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✪ Zhang Jianwei, Tang Weidong
School of Sports Science, Nanjing Normal University
【Introduction】
Alpine skier Arif Khan is the only Indian athlete to qualify for the Beijing Winter Olympics. He said that the purpose of participating in the Winter Olympics is to let the world know that India can also develop winter sports, and China and India have great potential in the field of winter sports cooperation.
As a large country with a population of nearly 1.4 billion and a total GDP of the world's top 10 countries, why is it so "stretched" in competitive sports? It has been noted that India has won only a handful of medals at the Olympics in the past few decades, which is clearly disproportionate to the size of its country. however
India is also a country that is extremely negative for "great power feelings" and "national self-esteem". Why is India willing to become a "weak country" on such an important world stage?
This article analyzes this phenomenon,
It is believed that India's "Olympic medal shortage" phenomenon is closely related to its own pre-industrial society, political will, religious culture ("abstinence" and caste system) and other factors.
This article was originally published in the Journal of Nanjing University of Physical Education (Natural Science Edition), No. 2, 2017, transferred from the "Eurasian Systems Science Research Society"
, representing only the author's point of view, for the consideration of the monarch.
Get a glimpse into India from previous Olympic Games
Analysis of the phenomenon of "Olympic medal shortage" and its causes
▍ Questions raised
Happy Olympic season, India alone sad. At the end of the 2016 Rio Olympics, India won only one silver and one bronze medal. China is the same as the BRICS countries, on the one hand, India's comprehensive strength in the world can not be underestimated, in the total GDP ranking of the world, India ranked 11th, but in the Olympic medal table, China, Russia often won double-digit gold medals, three-digit medals compared, with a population of 1.2 billion India but few people won the gold medal, in terms of competitive sports achievements are particularly weak, India's recent best performance in the Olympic Games is ranked 50th in the world. The performance of this South Asian country, which has been compared to China in recent years, in Rio and in the Olympic Games is extremely disproportionate to its performance as a developing country with a population of 1.3 billion. During the Rio Olympics, the sports headlines in India's domestic media were filled with words such as "disappointment", "garbage" and "shame" all day long.
In today's world, the Olympic Games, as a wonderful sports event presented to people, is also a carrier and window for the politics, economy, science and technology and culture of various countries, and is the best stage to show the national competitive level, comprehensive strength and national quality. Behind the public opinion, why india, a populous country, is difficult to become an Olympic power and can only bend over to the ranks of small Olympic countries has always been a rather sensitive topic for a country with a strong "big country complex" and a strong sense of national self-esteem. The Rio Olympics have come to an end, the Olympic Games have once again attracted the attention of the world, the Indian delegation in this Olympic Games won 1 silver and 1 bronze "tragic situation" caused the author to think, the reason, India's competitive sports where to go, worthy of deep consideration by the Chinese people.
(Alpine skier Arif Khan is the only athlete on the Indian delegation to qualify for the Beijing Winter Olympics / Video screenshot)
▍ Review of India's performance in previous Olympic Games
India's rapid economic growth in recent years has attracted the world's attention, but India's performance in the Olympic Games has not been so eye-catching. As a member of the Commonwealth, India participated in the second Summer Olympic Games in Paris as early as 1900, and was the first Asian participant to participate in the Summer Olympic Games. In the early years, the Indian men's hockey team was invincible in the international arena, and in the twelve Olympic Games from 1928 to 1980 (1940 and 1944 due to the outbreak of the Olympic Games in World War II), they won 8 gold, 2 bronze and 1 silver in this single event, a total of 11 medals, and the medal competition in the rest of the events was not successful; after 1984, the Indian hockey team never won a medal, and there was little success in the competition for medals in other sports, and India's performance in the Olympic Games was completely weak.
(1) There are only a few medals won in the past three decades
Looking at India's performance in the Olympic Games in the past 30 years, perhaps we will feel something. From the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics to the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the Indian delegation received three consecutive pellets without receiving any medals, and the number of medals was zero; In 1996 at the Atlanta Olympics, there was a breakthrough, with a bronze medal; in 2000, Sydney India achieved a stable result, still 1 bronze medal; in 2004, Sydney made a slight progress, winning a silver medal; 2008 was an Olympic year for India, on August 11 of that year, Indian shooting athlete Abhinav Bindra at the 10-meter air rifle competition at the Beijing Olympic Games. It won India its first individual gold medal in the 108-year history of the Olympic Games, in addition to two bronze medals; in 2012, India as a whole improved, winning 2 silver medals and 4 bronze medals, the highest number of medals in history; in 2016, India was getting farther and farther away from the gold medal road, only winning 1 silver and 1 bronze and two medals (see Table 1 for details).
Table 1 List of medals in India's Olympic Games from 1984 to 2016
(2) The advantages of the competition are limited
India has never been a sports powerhouse, sports culture is a foreign culture, India's conservative religious culture has inhibited the healthy development of its sports diversity. In India, the development of sports is very poor, and the sports that can be developed and popularized are even more limited. In this regard, many Indians have a deep complaint about the Olympic games: except for hockey, the strong sports of Indians are not in the Olympic games, especially cricket. In the high-handed Olympic games, India's traditional strengths mainly come from hockey, shooting and wrestling. There are 28 major events in this Rio Olympic Games, and India has only participated in 15 of them, and half of them have never won a medal. Throughout India's entire Olympic history, the Indian national team has won a total of 24 medals. Won 7 events: badminton (1), boxing (2), hockey (11), shooting (4), tennis (1), weightlifting (1), wrestling (4), India has not yet won medals in 21 events: handball, athletics, volleyball, softball, basketball, football, kayaking, cycling, archery, fencing, gymnastics, judo, table tennis, water sports, modern pentathlon, baseball, equestrian, taekwondo, triathlon, sailing and rowing.
(3) The per capita output of gold medals is very far from that of powerful countries
Needless to say, India's poor performance at the last Olympic Games has only been ranked alongside smaller countries like Qatar and Morocco. Looking back at history, since India first participated in the Paris Olympic Games in 1900, it has won a total of 9 gold, 6 silver and 11 bronze medals, a total of 26 medals, and the total number of medals is even far less than the number of medals won by China in one Olympic Games. Some media jokes that the world swimming star Phelps alone won more medals (23 gold, 3 silver and 2 bronze) at the Olympic Games than india has won since 1900. At the 2016 Rio Olympics, there are 207 participating countries and regions, and if you express the real sports competition level of a country according to the number of people needed to win each gold medal (that is, how many people share a gold medal), or the number of gold medals per capita, India is even more difficult to find in this list. Referring to the medal table of the Olympic Games, India has a population of about 1.227 billion, almost 600 million people to produce a medal, while China won 70 medals in the Olympic Games, with a population of about 1.3 billion, 18 million people can correspond to an Olympic medal, with a per capita gold medal of 1/18 million; the United States won 121 medals in Rio, with a population of about 320 million, an average of 2.6 million people in a medal, and a per capita gold medal of 1/2.6 million; Countries such as Jamaica and Grenada can get a medal for an average of hundreds of thousands of people.
In addition, India, which has participated in a total of 28 Summer Olympic Games, can win an average of 0.9 medals per Olympic Games, while the huge population makes the Indian team rank at the bottom of the list of medals per capita in each Olympic Games. In recent years, India, which has achieved miracles in economic development, has been lackluster in the development of competitive sports, and the "Olympic dilemma" that has plagued the development of Indian sports for many years has always been impossible to crack.
▍ Behind India's "medal shortage" and the reasons for the backwardness of competitive sports
(1) Pre-industrialized societies lack the foundation for sports development
On the face of it, India's large population and rapid growth provide a large population base for the selection of athletes. However, India's agricultural population accounts for 70% of the total population, and most of them still live in rural areas with lack of water and electricity and closed transportation, and the people's cultural level is generally not high, and the phenomenon of illiteracy is serious. In recent years, although the literacy rate in India has shown an upward trend across the country, the absolute number of illiterates has increased unabated, just imagine, how can a country that is making literacy education a priority can make sports efficient and healthy. Therefore, the absolute advantage of India's population base cannot be reflected in the selection of excellent athletes. In India, which is in the pre-industrial period, the government is still focusing on supporting agricultural development, focusing on solving problems such as national poverty and backward infrastructure, neither relying on social forces to spontaneously form "market sports", nor mobilizing administrative resources to carry out "planned sports", can only hope for a small number of elite athletes, and gather the country's limited sports resources to focus on the development of its own traditional advantage projects or talent projects. According to the United Nations Human Development Report 2013, 42.5% of children in India are underweight, and malnutrition is prominent. According to the Statistics of the Global Hunger Index Report 2012 of the International Food Policy Research Office, India's food problem is ranked fifteenth in the world, India lacks modern agriculture, food supply cannot be guaranteed, many citizens are still worried about the problem of food and clothing, and the country's vigorous development of sports cannot be talked about. Compared with China, India is a typical Western capitalist federal republic, the government's ability to govern is low, the investment in sports is very limited, "market sports" can not be talked about, "planned sports" is difficult to implement, let alone mobilize administrative resources to carry out the Chinese-style "national system" or establish a national competitive sports promotion model similar to the former Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The shortage of sports funds in India, the backwardness of the national infrastructure and the characteristics of the pre-industrial era on the hardware have led to the real dilemma of India's sports hovering at a low level and lacking the foundation for sports development.
(II) Lack of "political will" to become a sports powerhouse
Professor Bourges of the Centre for the Study of Sports Economics at the University of Limoges in France once pointed out that any athlete who wants to win an Olympic medal should have one of the following three conditions: either from a populous country; or from a country with a high per capita domestic output; or from a country with a strong political will of the government to become a sports power. In India, becoming a "sports power" has never been an "established national policy" of the government. The largest stadium in India's capital, New Delhi, is built in honor of its founding Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and named after him. During Nehru's tenure, science and technology and education were listed as the primary tasks of India's development at that time, and the top leaders of successive Indian governments personally examined or led the development of cutting-edge science and technology, under this idea, the Indian government promulgated the "Science Policy Resolution" and "National Education Policy" in 1958 and 1968 to comprehensively plan the country's science and technology education development strategy, "using modern science and technology and education to bring India into the 21st century." However, the development of sport occupies little place in the vision of India by the Nehru and Manmohan Singh governments, during which almost no input and funding mechanisms involving sport have been developed. Influenced by Nehru's ideas, successive Indian governments have never put becoming a sports power on their agenda. It was not until December 2002 that the National Planning Commission of India issued the Vision 2020 of India (or Vision 2020 of India), which contained a strategic plan for the development of sports, which put forward some new requirements for India's economic, educational, sports and infrastructure development goals.
On the other hand, compared with the generosity in the military and scientific and technological fields, the Indian government's investment in sports development is stingy and shy. In 2004, in the first budget released after the Indian Congress government came to power, the allocation for sports was only A meagre Rs.38 crore, accounting for only 3 per cent of the education allocation. The then Sports Minister Sunil expressed his displeasure, accusing Indian Finance Minister Chidam Balam of being stingy with sports allocations and academic bias against the sports sector. In India's 2007-2008 Budget, the allocation for sports was Rs.49 crore (equivalent to RMB1 billion at the then exchange rate), and the allocation for education was Rs.2867 crore; considering that the 17th Commonwealth Games would be held in New Delhi in 2010 (the Indian delegation won 38 gold, 27 silver and 36 bronze, ranking second in the medal table), India's sports allocation increased to Rs 11 billion in the 2008-2009 budget, but the education budget was as high as Rs 344 billion. Judging from the government's expenditure on various types of funds in recent years, India has spent a lot of public funds on public education funds, and the proportion of public education funds in the total financial budget during this period has remained above 4%, while the proportion of sports funds usually does not exceed 0.1%, which is also related to India's comprehensive implementation of the "brain-heavy and light physical" education reform campaign strategy in accordance with the guiding ideology formulated by the New Education Policy since 1986.
If a country's competitive sports want to develop rapidly and efficiently, on the one hand, it is necessary to rely on the improvement of the social environment and the improvement of national health awareness to drive the people themselves to actively participate in sports, on the other hand, it must also rely on the full support of national policies and regulations. In India, the development of sports powers seems to have never been included in the agenda of the government's work, which has also become an important factor restricting the development of sports in India. The Indian Olympic Committee did not participate in the "Olympic bid" and admitted in response to questions from foreign reporters that the state has not always supported sports. In contrast, japan, after the defeat of the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988, the Japanese government's involvement in the sports circles has increased significantly, and in 1989, the Japanese Ministry of Education promulgated the "Strategy for The Revitalization of Sports Oriented to the 21st Century", which put forward the policy of vigorously developing sports from the aspects of competitive sports and lifelong sports, and then formulated a series of detailed short, medium and long-term plans to strengthen players. The government has also invested in the construction of the Japan National Sports Research Center (JISS), which provides a full range of scientific research and training services for Japanese athletes to win medals at the Olympic Games. After just over a decade, a series of measures taken by the Japanese government have achieved results in the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, where the Japanese delegation won a total of 16 gold medals, 9 silver medals, 12 bronze medals, a total of 37 medals, jumped to the fifth place in the gold medal list, and achieved the rise of competitive sports in just a few years.
(iii) The conservative nature of Indian religious culture inhibits the development of sports
1. The concept of "Brahmacharin", which is rooted in Indian education
Throughout the nearly 3,500-year history of Indian education, Indian education originated from the Rig Veda, religion laid the foundation of Indian education, and the requirements for education were limited to the basic needs of static societies. Indian education comes with religion, India belongs to the Hindu cultural circle, more than 80% of Indians believe in Hinduism, and the concept of "Brahmacharin" in Hinduism and fatalism stipulate that people should keep to themselves in peace throughout their lives, and do not try to change their destiny and destiny to fight by force, even in the 1950s India's independence from British colonial rule was also in a peaceful way, which is very different from the quality of competitive sports advocating individual struggle and the will to fight bravely.
On the other hand, Indian traditional culture is a multicultural comprehensive system with Hindu culture as the main body and Indian religious culture as the core value orientation standard. The religious nature of Indian culture emphasizes the pursuit of the spiritual world and the focus on inner peace rather than external material pursuits. The development path of Indian education in modern times has been gradual, and the concept of "abstinence" in traditional education has been largely retained, which also makes it difficult for them to adapt to the characteristics of foreign sports culture. Religious ideas permeate all aspects of Indian life, through people's actions and hearts, and the traditional and conservative qualities are particularly obvious. Overly conservative traits and a peaceful pursuit of the inner world have led Indians to show symptoms of discomfort when dealing with a sports culture that is completely different from their own culture.
2. The caste system hinders the development of sports in India
The caste system, formed more than 3,000 years ago, is a characteristic of Indian society and can also be said to be a hierarchical system, mainly in Hinduism, and has different degrees of influence on Islam and Sikhism. In this system, each caste group occupies a certain social position, the highest caste is the Brahmans, and the lowest status is the Dalits who do cleaning work. In 1947, the Caste System was abolished in India, and the Constitution clearly stipulated the abolition of caste discrimination and non-access, but the tradition that has been formed for thousands of years still prevails in Indian society. Influenced by caste discrimination, physical activity is extremely humble and degrading in the indian perception. Anyone who has status (whether by caste or by accumulating money) should not do it himself, but should leave physical activity to the poor of the lower classes. Sports activities such as running, jumping, and swimming were not "inferior" in the eyes of the upper class, but they were only regarded by the Brahmins as "playful games" for entertainment.
In India, caste norms are well aligned with sport:
(1) A Brahmin who eats meat every day and sweats profusely on the sports field must not be a qualified Brahmin;
(2) The upper middle class in India is bound by caste norms and has no desire to play sports;
(3) Many emerging middle classes stay away from physical activity, if not born Brahmins;
(4) The caste system prevents people with different surnames from exercising together.
The reality is that a Brahmin-born athlete rarely initiates contact with a Dalit-born athlete, and "higher caste" athletes often refuse to train and compete with "lower caste" athletes. However, it is precisely such a class that is far away from sports and incompatible with the requirements of modern sports constitutes the main body of today's Indian upper class society, and the sports concept followed by brahmins as the highest caste has affected the sports atmosphere of the entire Indian society, and the athletes of the "lower caste" do not even dare to pursue a higher level of breakthrough in sports. It can be said that the caste system is a fundamental obstacle to the rise of sport in India. Many of India's historical leaders have publicly attacked this system, and on the other hand, they have affirmed the positive role of the caste system in stabilizing social stability. India's founding prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru once pointed out: "Under the condition that the Indian people maintain the caste system, India is india after all." "But from the day they disassociated from the system, India ceased to exist. So, rather than saying that Indians do not attach importance to sports and do not develop sports, it is better to say that India's worst caste hierarchy has never been cured.
▍ Conclusion
Compared with China, India's achievements in previous Olympic events have been lackluster. In recent years, the Indian government is working hard to "make Indian sports go global", increase the construction of sports infrastructure, and significantly increase the amount of sports competition rewards, stimulate the development of competitive sports, of which the Olympic champion prize money is 10 million rupees. India is not a country without sports, all it lacks is sports culture, and the extremely limited participation of the people is the root cause of India's sports backwardness. It can be seen that if India wants to fundamentally develop and develop competitive sports, in addition to continuing to strengthen investment in hardware and software and increasing incentives in policy, the most important thing is to fundamentally change the traditional concept of indian people's contempt for physical activities, remove the shackles brought by Indian religion to the development of competitive sports, design a comprehensive development strategy focusing on the future Olympic Games, and at the same time reform the current sports system and transform the development mode of competitive sports. Like an elephant, India has a long way to go in developing competitive sports, which is a long process that cannot be achieved overnight. It is expected that India's competitive sports can usher in a new development.
The article is reproduced from the Journal of Nanjing University of Physical Education (Natural Science Edition), No. 2, 2017, and the annotations are omitted. Welcome to share personally, media reprint please contact the copyright owner.
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