Bloodsport: A Sequel

Commentators on modern sport often claim it is a fundamental component of 21st century society. Witness Australian journalist Greg Bearne on India-Pakistan cricket clashes and on the threat of cancellation on the eve of the February 2004 tour: "Pakistan is a country that has never lacked great drama, in the past few months alone its President was nearly blown up twice, its nuclear scientists were exposed as having sold more atomic secrets than Gerry Harvey has sold televisions, and then, Osama was spotted in the hills on the border. But all these events come to nothing compared with the drama of a series against the Indians..." Is this merely amusing journalistic logorrhoea?

Martin Rees in Our Final Century considers the threat of unpredictable science and bolting technology. "Humanity is more at risk," he argues, "than at any earlier phase of its history"—from dangers present and possible: the N-bomb, terrorism, lethal engineered air-borne viruses, character-changing drugs and experimental science. He reviews the hazards of human error, ideological terror and environmental catastrophe, and comes to the pessimistic conclusion that humankind has only a 50/50 chance of surviving this century.

Robert Cooper in The Breaking of Nations sees the strong possibility in this century of a steady descent into global political chaos. "The new century risks being overrun by both anarchy and technology," he writes. "The two great destroyers of history may reinforce one another." Thus, in the next 100 years, it could be that only two options are available to the human race; global annihilation and political anarchy.

Cooper attempts to be positive and sees a way ahead. There is, hopefully, a linear progression in human affairs: "Chaos is tamed by empire: empires are broken by nationalism; and nationalism gives way, we must hope, to internationalism. At the end of the process is the freedom of the individual; first protected by the state and later protected from the state." How realistic is this? His first condition of survival is that nations make peace with one another. A tall order! Sport is frequently promoted as a medium for peace on earth. The ioc, in particular, takes this line. The 2004 Indian tour of Pakistan was touted as the 'Friendship Series'. So can sport help ensure human survival? An equally tall order! As George Orwell put it: "Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, and disregard for all the rules." Nationalistic sport is the most serious of all sport.

It is a truism that Indian and Pakistan cricketing confrontations are a barometer of Indian and Pakistani political relations. Two ancillary points may be made here: cricket once viewed as an imperial cement is now perceived as national mortar, and sport, while hardly fundamental to global survival, has been a not insignificant element in imperial and post-imperial nationalistic assertion and denial. Experiences of turbulence and instability in Indian politics and the rising heat of Indo-Pak foreign relations over Kashmir may readily convert an Indo-Pak cricket match into a test of national superiority.

Immediately after India's victory on March 1, 2003, in a World Cup tie, the streets and lanes of Calcutta reverberated with sounds of blowing conches, bursting crackers and chanting of slogans. At Kalighat, the city's premier religious shrine, many were seen waving national flags with pictures of Sachin Tendulkar stuck in the middle of the Ashoka Chakra. Gujarat, on the other hand, witnessed incidents of Muslims being stopped from celebrating. There was rioting, injuries and also a death in Ahmedabad. Violence also erupted in Bangalore. In all these places, prohibitory orders were imposed and security tightened.Reactions of Indian politicians to the victory also require attention.Army chief N.C. Vij congratulated the team for their win over phone. It no longer mattered whether India made it to the Super Six, semis or final.

The question that surfaces in the context of this extreme communalisation and politicisation of cricket is whether this is a phenomenon unique to India-Pakistan cricket and whether it is possible to resolve these relational complexities between sport and politics in an era of hypernationalism.

Experience suggests that this is not a state of affairs peculiar to the East. English imperialism, it is sometimes overlooked, was local before it was global. In sport, the resonances have been loud and long-lasting. Writes Terence Black in The British Seaborne Empire: "Naval power was important in the attempts by the English Crown to enforce imperial pretensions in the British Isles." England's first imperial territories were Ireland, Scotland and Wales. And England's local empire has produced sporting ripples across, and beneath, the surface of the relationship of the Irish, Scots and Welsh to the English on modern sports fields.

Rugby football will serve here as merely one occidental political barometer. For all the intensity of the rivalry between the Celtic nations, England, for them, is the nation to defeat, and if possible, humble. Sport, as in the subcontinent, has helped sustain local resentments, insecurities and inferiorities. Nowhere is this residual animosity towards England as a nation more aggressively expressed than at Murrayfield, the national Scottish rugby stadium, and in the passionate rendering of the now official anthem of the Scottish Rugby Union, The Flower of Scotland—a lament for lost nationhood. The dirge recalls a rare victory on the battlefield of the Scots over the English:

'O flower of Scotland/ When will we see/ Your like again/ That fought and died for/ Your wee bit hill and glen/ And stood against him/ Proud Edward's army/ And sent him homeward/ Tae think again.

The hills are bare now/ And autumn leaves lie thick and still/ O'er land that is lost now/ Which those so dearly held/ And stood against him/ Proud Edward's army/ And sent him homeward/ Tae think again.

Those days are passed now/ And in the past they must remain/ But we can still rise now/ And be the nation again/ And stand against him/ Proud Edward's army/ And send him homeward/ Tae think again.'

Little love for the English here, in the mass Murrayfield rendition of simplistic nationalistic nostalgia.

Sport, and sporting occasions, can be both benevolent and malevolent pleasures. If the Scots obtain independence again, they could have only a 50/50 chance of survival as a nation to the year 3000. Contrastingly, if partition could be reversed, the Australian hegemony in modern cricket might never have been a thing to reckon with. To go back to the beginning then, the marriage between sport and nationalism, entertainment and patriotism, culture and passion is a global phenomenon, more global on occasion than even the war against terror.