Two things unite a nation as diverse as India - culture and cricket. When any nation takes part in a world tournament and does well very in the initial stages, one would expect the people of that nation to back the team ....
Over the past few weeks we had many intellectuals and prominent media houses hoping that India looses the semi finals against Australia ...
It started with noted sociologist Ashis Nandy ....
According to Nandy, India is suffering from too much national pride and winning the world cup will make it worse...
This was followed by a national poll by a leading print magazine Outlook which asked .. "Should India win the World Cup ? " You can take the survey here
Over the past few weeks we had many intellectuals and prominent media houses hoping that India looses the semi finals against Australia ...
It started with noted sociologist Ashis Nandy ....
According to Nandy, India is suffering from too much national pride and winning the world cup will make it worse...
This was followed by a national poll by a leading print magazine Outlook which asked .. "Should India win the World Cup ? " You can take the survey here
Outlook not only echoed Nandy's sentiments but went on to add that "winning the world cup might just make India's macho and hyper masculine nationalism more intense. Over the last few months, there seems to have been an effort to make a pluralistic India into a homogenized Hindu state where the space for dissent has diminished, churches are regularly 'robbed', talk of religious conversion is rampant, and there's banning of many things, including beef. In case India wins the World Cup, the fear is that majoritarian nationalism will become more aggressive"
The poll from Outlook suggests that if India wins the world cup, rapes and riots in India will increase and hence we are better off not winning the cup at all.
These are not fringe opinions ... Ashis Nandy has appeared on the list of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll of the Foreign Policy magazine, published by The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Outlook is a leading print magazine in India...
There are 2 key drivers for such statements ...
1) Rise of rural India - Much of the intellectual/left leaning/media space is monopolised by urban convent/foreign educated elite who has always looked down on the semi educated rural population of India....In the 1990s and early 2000s a most of the players of the Indian team were from urban centres like Delhi/Mumbai/Bangalore, spoke English and had some sort of westernised education.
The current lot was born in low middle class rural India, went to local government schools and could barely speak English .... Its unpalatable to the left elite that kids from small town India could dream, compete and win anything at the world stage..... they need to be first civilised..... this opinion echoes the disgust the same people had for Narendra Modi in the 2014 election... how can a kid from a backward community in rural India who used to sell tea dream of leading India on the world stage ? ....
The rise of India is linked to the rise of rural India... take any talent show in India.... the winner is always from small town India...... the rise of rural India is for real ..... and this rise is making many Ivy league folks feel uncomfortable .......
2) Idea of India - The 'Idea of India' for left leaning intellectuals is that 'India is a nation of losers'. We are supposed to be ashamed of our culture, our past, out heritage, our civilisation ...our only salvation is to get westernised .....Look at our history books ...we were a bunch of primitive animals... thank god the Aryans invaded us and gave us the Vedas .... thank god the Mugals invaded us and gave us Taj Mahal ... thank god the English invaded and gave us Railways ...... our growth only comes from invasions... we look forward to Americans teaching us tolerance and the Chinese teaching us how to address poverty.... net net ... we are a nation of losers .... how can this nation of losers play and win at a world event ? This goes against their 'Idea of India' ... and winning against a team of western white men by people from the 'cow-caste-curry' country !! This is blasphemous ..
Our intellectuals do not see 'Team India' when the #MenInBlue step out... they see a bunch of lower class Hindu males from rural background .....after attacking our culture, its time to attack the next thing that unites us - our cricket ...
I want Dhoni and team to win for in their dreams lie the dreams of millions of Indians who are proud inheritors of a 5000+ glorious civilisation, who may not know English but take pride in speaking in their mother tongue ... people from lower middle class homes who with their courage rise and conquer the world ... ordinary Indians who do extraordinary things....
As India celebrates Navratri ... may the shakti of Ma Durga be with the men in blue .... #WontGiveItBack
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