Racism is suddenly back in the news everywhere. Three participants in the UK TV show Celebrity Big Brother have been accused of making racist remarks about Shilpa Shetty. Sacha Baron Cohen, who wrote and starred in the controversial?and to some, racist?film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, has just won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy. Herschelle Gibbs has been banned for two tests for referring to some Pakistani supporters at the Centurion ground as ?a bunch of bloody animals?.
The Shilpa Shetty episode may well end up making her more famous and much richer than she is currently; London bookies have already made her, at 6-4, the favourite to win the contest and take home 100,000 pounds. The Borat case is more complex. Cohen?s true agenda was to unmask American arrogance, ignorance and prejudice, but on the way, he projected Kazakhstan as a country populated by filthy brutish morons, who are also anti-Semitic; Borat asks his host in an interview if it is legal to shoot Jews in the US.
And Herschelle Gibbs? outburst is just the latest in the long line of racist incidents in sports.
Monty Panesar, the English spinner of Indian origin, was the target of racial abuse by Australian supporters during the just-concluded Ashes series. Some months ago, TV commentator Dean Jones was sacked when he referred to Hashim Amla, a South African batsman with a flowing beard, as ?the terrorist?. Zinedine Zidane head-butting Marco Materazzi during the World Cup soccer final took on racist hues when it was revealed that Materazzi had abused the Algerian-born French captain?s mother and sister. In November, in Paris, after an Israeli soccer team won a match against Paris Saint-German, about 300 PSG fans chased French Jews. One Jew was cornered alongside a black plainclothes police officer who was also attacked as a ?nigger?, and had to finally fire into the crowd in self-defence, killing one.
Why is sports always just one stumble away from feeling racism?s vile breath? And it?s hardly as simple as players abusing each other in the heat of the moment. Racism and sports have been interlinked in complex ways. Perhaps the best known example is Hitler?s trying to prove the physical and political supremacy of the German race through the Berlin Olympics of 1936. He had made a subtle connection which he knew he could cynically use to further his manic aims. Fortunately, the Fuehrer ended up with egg on his face with African-American Jesse Owens beating all the Aryan wannabe-gods and winning four gold medals.
In cricket, even some match referees and umpires have long been suspected of racial bias. It remains a mystery how hardly any player in Steve Waugh?s Australian team was never hauled up for vicious sledging, which included racial slurs. The only one punished was Darrell Lehmann, who called Sri Lanka?s Sanath Jayasuriya ?a black monkey?, the only notable?if notorious?act in his career. How South Africa?s vile-tempered bowler Andre Nel has managed to be around for so long without any disciplinary action against him is another unanswered question. This, while Sourav Ganguly has been suspended for staring at the umpire incredulously for a few seconds after being given out wrongly.
In 2001, Scotsman Mike Denness fined five Indian players including Sachin Tendulkar and suspended Virendra Sehwag for tampering with the ball and excessive appealing in one of the most bizarre displays of either senility or racism. But, strangely enough, it?s not only white match referees and umpires who have been accused of discriminatory behaviour. At least one black referee and one black umpire have also been labelled racist by many cricket fans from the sub-continent. Their critics believe that these two men let a member of a white team get away with much more than a player in a brown team.
And the really grey issue in the black-white divide is the way the South African cricket board, today dominated by non-whites, have treated the men who represented the country in the years before the 1970 ban. As far as the board is concerned, Jimmy Cook is the first South African to play international cricket, since he opened the innings at the first international match South Africa played after the ban was lifted, against India in Kolkata in 1991. The board denies the country?s international cricketing history from 1888 to 1969. In its books, there is no mention of Peter or Graeme Pollock or Barry Richards.
Is this revenge for decades of repression also not a form of racism?
Let?s face it, sports is a surrogate for war. It is a competitive activity, where, in the end, there can be only one winner. I have always been sceptical of the notion?aired so piously by every world leader?that sporting ties can build friendship between nations. I am sure it can, at an individual level: an Ian Botham can be a Viv Richards? best friend, an Indian fan visiting Trinidad to watch a World Cup match will certainly make many friends among the locals there. But at an aggregate level, at the national and the racial level, sports changes little. What it does is provide a way for the masses to let off steam, work out one?s violent nationalistic and racist urges vicariously through the feats of athletes. Which is extremely valuable, since otherwise many more people would have been killing and getting killed.
Herschelle Gibbs claims that his ?bloody animals? comment to his team mates was a reaction to some Pakistani supporters constantly abusing South African spinner Paul Harris. Sure, there was provocation, and strictly speaking, he was not talking about all Pakistanis but a group of uncouth Pakistani cricket fans. The trouble is, Gibbs being South African makes the matter that much more delicate. If only Gibbs had known how Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi handled racist abuse while touring Australia as part of the English team during the Bodyline series of 1933-34. ?Hey, Gandhi!? shouted a heckler. ?Where?s your goat?? Replied Pataudi: ?From the smell, seems like you have it.?