Sports and politics are inseparable. They always have been, and always will be. Anyone who suggests something to the contrary is in fact making a political statement, and denying the truth. Each time the national anthem is played on the sports field, it is a celebration of nationalism and a political act. Players with hands on their hearts singing the national anthem while standing on the medal podium seeing their national flag go up is the most celebrated sight in sport, and nothing could be a more potent symbol of patriotism.
We have seen Mirabai Chanu do that for India. We have stood up when she won, and celebrated the tricolour. Today, she is in the US training for the World Championships and the Asian Games. And she isn’t in the best frame of mind. Manipur, her home state, is burning, her sisters have been violated, and her own killed and raped. Manipur is crying, and yet we want and expect Chanu to win medals for India.
What of her mental health, and that of thousands like her who have been unable to even contact their kin because most communications networks have been shut down?
The sports field has always been used to make larger political statements. Tommy Smith and John Carlos standing on the podium in Mexico 1968 performing the Black Power Salute is one of the most powerful images ever. It was also the strongest political indictment of racism using the Olympic platform. While Smith and Carlos were criticised and banned at the time, they have now been accorded the status of legends in the echelons of American sport.
Inviting Mohammed Ali to light the Olympic flame at the Atlanta Games in 1996 is yet another example. The political significance of the act was not lost on anyone. A frail Ali lighting the flame with trembling hands sent shivers down the spine of every spectator who watched the act. It was deemed an apology for years of mental torture, and was the sort of recognition that Ali had always craved. The very same man who had thrown away his Olympic medal in protest against racial discrimination had been asked to inaugurate the world’s greatest sports spectacle. Things had come full circle for him, and also for the fight against racism.
Before every summer Olympics for the last few decades, the Games have provided a forum for issues of international concern. While Seoul highlighted the Korea crisis, Barcelona 1992 brought to light ethnic differences within Spanish society. Atlanta 1996 drew world attention to the race issue in the USA, and Sydney 2000 highlighted the Aboriginal crisis Down Under. When Cathy Freeman lit the flame in Sydney, it was much more than a sporting ritual. It symbolised the recognition of the tensions at the heart of modern Australian society, augmented further even when Freeman later wrapped herself in the aboriginal flag in full view of the world’s cameras.
Jackie Robinson breaking the colour line in 1947 while turning out for the Brooklyn Dodgers will forever remain one of the most celebrated acts in modern sport. Robinson, who was abused and vilified at the time and even called a “negro” multiple times on the field of play, had the support of some of his teammates and manager Branch Rickey. He, along with other pioneers like American Football’s Jim Brown, would play a stellar role in the fight against racial discrimination.
India too has had its share of political moments in sport. The standout will surely be the refusal to perform the Hitler salute in front of the German Chancellor at the opening ceremony of the 1936 Berlin Games. Though those Olympics were ultimately to be remembered for the exploits of Jesse Owens, the African-American athlete whose triumph disproved Nazi theories of Aryan supremacy, the Indian decision not to salute Hitler was a grand gesture of defiance, totally in sync with the tenets of the dominant stream of Indian nationalism at the time. The Indians were the only contingent, apart from the Americans, not to perform the raised-arm salute as a mark of respect for the German leader.
At a time when Britain was courting Hitler with its policy of appeasement—just two years later Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, was to triumphantly declare ‘peace in our times’ after the Munich conference—the Indian decision not to salute the Führer, it seems, stemmed, ideologically, from the anti-Nazi posture taken by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. From the 1920s, India had repeatedly expressed opposition to Britain in the event of a European war, but the leaders of the freedom struggle regarded Fascism and Nazism as forms of Western imperialism.
Against this backdrop, it is entirely fair that Chanu stands up for her own, that she speaks out and draws attention to their plight. Manipur needs her, and I am glad that she has decided to speak out. The crime against humanity that we have seen happen on the roads of Manipur has shocked us all. We, as a nation, have been shamed. And that’s why Chanu chose to speak out and draw our attention to what is going on in her state. That she has decided to should be celebrated and hailed, because it united millions of Indians and forced us to confront the horrors that her people have been subjected to. We need to save Manipur, not avert our gaze.
Some have already followed Chanu’s lead. CK Vineeth, who played for the national football team seven times, tweeted this: “The houses of the players who are now on the Indian National Football Team have been entirely destroyed in Manipur; They and their families have sought refuge in the homes of friends. Weeks have passed since this occurred. No media is talking about it.”
It is time we accepted that sport makes room for peaceful protest and draws international attention to things in a manner that few other spheres are able to. A legendary sportsperson taking a knee or raising a clenched fist is more influential than dozens of well-intentioned candlelit vigils. As a result, sport will forever be used to make larger political statements. To deny its potential to do so is an attempt to disavow it of one of its most fundamental characteristics. Chanu has a voice, and she must be heard the world over.