Taj Mahal, Cricket and Patriotism

Vennila has already started cheering for Indian cricket team, even though she does not anything about Cricket. The change happened after she seems to have watched the last over in which India won the 20-20 world championship.

From then onwards, she now has the habit of saying 'I pray that India wins this game'. Once or twice, I told her that whoever plays better will win and praying does not help. But, this leads me to think about the issue of patriotism vis-a-vis supporting your national team ! (In any case, this cricket team is not our national team - it is only the team chosen by the Board of Cricket Control in India, which is - we all learnt quite surprisingly - a private body and nothing to do with the Government). Watching Chak De! and Iqbal during the last couple of months also helped to confuse me a bit more...

In my view, Arts and Sports are cultural in nature and hence, patriotism should not get confused with 'supporting' or 'liking' an artist or a player. For example, most of us were big fans of West Indies Cricket in late 70s and through 80s - not because they were winning all the tournaments, but because of the way they played.


Though the current Australian cricket team is almost invincible, no one outside Australia is a fan of this team ! It is wonderful to read about the Tennis star Roger Federer - though we are very fond of the american Pete Sampras. In Hockey, despite of our India + Pakistan teams not doing very well, I am a fan of their style of playing and do not like the winning styles of the european or australian teams.

It is wonderful to watch in TV the gymnasticians of the east european countries or from China, or the swimmers from Australia. In Cricket, of course, I prefer the unpredictable genius of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and West Indies over the successful teams, including India.

So, Patriotism should not get confused with supporting or liking a sports team, I feel.

Similarly, sometime ago, we had a big news that Taj Mahal has been retained in the list of 7 wonders of the world.

There were huge SMS campaigns to vote in a poll, that was to decide the current 7 wonders of the world. And, finally, Taj Mahal was retained as the world wonder and all we Indians were supposed to rejoice at the result !

Those who voted for Taj, did not know which are the other wonders fighting for their place. Just because Taj is in India, should I automatically think that Taj is the best wonder of the world ? And, if I think, the buddhas of Bamyan, Afghanistan are more wonderful than Taj, am I being unpatriotic ?

In today's world of shrinking borders, it is going to be more and more difficult to balance nationalism or patriotism with Values or artistic preferences. When we didn't know about any other breakfast, we were fine thinking that Dosa and Idli are the best dishes in the world. But, not today.

If there is a SMS campaign to decide the 7 best breakfast of the world, should I vote for Idli - which figures in my list of preferences even below the American Corn Flakes ? Never.