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Cricket: the new whore of Indias private enterprise
By Jawed Naqvi
Monday, 01 Feb, 2010
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is reportedly angry with the private organisers of a cricket carnival who have excluded Pakistani players from a lucrative international contest to be hosted in India in March and April.
Indian officials have indicated that the government was embarrassed by Lalit Modi, the head of the IPL, a private body that runs the garishly rich cricket event. However, officials have expressed their helplessness in doing anything about it, though pressure is mounting on Modi quietly to undo the decision.
Indian officials have explained that the decision not to invite players from Pakistan was a commercial one, not political. This is an important point to note because it puts a key argument flaunted by peacemakers in India and Pakistan, and their foreign stakeholders, on its head. For far too long it has been drummed at every opportunity that foundering ties between the two countries could be rescued only by their business communities.
Consequently, the so-called captains of industry were given special privileges over ordinary citizens, be it in procuring scant visas or in finding access to the top echelons of both governments, in the belief that primarily they could bring a semblance of purpose and reason towards ending the decades old debilitating discord between India and Pakistan.
The fact, however, is that Lalit Modi and his band of owners of cricket teams have shown the truth of what private business is all about. The fact is that the IPL folks have played scrupulously by the dictum patronised personally by the Indian prime minister and his free-market acolytes. The message in Modis posture is rooted in Dr Singhs ideal of a free-markets leadership in a country that has suffered untold misery at the hands of private enterprise.
There are many names for the kind of business that Lalit Modi indulges in and which Dr Singh has used as a mantra to unsuccessfully relieve India of its grinding poverty and other entrenched injustices. You may call it free-market enterprise, or plain capitalism, but the motive, the prime mover, which has official patronage, is the same unalloyed profit-making.Together with this there may be other extenuating circumstances for Modi and his IPL to keep Pakistanis out. Some reports say the chief organiser is a fan of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, which has its prejudices against Muslims in general and Pakistanis in particular. Others say that Bal Thackeray, who lords over Mumbai, would not allow Pakistanis to play in the city, and the finals are to be held there on April 25. The organisers are hardnosed businessmen so why would they want trouble from a fascist group that the Indian state lionises as a nationalist party?
Even before the fall of Hansie Cronje and Mohammed Azharuddin in a match-fixing scam, cricket was being wooed by private entrepreneurs and full-time racketeers. Some of the people who may be placing their bets on the IPL teams (and they do so with less private Test matches too) were busy making money in speculating over the amount of blood that would be shed in Gujarat in 2002. An excerpt from the Indian Editors Guild report would tell you what really was afoot.
There have even been reports of betting over the riots. Bookies have been placing bets on who would start riots and where and whether the Gujarat riots would spread to Rajasthan. There has been betting on the death toll. (Times of India, April 10). So now we have rioting as a blood sport, the report said following a fact-finding trip to Gujarat in the aftermath of the pogroms that began on February 28, 2002.
Private enterprise is not a new mantra that Dr Manmohan Singh has introduced into India, nor has the average Indian been its victim for the first time. From the early native usurers to global finance capitalism, to downright plundering by force, private entrepreneurs have always made a neat profit out of Indians. After all the British East India Company was a trading enterprise, was it not?
However, the part of India that Modi belongs to has endured a most vicious form of private enterprise for centuries. Its known as usury or money-lending. Far from bringing peace between warring nations, the rapacious nature of capital-based business is such that it preys on adversities of its victims instead. Dr Singh has emphasised the benefits of private enterprise without anticipating its negatives, which includes Lalit Modis point view.
When Mahatma Gandhi spoke of Indian capitalists as trustees of the country, he was merely echoing what a British official had tamely observed in Gujarat in 1840. the poorer natives regard the village Banyan (bania, businessman, moneylender) as a friend, who in times of need supplies them with the means of celebrating marriages, performing religious ceremonies, and enjoying the few other festivals in which they indulge, and which they must, by inevitable custom, disburse large sums of money. Without such a resource, the progress of their very lives would be impeded. In this view, the Banyan is a positive benefactor to his indigent neighbours, a refuge against the consequences of their own un-thriftiness and so, I think, he is generally considered. The collector of Surat W. Simson had clearly anticipated the views of Indias present-day free-marketwallahs too.
On the other hand, the business community continued to indulge in elaborate prayers and magic rituals to bring calamity (far from brokering peace between warring nations) to their region, such as drought to boost their businesses.
In the Punjab, in the 19th century, the business community sometimes filled lamps with liquid ghee, according to an account recorded by historian David Hardiman. They lit the lamp when rain clouds gathered overhead. After some time they blew out the light, and this was said to drive away the clouds. It was said that this was done with great success in Ambala in 1883, records Hardiman in his seminal book Feeding the Baniya. The use of ghee rather than oil in the lamps was probably intended to show to the deity that the people were still well off and did not need rain. In some cases, a Baniya gave an unmarried girl some oil, which she poured on the ground while saying: If I pour not the oil, mine the sin; If thou dispense not the clouds, thine sin.
The popular belief that Baniya usurers and grain merchants acted in such ways was extremely widespread, being found from the Punjab, to Rajasthan, to Gujarat, and Maharashtra. It was for example, reported from the latter region in 1846 that the Baniyas were commonly believed to employ Jain mendicants to prevent rain, says Hardiman in his research on usury in western India.
Lalit Modis carnival of heavily televised and advertised cricket is another step towards turning the once sobre sport into a whore of private enterprise. It would be preposterous to expect it to work for peace or goodwill of any kind. Profit motive harbours no such emotions.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
By Jawed Naqvi
Monday, 01 Feb, 2010
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is reportedly angry with the private organisers of a cricket carnival who have excluded Pakistani players from a lucrative international contest to be hosted in India in March and April.
Indian officials have indicated that the government was embarrassed by Lalit Modi, the head of the IPL, a private body that runs the garishly rich cricket event. However, officials have expressed their helplessness in doing anything about it, though pressure is mounting on Modi quietly to undo the decision.
Indian officials have explained that the decision not to invite players from Pakistan was a commercial one, not political. This is an important point to note because it puts a key argument flaunted by peacemakers in India and Pakistan, and their foreign stakeholders, on its head. For far too long it has been drummed at every opportunity that foundering ties between the two countries could be rescued only by their business communities.
Consequently, the so-called captains of industry were given special privileges over ordinary citizens, be it in procuring scant visas or in finding access to the top echelons of both governments, in the belief that primarily they could bring a semblance of purpose and reason towards ending the decades old debilitating discord between India and Pakistan.
The fact, however, is that Lalit Modi and his band of owners of cricket teams have shown the truth of what private business is all about. The fact is that the IPL folks have played scrupulously by the dictum patronised personally by the Indian prime minister and his free-market acolytes. The message in Modis posture is rooted in Dr Singhs ideal of a free-markets leadership in a country that has suffered untold misery at the hands of private enterprise.
There are many names for the kind of business that Lalit Modi indulges in and which Dr Singh has used as a mantra to unsuccessfully relieve India of its grinding poverty and other entrenched injustices. You may call it free-market enterprise, or plain capitalism, but the motive, the prime mover, which has official patronage, is the same unalloyed profit-making.Together with this there may be other extenuating circumstances for Modi and his IPL to keep Pakistanis out. Some reports say the chief organiser is a fan of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, which has its prejudices against Muslims in general and Pakistanis in particular. Others say that Bal Thackeray, who lords over Mumbai, would not allow Pakistanis to play in the city, and the finals are to be held there on April 25. The organisers are hardnosed businessmen so why would they want trouble from a fascist group that the Indian state lionises as a nationalist party?
Even before the fall of Hansie Cronje and Mohammed Azharuddin in a match-fixing scam, cricket was being wooed by private entrepreneurs and full-time racketeers. Some of the people who may be placing their bets on the IPL teams (and they do so with less private Test matches too) were busy making money in speculating over the amount of blood that would be shed in Gujarat in 2002. An excerpt from the Indian Editors Guild report would tell you what really was afoot.
There have even been reports of betting over the riots. Bookies have been placing bets on who would start riots and where and whether the Gujarat riots would spread to Rajasthan. There has been betting on the death toll. (Times of India, April 10). So now we have rioting as a blood sport, the report said following a fact-finding trip to Gujarat in the aftermath of the pogroms that began on February 28, 2002.
Private enterprise is not a new mantra that Dr Manmohan Singh has introduced into India, nor has the average Indian been its victim for the first time. From the early native usurers to global finance capitalism, to downright plundering by force, private entrepreneurs have always made a neat profit out of Indians. After all the British East India Company was a trading enterprise, was it not?
However, the part of India that Modi belongs to has endured a most vicious form of private enterprise for centuries. Its known as usury or money-lending. Far from bringing peace between warring nations, the rapacious nature of capital-based business is such that it preys on adversities of its victims instead. Dr Singh has emphasised the benefits of private enterprise without anticipating its negatives, which includes Lalit Modis point view.
When Mahatma Gandhi spoke of Indian capitalists as trustees of the country, he was merely echoing what a British official had tamely observed in Gujarat in 1840. the poorer natives regard the village Banyan (bania, businessman, moneylender) as a friend, who in times of need supplies them with the means of celebrating marriages, performing religious ceremonies, and enjoying the few other festivals in which they indulge, and which they must, by inevitable custom, disburse large sums of money. Without such a resource, the progress of their very lives would be impeded. In this view, the Banyan is a positive benefactor to his indigent neighbours, a refuge against the consequences of their own un-thriftiness and so, I think, he is generally considered. The collector of Surat W. Simson had clearly anticipated the views of Indias present-day free-marketwallahs too.
On the other hand, the business community continued to indulge in elaborate prayers and magic rituals to bring calamity (far from brokering peace between warring nations) to their region, such as drought to boost their businesses.
In the Punjab, in the 19th century, the business community sometimes filled lamps with liquid ghee, according to an account recorded by historian David Hardiman. They lit the lamp when rain clouds gathered overhead. After some time they blew out the light, and this was said to drive away the clouds. It was said that this was done with great success in Ambala in 1883, records Hardiman in his seminal book Feeding the Baniya. The use of ghee rather than oil in the lamps was probably intended to show to the deity that the people were still well off and did not need rain. In some cases, a Baniya gave an unmarried girl some oil, which she poured on the ground while saying: If I pour not the oil, mine the sin; If thou dispense not the clouds, thine sin.
The popular belief that Baniya usurers and grain merchants acted in such ways was extremely widespread, being found from the Punjab, to Rajasthan, to Gujarat, and Maharashtra. It was for example, reported from the latter region in 1846 that the Baniyas were commonly believed to employ Jain mendicants to prevent rain, says Hardiman in his research on usury in western India.
Lalit Modis carnival of heavily televised and advertised cricket is another step towards turning the once sobre sport into a whore of private enterprise. It would be preposterous to expect it to work for peace or goodwill of any kind. Profit motive harbours no such emotions.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
