Olympic dreams

Rohit Mahajan

TWO days after Independence Day in 2016, the vanity of wrestler Sakshi Malik, triggered by a nation and media frustrated over days of Olympics failure, made her speak much about herself and her love for the country — conversations with her were marked with ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘myself’, but also ‘my country’, ‘my flag’. Sakshi had ended days of a medal-drought for India at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games. She had become the first woman wrestler to win an Olympics medal for India; if that won’t drive the vanity — non-toxic, though — of a professional athlete, nothing will.

After serving their utility, vanities get crushed, get burnt in the bonfire of time. We saw that in 2023, when Sakshi was dragged through the streets of New Delhi during the wrestlers’ protests against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh — the former Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president and a BJP Member of Parliament — who had been accused of sexual harassment by women wrestlers. We saw that in the year when the celebrated Bajrang Punia — a devotee of Hanuman like few others, a wrestler of rare international success — was manhandled and detained by the Delhi Police during the protests. We saw it when Sakshi, her spirit broken by the election of a Brij Bhushan loyalist as the WFI president, brought her wrestling boots to a press conference and symbolically and literally hung up her boots and retired from the sport.

The significance of Brij Bhushan — an embarrassment, surely, to our times of greater gender sensitivity than the previous generation — to the strongest government in decades stems from his political clout. But, if belatedly, action was taken — his loyalists, who had been elected to top positions in the WFI, were removed by the government, and matters should have ended there. A BJP MP’s loyalists defying the party’s government at the Centre seems inconceivable, but that did ensue — they have complained to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and United World Wrestling (UWW) against government action. Defiance of the Modi government by men affiliated with a party MP, surely, is a sign of insanity. But power is a strong intoxicant; Brij Bhushan and his men know that IOC and UWW, comprising clout-chasers not much different from them, fiercely protect themselves and their constituents against government ‘interference’. They hope that IOC and UWW, with the threat of banning the Indian flag at the wrestling arena at the 2024 Paris Olympics, would put them back in charge of WFI.

The Paris Olympics, then — a festival of youth and a festival of vanities, of both athletes and organisers, at the vainest of cities; the first ‘normal’ Olympics in six years, with both 2020 Summer Games and the 2022 Winter Games getting horribly suffocated due to the coronavirus.

Bajrang and Vinesh Phogat — and others such as Neeraj Chopra — would chase sporting clout there; sports association officials would chase a good time and fine liquor and, if the past is any sign, some would turn up drunk at venues and make a fool of themselves.

Sport is an activity with little inherent value, but its social, cultural and political significance is matchless; countries that want to mark their arrival on the global stage turn to the Olympics. It has faded a bit in significance in the past few decades; in relatively more sensitised times, brute force and a jock sports attitude — often permeated with toxic masculinity, misogyny and homophobia — are giving way to a spirit of fun and fraternity and gender parity, best evidenced in mixed-gender events. Tokyo 2020 featured 18 mixed-gender events, including in hardcore sinewy sports such as athletics, judo, swimming, and triathlon.

The Olympics do a great service to powerful leaders and aspirational nations — this event, during which the world seems to be revolving around the host city, attracts peerless global attention; it tickles the vanity of nations that are seeking validation; it’s the confirmation of arrival. During the Cold War, the Olympics were a tool at the hands of countries in the ‘Free World’ of the West and those behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ of the USSR and its affiliates. Success in the Olympics was seen as the success of a particular style of governance, of economic model, of cultural values — indeed, as success of good over the evil ‘other’; the victory of the righteous, epitome of moral and physical strength and courage. Success in sports boosts national pride like few other endeavours — a nerdy scientist creating a Covid vaccine is no match in popularity or riches to a Neeraj Chopra winning Olympics gold.

There is a great feeling among a very large section of our population that we’re on the righteous path; God, indeed, is still alive and safe in His heaven, and all is well with India. The stock markets are hitting new highs with breathless regularity; India, as we’re regularly reminded, is the fastest-growing large economy in the world and, indeed, is the world’s fifth biggest economy in terms of GDP. Prime Minister Modi has confirmed that during his third term, India would become the world’s third-biggest economy in the world, surpassing both Germany and Japan. India’s position on the global stage, vis-à-vis its neighbours, is strong; the West, having nurtured China by giving it technology and business, is now unnerved by its clout and ambition and has turned a kinder face toward India. The success of the G20 Summit, and India’s imprint on the Summit statement, suggest that we’re being taken very seriously in these times of increasing global polarisation.

With so much good news, New India, naturally, has turned its attention to the Olympics — PM Modi has announced that the country would bid for the 2036 Olympic Games. Olympics in India! That would be every sports lover’s dream come true.

For India and its elite, it would mark another important milestone in India’s journey towards being a great power. For an aspirational nation, hosting the Olympics is akin to a family with new money moving to a big house in the leafy, quieter part of the city and buying a big limousine — you’ve earned the money, and what better way to show that you have money than by spending it like a billionaire?

The State steps in to ensure the success of its sporting projects. Beijing hosted a breathtaking Olympics in 2008, perfect in every way (with ugly neighbourhoods hidden and stray animals rounded up and corralled away), at a cost of $6.8 billion, excluding the cost of building new infrastructure such as stadiums, roads, subway lines and airport upgrade. When Russia hosted the Winter Games in Sochi in 2014, the reported cost was $50 billion. What kind of money would India, possibly the third-biggest world economy in 2036, as promised, spend to make the 2036 Ahmedabad Olympics a success? Money, it’s clear, would be no object. At the cricket World Cup final between India and Australia in Ahmedabad, the government pitched in to provide a spectacle to the one lakh-plus spectators at the ICC-hosted, private event — a breathtaking air show by the Surya Kiran aerobatic team of the Indian Air Force. What would the government do if Ahmedabad gets the Olympics? There would be no limit — already, reports have emerged that five new stadia, to be built around the Narendra Modi Stadium, have got the official sanction of the Central and state governments. We’re likely to witness construction activity take off over the next few years, boosting the local economy and sports infrastructure.

The Olympics, it must be noted, tend to leave the hosts somewhat in the red — ask Greece, whose Olympics in 2004 triggered, in the view of experts, an economic crisis. The Olympics aftermath in Athens is not pretty — neglected and crumbling stadiums, restive citizenry. The 2016 Olympic Games brought little to Rio de Janeiro except a lot of bad name for corruption and debt. As a quasi-Cold War dawns, Russia and China are still engaged in using the Olympics as soft power-building projects, and the nature of their system of governance ensures that no question would be asked over cost overruns — as were asked for, say, the cost overruns for the 2012 London Olympics.

What would India and Indians think and do? Would there be a debate over the pros and cons of hosting the Olympics? Well, the public sentiment seems imbued with absolute certitude, which is scary because divisions among people on the basis of religion, caste, ethnicity and language are more marked than any time in living memory. The banishment of the Opposition from Parliament — both figuratively and physically — would be near-total, it is widely expected, after the General Election in 2024. This can be nothing except terrible for our democracy, for such situations tend to foster totalitarian tendencies.

For hope, we return to the non-toxic vanity of sportspersons. Neeraj Chopra would be our great hope at Paris 2024, PV Sindhu would go for her third consecutive Olympics medal, and Vinesh Phogat, our finest woman wrestler ever, would hope for that elusive medal — and also hope that the coming generations of women sportspersons would be better protected from the pawing hands of administrators than her contemporaries.