been and are driven to any extent, often at the cost of humanism, to be there at the top of the heap are the ones that reap most of the medal harvest. Should we be defensive or apologetic about our attitudeIJ That, for me, is the most important question that arises out of our medal show. My answer is that we should revel in our attitude and turn it into a positive asset instead of a negative drag.
This attitude of ours is India’s ornament, its gift to the world. This attitude can make us lie down on our back and sing songs while immersed in the cosmic drama of countless stars in the limitless night sky when nations bent on global supremacy busily send probes into space. Of course, the hangover of British raj and the environment of me-first in everything sprung all over the world by the West have made a lot of us in India have the mindset of nations that have been or are power centres.
There is a lot of history behind all this and I don’t want to get into it. The result of this history going back not just centuries but millennia is that India has been thrust into the mire of inferiority complex about many of its superiorities vis-a-vis powerful nations. Many of our strengths have been turned into abject weaknesses just because of the way we look at them. I will narrate a small true story.
It’s about a child. She took part in a school race and came first by a huge margin. Her parents were happy about it and went to the school on its sports day next year to see how she fares. She took a handsome lead midway through the race, then suddenly slowed down and came last. Her parents asked her the reason for slowing down. She said that midway when she was leading she looked back to see where the others were. She thought then that she was sure to win the race like the previous year. But she felt bad about all those she would leave behind and decided to come last.
This mindset and the genes responsible for it have been overhauled and manipulated to a great extent to make them like the winner mindset powerful nations have, but the killer instinct just refuses to set in the way it naturally exists in the nations that grab most of the sports medals. But is the killer instinct better than our laid-back let-go attitudeIJ If the whole world gets harnessed by the killer instinct nobody will be left alive on the planet.
The races at the Olympics are not India’s races. They are the races of the West, the Occident. The Orient has traditionally never bothered about such races. And now it has become our genes. There’s nothing wrong with it. But now the whole world has become the West and it has been drilled into us that singing songs to starry night skies is much worse than egoist space races. The global milieu is such that it would just not allow anybody to sing carefree songs. Everybody is dragged to take part in the race to beat everyone else, with the Olympics being one of the most civilised editions of the race.
So if India, after its sportspersons put in their best, comes way down the medal list, it is a reason to celebrate what we are and not feel lowly about it. We have participated in enough Olympics to see what we are. Now the time has come to rejoice in what we are. There’s no use trying to be somebody else and win somebody else’s race. The West celebrates its aggression often on the world stage. If lack of aggression makes us lose on the world stage in shows like the Olympics, we should recognise this trait and feel blessed about it. That will turn a weakness into strength.
In the match for the badminton Gold, both Sindhu and Carolina Marin were aggressive on the court. But a keen eye would have seen that aggression came more naturally to Marin than Sindhu. Marin attacked much more than Sindhu. In terms of skill Marin had just a slight edge, but her aggression made the difference. It often made Sindhu defensive. like wars, Olympic Games are also fought in the mind. Sindhu lost the mind game of aggression. That doesn’t make her mindset inferior.
The Olympic Games are not the end of life. There’s more to life than gold medals. A mindset that loses medals can prove to be much more useful in the bigger game of life where winning is not always everything, where losing often creates a better life. When a starry night sky zooms into eyes, a heartfelt song can be a better response than a pointing finger that says grotesquely, “I want to tame and conquer all I see.”
The quest of the Orient has historically been not races of the material world, but in the realm of the spirit underlying the material world. The material world begins with the human body. We have put the human body to much better use than the West. We may lose at the Olympics but more people of the Orient have used the human body to transcend it and be living embodiments of the spirit than the West. When the West returns weary from its races, the songs of the Orient under starry night
skies will feel more meaningful than victory podiums.