As one traverses the hills and valleys of the North East region today, they hear the sound of an unusual music. For a region that had been torn apart by narrow ethno-nationalist considerations, political carnages and ethnic-conflict bloodbath, the region had come a long way. This, I suspect had a lot to do with the ingenious ways in which people had learnt to overcome their contradictions, for example, through district level-sports competition, district level prayer meetings, cross-cultural intercourse at schools, colleges, market places and so on. Here in this essay, I would be emphasizing the role of sports towards this impressive achievement, while also attempting to weave this together with the larger questions of Nationalism.
In 2007, K. Pradipkumar came out publicly to declare that he was diagnosed with HIV soon after winning the Mr Manipur title, he went on to win the Mr South Asia title in 2012. What is interesting about him is the turn he took to bodybuilding for his salvation.
For a society which stigmatizes people with disabilities, the power that sports can have in healing those injustices is of great importance. This magic of reconciliation through sports is seen manifested in other facets of society as well. Sports as a mere game is an inadequate conception, it also intersects closely with the political, social, cultural, and for some, it is a way out of economic deprivation. In an interview by a correspondent of The Indian Express, the mother of the Indian footballer Ninthoinganba Meitei said, “At the academy, he would get nutritious food. We can’t afford that here. He would exercise in the gym there. Here, nothing.”
It is a common story, perhaps so common that it often slips our notice. These stories are similar in their concern, people like Ninthoinganba, turn a hopeful eye towards sports and its allied activities for improving their condition. Why do people look to sports? Can’t the government offer other choices for bettering their circumstances? Are these inherent structural problems of a big democratic country that can never be resolved? Or is it a failure of the state?
Writings of the region in the past, or at least as far as my knowledge goes, often points out the imbalances between what is often called ‘mainland’ India and that of ‘North East’ India. Their main argument belies the structural injustices, the biased attitudinal behaviour of the state-centre towards Northeast India, the negligence of the state towards this region post-independence period and the lack of concrete steps to solve the economic and political maladies. They note the ‘semi-colonial’ tendencies that are still present in the Centre’s mindset, the emphasis on the exploitation of natural resources, the narrow base of industrialization, poor infrastructure, the lack of capital transfer from the Centre, and how the region’s export-oriented economy works at their disadvantage.
In contrast to these views, in recent years there seems to be a shift in the outlook of the government. The ‘Look East’ (and subsequently called ‘Act East’) policy of the government, unlike in the 1990s where an increase in the volume of trade had little or no impact in the region, has now shown renewed interest in the development of the region. A case in point here will be the connectivity projects of a four-lane trilateral highway that would link India, Manipur with Mae Sot (Thailand) via Myanmar which will be expanded to Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam; in the announcements by DONER (Ministry of Development of Northeastern Region) to spend a sum of Rs 45,000 crores, for the border regions of NER or even in the setup of ‘Japan India Act East policy’ which will be the flagship organization that will expedite the partnership activities between the two.
However, these recent developments have their limitations. For one, the development that is projected to happen if all these proposals proceed smoothly is that it will aggravate regional imbalances in the region, since the relatively peaceful states like Meghalaya and Assam will absorb all the benefits. Two, the political instability of the region and the influence that militant outfits have in the society will impede developments in the region. Third, there will be an increase in the flow of arms, drugs, narcotics, fatal diseases etc. across borders. Lastly, the problems that these proposals will address, if at all they do, will forget the larger questions of plurality, identity, and the distinctness that each ethnic community wants to maintain. Thus, there appears to arise a fundamental contradiction between the questions of economic development and that of culture, ethnicity and identity. How do we resolve this problem? And most importantly where does sports fit into this picture?
These are interesting questions and one that we have to ask ourselves if our commitment to socialist democracy is sincere. The politicians and policymakers must not overemphasize the importance of the economic aspects, of growth and development, at the cost of its minorities losing their communitarian identity. It is important, as Hegelians pointed out, to remind ourselves that this desire for recognition by the ‘other’ is a very fundamental human need. For some people, this need is so crucial that in order to have a proper sense of who they are and to uphold the age-old values conferred upon them, this recognition, as seen in the demands for ‘self-determination’, is worth, they thought, their lives. Therefore, in order to reassert the dignity and identity of many sidelined communities, who in the larger picture on India dissipates, sports can be that one significant medium for reaching out. For example, when a local boy from a particular community is seen playing football in a national TV channel, that very act of seeing, strangely enough, binds splintered communities together. In the very words of Benedict Anderson, they never “meet them, or even hear of them, yet in their minds of each life forms an image of their community.”
What flows from this is that, naturally many people would be incensed to see a typical “mainland” looking Indian, Priyanka Chopra, being cast to play Mary Kom, whom they identified greatly with. Political psychologist at JNU A. Bimol Akoijam notes, “What is ironical is that the ordeal Mary Kom has gone through in life includes her struggle against those very stereotypes propagated in Bollywood.” The fact is that race continues to matter in India and a nationalist idea of India that is over laced with racial underpinnings neglects the inclusivity and the idea of the unification of diverse groups.
For a diverse country like India, as scholars like Romila Thapar had argued, “… concepts of nation based on single exclusive identity – religious, linguistic, ethnic, and similar single identities are actually pseudo-nationalism and should be precluded from being called a nationalism.” She allays the fear that ‘religious nationalistic’ assertions are tantamount to imposing the idea on Indianness on the rest of nationalities of the country. Our founding fathers, who ushered us into a democratic republic were well aware of these setbacks looming ahead. They knew that if unity in diversity is to be maintained, it could not be taken for granted. Thus, there were a series of Constituent Assembly debates in the past and different proposals were made so as to decide between “Knowledge solution” or “Power solution” for incorporating what we now called “North East” into the union of India. The former led to the incorporation of “tribal autonomous” structure in the form Autonomous District Council under the sixth schedule of the Indian Constitution, the latter spawned into a strict policy that forged compliance to recalcitrant community. More than 70 years after Independence, this question of unity still confronts us with looping repertoires of oversimplified sloganeers, skewed interpretation of History and a bold reassertion as to who are the genuine inheritors of the land (India). If secular democracy is to emerge victorious, then unity has to be laboured for and nourished after. This can only be achieved if ‘unity in diversity’ is being deeply valued by all of us.