"India would give up English but not cricket"

By Dharminder Kumar

LORD HARRIS, Governor of Bombay and a zealous promoter of cricket in India in late 19th century, once said that cricket was a peculiarly English game which required "dogedness of the English temperament" for success on the field. It was a genral opinion that it was easier for the ‘phlegmatic Anglo-Saxon’ to bat in a disciplined and scientific manner than ‘the excitable Asiatic’. J.M. Framjee Patel, a celebrated Parsi cricketer at the turn of the century, wrote, "It must be admitted that in staying power the man whose sinews are built on beef is stronger than he whose sinews are formed on curry and rice, together with the great disadvantage of an enervating climate".

From Harris and Patel, the two loci of the colonial mythology of cricket, to maverick Sachin Tendulkar, we witness a range of sporting experience which reflects more than any other discourse the complex and often ambivalent relations between colonialism, western modernity, nation and community.

Harris and Tendulkar, two poles which seem irresolvable, hold between then a repertoire of intricate encounters between colonial enterprise and native resistance. The unfolding of this repertoire shows how a game inherting the attitudes, myths and politics of colonial power becomes a game which at once is not only a national passion and but also an intimate community sport.

Cricket was posited as an instrument of cultural appropriation which hardly met any resistance. It was rather welcomed. But this does not mean that acceptance of a dominant symbolic order left us caught in its logic and we perpetuated it in turn. What did happen was an infiltration in this symbolic order — a dismantling from within by reinscribing its technologies. The imperialist ethics were hollowed out of cricket and a whole lot of native values lodged in their place. This is how we got our cricket which does not seem alien today.

Cricket, when it finally took shape in Victorian England, eiptomized the values and sentiments which were definitive of the so-called English national character. Cricket was thought to be an efficient tool to initiate people into the mysteries of this character. Rigid adherence to external codes of the game was an outward expression of the moral values operating at the core of the game. Sportsmanship, a sense of fair play, thorough control over the expression of strong sentiments by players on the field, subordination of personal sentiments and interests to those of the side and unquestioned loyalty to the team were elements that shaped morern cricket in England. These values were obviously contemporary and influenced most of the social and cultural expression in England. This complex of values also formed the core of imperialist ethics which constituted the legitimation for ‘white man’s burden’.

Cricket was never a state policy. The anglicisation project of Macaulay focussed on education. Cricket evolved in India as an unofficial instrument of state cultural policy. This was largely the result of the cultural commitments of prominent members of Victorian elite who held key positions in India. Sir Stanley Jackson, the Governor of Bengal and an illustrious English cricket captain, expressed the unstated policy when he said, "we are striving to make cricket the bond of the Empire".

In early cricket lore, Indian male was considered effeminate as against virile English. In Harris’ book ‘A few Short Runs’ there are frequent references to the "native tendency" to "laziness" and there are innumerable expressions like "supine Guzerati", "effete marathi". Their initiation into cricket, it was believed, would ‘cure’ them of these defects by implanting English ideals in them. Harris goes a step further and betrays the ideological implications more clearly, "To play it keenly, honourably, generously, self, which actually hid victorian colonial values, was offered to Indians against their own moral — ethical complexes which were seen as "week" and "primitive".

Cricket thus became a site for the construction of coonial stereotypes and myths. Cricket was seen as a good way to educate Indians in a new set of colonial values which would help create a sense of unity and purpose in a country where such ideas were absent. This way of thinking was upheld by Indian elite. In the beginning English and Indian players played separately. It was in 1878 that first match between an European and Indian team was layed at the behest of Lord Harris. later, a number of teams included both Europeans and Indians. Even then cricket did not reach the masses. it remained a privilege of the elite. Expensive cricket equipment was one reason for masses staying away from it.

The British wanted to form an elite among Indians which wold imbibe their values, act and behave like them. the elite was to be used as a mediator between the British and Indian mases. Princely patronage to cricket, a wide practice in India, was also ascribed to the princes’ tendency to curry favour with the British. Cricket thus was confined to a small elite and never trickled down to the level of community.

Cricket did not remain an ongoing colonial present. Independence effected a rupture between the colonial and the post-colonial more definitely than in any other domain. This rupture happened in the wake of shifting patronage. In post-Independence India, state patronised the sport. It became favourable for the players of middle and lower-middle classes to enter the national teams since various government departments provided them with regular jobs. Earlier the sport was confined to an elite which also subscribed to the British concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘national character’ which, in fact, constituted the logic of the game.The state patronage extended after Independence by encouraging players from lower social strata brought the game to the level of the community. It was played in mohallas, street, terraces and village fields.Cricket, it is evident, was not a mere sport that came from across the seas and became a national passion. Our relation with this symbolic form has not been as simple as in Ireland where nationalists attacked cricket and promoted their own community sports. In India it had multivalent engagements, both overt and covert, with colonialism, nation and community which led to the develoment of a sport which is now more akin to India and not even remotely related to the colonial values it came wrapped in.

C. Rajagopalachari said, "The day might come when India would give up English but not cricket." No wonder, there are conflicting views on use of English in India but passion for cricket cuts across all boundaries. More importantly, this fact points out a fracturing of colonial discourse. We did not reject cricket but assimilated it and made it undergo changes in this process. Our reception of cricket, a symbolic colonial apparatus, distorts the identity of the coloniser. This process involves rearticulation of symbolic forms on terms other than those that were historically assigned.

Ranjitsinghji, popularly known as Ranji, can be considered first colonised cricketer to act out this psychological warfare. He revolutionsed the game by playing it in an unconventional manner. A manner quite different from contemporary notions of cricket. His unorthodox strokes made him a metaphor of oriental cricketing skill. He was called ‘juggler’, ‘the master, the magician’. A mysterious aura was created around him. Strange lights and blue flames were reported to be seen around his bat. Ranjitsinghji was "weak" and "effeminate", the traits Englishmen ascribed to Indians. He brought to cricket these traits and upset the colonial muths.

It was in post-Independence India that the grammar of cricket and its surrounding discourse was challenged and reinscribed. The major change that tore cricket out of its colonial context was deep dissatisfaction among Indians with the slow ebb and flow of the game and the silent and solemn demeanor of the crowd. The riotous crowd behaviour hid a longing for play which was free from Victorian trappings of self-control, exaggerated technique and discipline or what was broadly termed as "dull play". This indicates a euphoric attitude towards the game which is essentially Indian and quite un-english.

Players also did their bit to reinvent cricket. The emergence of player as entertainer was a major break with the colonial idea of cricket. Players’ spontaneity and love for improvisation buried the text-book cricket. Srikant and Sachin are two such examples, though these elements can be traced in majority of the players.

Finally, it can be said that indigenisation of cricket is a strategic reversal of the process of symbolic domination. It is about the questioning of colonial symbols domination. It is about the questioning of colonial symbols and interpreting them in ways other than usually intended or using them for the purposes other than those foresenn by the coloniser.