The IPL and India’s identity
KKR’s captain Gautam Gambhir declared himself a “son of Kolkata” and Shah Rukh, already West Bengal’s “brand ambassador”, must surely feel some kinship. In a moving enough speech, he said: “We had all come from different states — some had come from Mumbai, Gujarat, Delhi — and made this city our home. So we wanted to win the hearts of the Kolkatans. Today, I felt that I have won the heart of Kolkata.” The crowd cheered in approval.
The shift of allegiance has been sudden and dramatic. Even as of May 5, when KKR was set to face Pune Warriors in a league match at the Eden Gardens, many prominent Kolkatans had vowed they would back the rival team and wear Pune colours because it was being led by Sourav Ganguly. It was time to avenge for the ‘insult’ that the franchise owners had dealt their favourite son. But all is forgiven, it seems.
Indian TV channels that showed amazing scenes at the Eden Gardens on the day of the final, where West Bengal’s eccentric Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her attention-hungry ministers crowded the dais with Shah Rukh and the KKR players, said that the state government, that is hopelessly broke, spent considerable scarce resources on the ceremony. Banerjee, alternatively, exhorted the film star to dance, held hands with him, got hugged, cheered, screamed and ran towards the crowd in the stands. It was as if the KKR had won the World Cup, not a club tournament. We could wonder how many among the 70,000 screaming and dancing fans at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens, and another 25,000 thronging outside, were part of the “No Dada, No KKR” protests that arose when former Indian star and KKR captain Sourav Ganguly was left unsold at the 2011 IPL auction. That campaign had won millions of signatures and hugely compromised stadium attendance during the previous IPLs.
This time around, forget Ganguly, there was not a single Bengali in the KKR team that won the IPL final against the Chennai Super Kings led by Mahendra Singh Dhoni. The IPL has warped India’s regional identity. Mumbai Indians are currently led by Harbhajan Singh, otherwise captain of the Punjab state team; the Chennai Super Kings are led by Dhoni, from Jharkhand; and the Rajasthan Royals are led by Rahul Dravid from Bangalore. The IPL is decidedly urban India and this is, perhaps, its greatest strength.
Not everyone agrees. Historian and cricket writer Ramachandra Guha is aghast: in a scathing article in The Hindu titled “Smash-and-Grab Crony League”, he wrote: “The IPL is bad for capitalism, bad for Indian democracy and bad for Indian cricket”. He notes that not a single city in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state and among its poorest, was awarded a franchise. “Nor any city in Bihar, Orissa, or Madhya Pradesh either. To leave out four of India’s largest states — all cricket-mad, and which collectively account for close to half the country’s population — must seriously disqualify the League’s claim to be ‘Indian’.” Perhaps, Guha needs to consider that the players from these states are members of the city teams of the league.
The IPL, in this and previous versions, has been criticised for many reasons: for vulgar display of money, lack of transparency in allocation of franchises or player auction processes, boorish behaviour by players and stars under the influence and, possibly, player corruption, claimed to have been exposed by the tedious match-fixing sting. But the league has demonstrated for India that the big cities are rapidly moving out of regional affiliations. That could be indeed be bad news for sectarian politicians and their language identity politics: for Mumbai’s Bal Thackeray, for instance, and his even more aggressive nephew Raj Thackeray, who once questioned Amitabh Bachchan’s loyalty to Maharashtra because a character he plays mouthed the lyrics “Chhora Ganga Kinare Wala” from the movie Don. Shah Rukh though could be the new Don of Kolkata.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 11th, 2012.
COMMENTS (19)
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For all the people who make useless and unneeded comments like "what is the point of this article?" "Why does ET print such useless articles?". Well no one is forcing you to read the article, if you do not like it then just do not read it! It is not up to the writer to spoon feed the reader. The writer is only writing about what interests him and while it is more then acceptable if you criticize the argument presented by the writer, please do not start whining if your intellect was not able to grasp the concept of the article
IPL is entertainment. Let the people enjoy.
@BlackJack: While I agree with your observation, it seems to me that too many eager people would jump on IPL and relate it to every possible thing they can.
This article was a poor and incoherent attempt - jumping from CM of a poor government to IPL celebrations to Ganguly... I can go on and on.
Let IPL be what it is - a highly successful T20 event that attracts talent from all over the world.
What is the purpose of this article? Who really cares? Reallt, the Express Tribune should not publish everything and anything!
@hariharmani
You seem to be suffering from a Brown Sahib syndrome
Brown Sahib is a term used to refer to natives of South Asia who imitate Western - typically English. It is also used to refer to those have been heavily influenced by Western (usually British) culture and thinking. By implication, a Brown Sahib goes beyond simply mimicking the Western lifestyle and usually has an unfair bias towards West vis-à-vis East.
If BCCI thinks cricket fans have forgotten the 8-0 defeat(4-0 in england and 4-0 in australia) due to IPL matches, then they are right as public memory is short. But for test match cricket fans these wounds of defeat outside the subcontinent can never be healed by IPL.Nightmares of broad,tremlett,hilfenhaus,siddle running through the Indian batting line up will never vanish till India defeats Australia and England.
@abhi, it was only after dada's departure that KKR has shown some potential and spine.it was Gambhir who brought KKR out of a humiliation.if you are in such a awe of dada,look at his new teams performance.dada successfully leads his teams to the bottom of the table.next year even PWI are not going to to tolerate,this archaeological piece of yesteryear.
@abhi:
what "unfair treatment" to Saurabh Ganguly? Does he have a life-long seat reserved for him on the KKR Team? Besides these are privately owned Clubs - management can choose to select or sack whoever they want. Nobody protested him going to Pune? He was pretty happy playing for Pune too, so why are you upset? Let free unbiased competition rule!
@arindom you are trying to take positive from negative. the celebration on kolkata actually displayed the moral banckrupcy of the crowd. Is winning the final is good substitute for unfair treatment given to sourav ganguly? Or the treatment was fair but people were biased that time?
Hariharmani : Your comments are abnoxious. Whether the world watches IPL or Olympics or French Open, it does not matter, People watch the sport which they love. Nobody including you and me can question peoples' taste or pass ridiculous comments. If u dont like it, keep away. You dont need to advice to follow Olympics or French open. You dont even know how many people in India do or do not watch these events. Pathetic again, For your information, I love watching Davis cup matches and test matches more than Open tournaments and IPL.. The last two make me sick
@Chulbul Pandey: Pls read the op-ed, there was no negative connotation implied. For a nation with so much diversity, being able to view people from other regions (and countries) with the same lens that you reserve for locals is in itself creditable (if ephemeral), and IPL has helped in building on that spirit; cities like Kolkata and Chennai - traditionally known to hold their Bengali/ Tamil identity paramount are gradually unwinding from those positions. India's identity is probably a bit more than the identity of its composite parts, but all these do contribute.
@nasir jamshed: Well it may surprise you but i guess thats the job of your own tiny brain to answer!
For those of you who didnot understand: this article tells of an event (IPL) which exposed a very tiny and subtle shift away from Region/Religion/Ethnicity-based loyalties of Indians towards loyalty based purely on Brand-identity created by Advertising in Media.
The author further says that this is an urban phenomenon and a welcome development. This is a tiny step, but if stretched over decades continuously may have the potential of nullifying our divisive tendencies.....
My own addition is that, finally at the extreme point, in a state of Utopia, Indian states can be re-organised simply by taking a ruler and drawing straing lines and forming squares and rectangles and no one should complain as all are equal and homogeneous!!!
Dream on!!
Thank you Prakash. I for one agree with what you have said in this article. Although, knowing our (Indians) attitude regarding cricket, it wont take much to create another mutiny in Kolkata regarding KKR either. But we are like this only! Either they are gods, or they are fodder. The regional-chauvinism is being replaced (as it should), but the identity will probably remain for long. There is nothing in the world that makes Mumbai prouder than beating Chennai at a game. I think this is great for IPL, and great for India.
Who cares? why we had to read this article?
So, what was the point of this article?