This was in the early nineties. A well-known priest was addressing a gathering of Christian youth. At one point he said, “PT Usha is a great athlete. She runs like a deer but if you look at her face, you would like to run faster from her”. It was supposed to be a joke! His was an obnoxious, unpalatable, racist comment.

After the meeting, I told the speaker, who is no more, that he should not have commented on her. I also told him that she was a very beautiful lady with a chiseled body few women have in this country. She was also blessed with a beautiful face. As for etiquette, few women, let alone sportspersons, could rival her. In short, she was my hero!

He was gracious enough to admit that he had no business to comment on her. Of course, what came out from him was what was within him. A wonky sense of female beauty that valued the fair-skinned more than the dark-skinned, though what mattered was the glow in the skin not the colour. Neither Jesus nor Krishna was white or fair-skinned.

I remembered this incident when I read the report about a group of men, whose caste I do not want to reveal, creating a ruckus in front of the house of a hockey player near Haridwar in Uttar Pradesh. They believe that it was because of the presence of her and a few other Dalits in the Indian team that India lost the Gold in Women’s Hockey. 

I felt so shocked and humiliated as a citizen when I saw the report. I noticed Vandana Katariya in the Indian team, not because she belonged to a Scheduled Caste but because she was a brilliant player. She was swift, energetic and was chasing the ball like no one else did. She scored one goal against Britain, though the team failed to win the bronze. 

The team’s performance was exceptionally great when they defeated Australia. It was the Chak De moment for India. Vandana Katariya was, again, one of the architects of the victory. I did not know about her caste. There was no need to know. They were all Indians and they were playing for India. Nothing else mattered. A few days ago when I read the story of Rani Rampal from Haryana who captained the team, tears came to my eyes.

Her father was a cart-puller who confessed that the largest sum of money he ever received was when his daughter handed over to him the first payment she received — Rs 500. Her mother was a maidservant. It was mandatory for her to bring half a litre of milk to the hockey academy near her house. She could afford only 200 ml. So, she would add water to make it half litre.

Yes, a majority of the team members came from such humble backgrounds. In Shah Rukh Khan’s film Chak De, too, the players had similar, plebeian origins. One of the most memorable scenes in the film was when a lady player looks for an auto rickshaw at the Delhi airport. Yet, the camaraderie and unity that the coach was able to instil in them helped Team India to win.

Art often imitates life. Seldom life imitates art. However, in the case of the women’s hockey team, life imitated art. The women’s team could not win a medal but that was not because they did not make a determined attempt. The team has talent. I am sure they will do well in the future. 

They will be playing the Women's Asian Championship Trophy 2021 in South Korea from October 24-31, the Asian Games scheduled for September 2022, Commonwealth Games to be held in Jul-Aug 2022, and other international events as they come. Their future seems bright as a new dawn for Indian women's hockey has begun with their performance at the Tokyo Olympics. 

In sports, what matters is the attempt, not so much the medal. In Tokyo, the world witnessed how rival sportsmen treated one another with respect. They even garlanded each other. What’s more, they were even seen cheering their potential rivals in the events in which they were not taking part. That is sportsmanship. It is not just about winning medals.

Yes, every Indian wanted the largest-ever contingent that represented India at Tokyo to bring the largest-ever number of medals. Yet, I doubt whether we would be able to improve the highest medal tally we reached at the London Olympics in 2012. Yes, we won six medals — two silver and four bronze!

Please note the year. It was 2012 when Dr Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister. Around that time, the then Gujarat Chief Minister and now Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a speech at a gathering of elites in an auditorium. I heard a portion of his speech in a video. He said it was not a big thing to get medals in the Olympics. He even disclosed a formula on how to win a dozen medals. Let me quote him:

“We can select some talented, defence personnel, give them specialised training and field them in the Olympics. They will easily bring 12-15 medals”. Nine years have passed since the London Olympics. Modi has completed nearly seven years as Prime Minister. Two Olympics happened during his period — Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and Tokyo in 2021. Let’s give Modi the benefit of the doubt, as he did not get enough time to plan his strategy for the Rio Olympics.

Can he say the same thing about Tokyo? In fact, he had one extra year to plan because of Covid. But for the pandemic, the Tokyo Olympics was due in 2020. Till the time of writing with just two more days to go for the curtains to come down on the Tokyo Olympics, we have only five medals. There is not a single Gold medal.

It is now more than a century since we started taking part in the Olympics. During this period when the world saw two world wars, we have won a total of 33 medals. Abhinav Bindra remains the only Indian to win a Gold in an individual event. He won the medal in Beijing as far back as in 2008.

In comparison, China won 34 Gold medals in Tokyo alone. Overall, it has won 75 medals so far. In comparison, America has won 94 medals, lagging behind China only in Gold. No, I won’t blame Modi for the disastrous performance. Nor would I say that the pep talk he gave to the Indian contingent before it left for Tokyo is to blame for the failure to harvest medals. If anything it proves that his speeches are useless, as they do not inspire anyone. They are just empty rhetoric. 

Sports is a way of life. We Indians do not, unfortunately, have it in our blood. How many of us, honestly, will promote our children or grandchildren’s interest in sports for games? On the contrary, we will do everything possible to curtail their interest so that they muck up, get good marks, join elite institutions and, finally, migrate to the West to write software for multinationals. We consider that as success.

Allow me to digress a bit here. Once I attended a church service in Sydney in Australia. It was a special church, a church for journalists. Almost all the members of the church were young journalists. The pastor was a friend. He knew the name of every member, his or her spouse and children. What’s more, he was the one who blessed their marriages.

He took pride in saying that the divorce rate was negligible among his parishioners. No, what struck me the most was not their bonhomie but the fact that some of them brought to the church footballs. I noticed them fiddling with the balls while they were listening to the sermon on Daniel. 

What’s more, while having coffee and biscuits after the service they were playing the ball. One of the journalists told me that they practiced after the church service. Is it imaginable in India? Someone going to the church or temple with a ball in hand?

What happened in Haridwar would shock the conscience of the nation. The men who created a scene in front of Katariya’s house do not want any Dalits to be included in any of the teams, as if they are responsible for India’s failure in Tokyo. The fact of the matter is that the only individual who won the Gold in the Olympics won it only because of the heavy investment his father made in his training. The government did nothing for him.

Bindra had a personal trainer to monitor certain mental parameters. I had a long meeting with him when he explained to me how he practiced. This was before the Beijing Olympics.

Yes, the rich promote cricket. For them, Sachin Tendulkar is the icon. Nothing wrong with it. Even in cricket, those who excel now are the ones from middle and lower middle class families. Jaipal Singh was one of the greatest hockey players of India. He was a tribal from Jharkhand.

If one studies the class and caste composition of the hockey teams which took part in Olympics and used to win Gold medals for India, one will realise that they were mostly from rural and poor backgrounds. I do not know whether anyone has done a study of their caste composition. 

It seems caste matters now, more than ever when we all should have forgotten it. The result of the Battle of Plassey, which helped the British to control Bengal and thereby India, would have been different if the Indian forces had the lower castes among them. 

Until then, the concept was that only certain castes could fight. It was the British who realised that the best fighting force could be found among the lower castes. They recruited them in large numbers. It was with their support that the aliens defeated the mutineers in 1857. A majority of the Indian soldiers who died in the first World War in theatres as far as France and Italy were from the lower castes. The Bhima-Koregaon battle is a perfect example of how the fighting spirit of the Dalits was put to their use by the British.
The whole nation will be watching how the government responds to what happened in front of Vandana Katariya’s house. They should be booked under all possible charges and they should not see the outside world for a few decades. That is the minimum punishment they deserve.

Meanwhile, we should honour the Indian Women’s Hockey Team for their achievements in Tokyo. If the tempo is maintained, they will be able to do much better in the next Olympics. Caste and politics should not come in the way of sports. We have to begin from scratch, accept our limitations and find ways to overcome them and become a sporting nation. This must begin in our homes.

As I write this, the news has come that the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award will hereafter be named Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award. Instead of renaming an award, why can’t the government institute a new award in the name of Dhyan Chand? Or, why not in the name of Jaipal Singh Munda, who captained the first Indian hockey team that won the Gold in the 1928 Olympics? He was also a member of the Constituent Assembly. 

Sorry, he was a tribal like Eklavya who had to pay for his audacity to learn archery that was the privilege of the rich and the heaven-born with his thumb!