The Indian Olympics Association (IOA) has sent the International Olympics Committee (IOC) its ‘letter of intent’ to host the Olympics in 2036—appositely enough the centenary of the very year, 1936, when Adolf Hitler hosted the Games in Berlin!
The letter, reportedly drafted in consultation with the Indian government, might have been written by Jawaharlal Nehru, the bête noire of the BJP. For it invokes not “1,200 dark years of slavery” as claimed by Narendra Modi, but the “vast cultural diversity” of the country, shaped “by thousands of years of history”, as the raison d’être for our bid.
Repudiating the known ideological view of the sangh parivar, the letter proudly proclaims that “our society is a mosaic of religions, including Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism, each contributing to our rich heritage and society”.
The government must think the rest of the world are fools who do not know the 100-year record of hindutva from Savarkar through Golwalkar to Modi which excoriates our minorities and treats all encounters with “outsiders” as having had the most deleterious consequences for Hindus. Or the many nasty things their ideological mentors have had to say about Buddhism, its message of non-violence and compassion, and the contempt in which they hold emperor Asoka for having deprived the Hindu of his ‘masculinity’.
The letter shows our government thinks the diplomatic missions in our national capital were asleep at their desks when, in the campaign speeches of the prime minister and his cohort, the Muslim minority was publicly targeted. They might hide, but the world knows the hideous record of the brutal killings by their supporters of innocent Muslims suspected of consuming or transporting cow’s meat, most of which have turned out to be false allegations, but only after the victims were tortured, bullied and finally put to death.
We can fully expect our competitors (who include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Indonesia) to pass on this open secret to the IOC in case someone there missed it. We might also expect one of these countries (or, possibly, Canada) to inform the IOC executive board of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) that pointedly excludes Muslims from the ambit of refugees seeking shelter in our land. This despite the Rohingya Muslims being the largest cohort of displaced persons in our immediate neighbourhood.
And many would whisper, if not shout out, the carnage of Gujarat 2002, particularly in Ahmedabad, which is apparently intended as the host city. Why not Imphal in Manipur, a sports-mad state, where internecine tribal conflict would best diminish in the international spotlight?
Our sports priorities are wholly misplaced. We wish to host glittering international sports events but, unlike previous Asian hosts, we are hopeless at Olympic sports. In demographic terms, we have virtually the lowest per capita haul of Olympic medals. Even in hockey, in which Dhyan Chand first demonstrated our prowess before Hitler in Berlin, we have since slipped down the international scale. The only sport in which we have occasionally excelled is cricket, which is confined to a dozen Commonwealth countries.
We need to become a sporting nation, not a sports-hosting nation. For that we need a scheme that brings sports, sports training, talent search and nutritious nurturing to the doorstep of every Indian child in every rural or tribal backwater and urban slum. That is where our sporting talent lies. Assiduously searching out and nurturing that talent is not, alas, our national priority. And the world knows it. As Union sports minister (2006-08), I fostered just such a scheme that, unfortunately, has since withered on the vine. Which is why I think the IOA’s ‘letter of intent’ will remain the last will and testament of the Modi government.
Aiyar is a former Union minister and social commentator.