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SpeakOut: Does A Football Culture Exist In India?
In this week's edition of SpeakOut, Goal.com's Subhankar Mondal asks whether India possesses a footballing culture.....
09-Jun-2009 2:52:30 PM
In a nation infected by the weird belief that defeating some 11 nations out of which some can hardly play makes it the conquerors of Planet Earth it is hard not to get swept away by the unalloyed fanaticism for cricket. Even this columnist, who had forsaken all ties with 'the bat and the ball' ten or so years ago and who was recently branded an "alien" by a fellow Goal.com journalist for his lack of interest in the game despite being an Indian, couldn't resist himself getting a peep at the match between India and Bangladesh in the Twenty20 World Cup this weekend.
Watching with a bunch of old schoolmates it was tough not to identify with the millions of fellow Indians who must have been praying for an India win. Which was eventually answered, but what was even more revealing for yours truly was the age-old question: can football become the number one sport in India?
Or to better rephrase it: Has India got a footballing culture?
Even the most primitive of persons for whom India still means snake charmers and child marriages know about the cricketing prowess of this nation. It's no secret that cricket is the number one sport here; mothers dream of their children becoming the next Sachin Tendulkar or the next Sourav Ganguly and if the kid is born in this century then the next Mahendra Singh Dhoni. India has some of the most envious cricket stadiums in the world, has been a hugely successful nation in the sport and can only climb higher up in the tree.
All of which shoves football into the basement. Apparently, to many uninformed mortals football in India doesn't exist and Indians don't understand football.
Only, football does exist in India and Indians do understand football.
The biggest example is the world famous Kolkata derby, arguably the biggest in Asia and one of the biggest in the world. The attendance of the derby can overreach 100,000 at times, a number that even the Superclasio and the Clasico would struggle to keep up with. This is a match draped in a history that stretches back to the time when Bengal was still united, a history that every Bengali feels.
West Bengal is one state in which cricket is as important as football, where regular football fans tend to know more than or at least as much about football as journalists, where auto-drivers, cab-drivers, schoolkids, college party animals, white-coloured job holders are equally passionate about the game.
Although Kolkata still remains the hub of Indian football, it would be ridiculous to believe that it is the only region in India where football is a religion. For an outsider Sreedharan AM’s belief that “the popularity of football here in Kerala is more than it is in (West) Bengal” might appear strange but for those versed in Kerala football would testify the unadulterated love the people have for this game. Viva Kerala's promotion to the I-League 2009-2010 was met with delirium across the state and there are suggestions that this time they would not suffer relegation after just one season in the Indian top flight.
Even the Indian northeast, supposedly still caught in 20th century regression, is football-crazy. Shillong Lajong might have become only the first club from the region to feature in the Indian first division but Sikkim, Manipur and the like are minefields of footballing talent. People in the Indian northeast are Brazilian-esque mad about football, something that is observed regularly in the various football competitions played there. And then there's Goa of course, the new power-bed of Indian football.
Yet there's something that doesn't seem right. In spite of football being on the rise since the turn of the century, there is a distinct feeling that people across the nation have still not encrypted football into their DNA. True, European football especially the Premier League is huge in India but does watching football once or twice a week denote footballing culture? Does following the Premier League and knowing everything about it define footballing culture? Does watching a Spanish league match late at night and then going to work the next morning forgetting everything about the game until the next weekend mean football culture?
Take Bangalore for example. This is a city that is famous for its cricketing prominence yet figures suggest that football is immense here. But for those who have gone into the depth would tell you that it is foreign football that takes precedence here, not local football. In a city where students and IT professionals reign, it is the likes of Steven Gerrard, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo who are the faces of football, not the likes of Bhaichung Bhutia or Sunil Chettri.
No, this is not to suggest that following European football is killing the local game but isn't it true that watching foreign football often becomes a fashion statement, that to be seen as a modern, ear-ring donning, tattoo-strapping, low-waist wearing, American-following young adults they often follow football just to be 'in touch'?
Culture is something that makes us what, who and how we are, something that is inbred, something that is concrete; fashion is something that makes us what, who and how we want to be, something that is acquired, something that is abstract; culture is desperately and at times depressingly eternal, fashion ridiculously and at times dangerously fleeting.
Sporting culture doesn't follow the revolution-esque path of kill-him-and-replace-him mode and takes decades to alter. Indians have long accepted cricket as their number one sport and although the 'old footballing generation' tried hard to establish the charms of PK Banerjee and Chunni Goswami, they couldn't push off the kingdom of cricket.
Yet as the 21st century makes the world a ‘global village’ and football starts to become the new sporting language of Indians, the most popular sport in the world can only become a nationwide culture here in India in due time.
Subhankar Mondal
Watching with a bunch of old schoolmates it was tough not to identify with the millions of fellow Indians who must have been praying for an India win. Which was eventually answered, but what was even more revealing for yours truly was the age-old question: can football become the number one sport in India?
Or to better rephrase it: Has India got a footballing culture?
Even the most primitive of persons for whom India still means snake charmers and child marriages know about the cricketing prowess of this nation. It's no secret that cricket is the number one sport here; mothers dream of their children becoming the next Sachin Tendulkar or the next Sourav Ganguly and if the kid is born in this century then the next Mahendra Singh Dhoni. India has some of the most envious cricket stadiums in the world, has been a hugely successful nation in the sport and can only climb higher up in the tree.
All of which shoves football into the basement. Apparently, to many uninformed mortals football in India doesn't exist and Indians don't understand football.
Only, football does exist in India and Indians do understand football.
The biggest example is the world famous Kolkata derby, arguably the biggest in Asia and one of the biggest in the world. The attendance of the derby can overreach 100,000 at times, a number that even the Superclasio and the Clasico would struggle to keep up with. This is a match draped in a history that stretches back to the time when Bengal was still united, a history that every Bengali feels.
West Bengal is one state in which cricket is as important as football, where regular football fans tend to know more than or at least as much about football as journalists, where auto-drivers, cab-drivers, schoolkids, college party animals, white-coloured job holders are equally passionate about the game.
Although Kolkata still remains the hub of Indian football, it would be ridiculous to believe that it is the only region in India where football is a religion. For an outsider Sreedharan AM’s belief that “the popularity of football here in Kerala is more than it is in (West) Bengal” might appear strange but for those versed in Kerala football would testify the unadulterated love the people have for this game. Viva Kerala's promotion to the I-League 2009-2010 was met with delirium across the state and there are suggestions that this time they would not suffer relegation after just one season in the Indian top flight.
Even the Indian northeast, supposedly still caught in 20th century regression, is football-crazy. Shillong Lajong might have become only the first club from the region to feature in the Indian first division but Sikkim, Manipur and the like are minefields of footballing talent. People in the Indian northeast are Brazilian-esque mad about football, something that is observed regularly in the various football competitions played there. And then there's Goa of course, the new power-bed of Indian football.
Yet there's something that doesn't seem right. In spite of football being on the rise since the turn of the century, there is a distinct feeling that people across the nation have still not encrypted football into their DNA. True, European football especially the Premier League is huge in India but does watching football once or twice a week denote footballing culture? Does following the Premier League and knowing everything about it define footballing culture? Does watching a Spanish league match late at night and then going to work the next morning forgetting everything about the game until the next weekend mean football culture?
Take Bangalore for example. This is a city that is famous for its cricketing prominence yet figures suggest that football is immense here. But for those who have gone into the depth would tell you that it is foreign football that takes precedence here, not local football. In a city where students and IT professionals reign, it is the likes of Steven Gerrard, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo who are the faces of football, not the likes of Bhaichung Bhutia or Sunil Chettri.
No, this is not to suggest that following European football is killing the local game but isn't it true that watching foreign football often becomes a fashion statement, that to be seen as a modern, ear-ring donning, tattoo-strapping, low-waist wearing, American-following young adults they often follow football just to be 'in touch'?
Culture is something that makes us what, who and how we are, something that is inbred, something that is concrete; fashion is something that makes us what, who and how we want to be, something that is acquired, something that is abstract; culture is desperately and at times depressingly eternal, fashion ridiculously and at times dangerously fleeting.
Sporting culture doesn't follow the revolution-esque path of kill-him-and-replace-him mode and takes decades to alter. Indians have long accepted cricket as their number one sport and although the 'old footballing generation' tried hard to establish the charms of PK Banerjee and Chunni Goswami, they couldn't push off the kingdom of cricket.
Yet as the 21st century makes the world a ‘global village’ and football starts to become the new sporting language of Indians, the most popular sport in the world can only become a nationwide culture here in India in due time.
Subhankar Mondal
Inside Goal.Com
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