I’m still processing the bilious sortie by Shashi Tharoor, the Indian diplomat and author, outgoing undersecretary-general of the United Nations and failed candidate for the top job, in the opinion pages of last Friday’s New York Times. It’s the one where he announces that America and Americans are congenitally incapable of comprehending cricket, that the condition is incurable, and that after valiantly performing such educational mitzvahs as diagramming cricket play possibilities on bar napkins for baseball fans during breaks in World Series games, he has now given up; and hereby retreats to the world of connoisseurs who will gather, he tells us, to watch the final at the home of an expatriate where “of course there will be no Americans.”
Here’s his parting shot:
So here’s the message, America: don’t pay any attention to us, and we won’t pay any to you. If you wonder, over the coming weeks, why your Indian co-worker is stealing distracted glances at his computer screen every few minutes or why the South African in the next cubicle is taking frequent and furtive bathroom breaks during the working day, don’t even try to understand. You probably wouldn’t get it. You may as well learn to accept that there are some things too special for the rest of us to want to waste them on you.
Lovely! Elegant! Thoughtful! Um… diplomatic! Ever considered working for the United Nations?
Alright, so everyone has an off day. And sure, yeah, most people in the U.S. don’t get cricket. Not exactly a novel observation. So why not leave it at that? Instead Tharoor decides to actually argue the case, justifying his dismissal of this thing called “America” with an array of absurd statements. Americans, he says, “have about as much use for cricket as Lapps have for beachwear.” They follow baseball instead, which “is to cricket as simple addition is to calculus.” Tharoor has “even appealed to the Hemingway instinct that lurks in every American male by pointing out how cricket is so much more virile a sport.” All to no avail. But thanks to satellite television and the Internet, now “you can ignore America and enjoy your cricket.” After all: “Why try to sell Kiri Te Kanawa to people who prefer Anna Nicole Smith?”
But all of this is mere appetizer for the main dish, the Comparative Analysis of National Character. Take it away, maestro:
In any event, nothing about cricket seems suited to the American national character: its rich complexity, the infinite possibilities that could occur with each delivery of the ball, the dozen different ways of getting out, are all patterned for a society of endless forms and varieties, not of a homogenized McWorld. They are rather like Indian classical music, in which the basic laws are laid down but the performer then improvises gloriously, unshackled by anything so mundane as a written score.
Cricket is better suited to a country like India, where a majority of the population still consults astrologers and believes in the capricious influence of the planets — so they can well appreciate a sport in which, even more than in baseball, an ill-timed cloudburst, a badly prepared pitch, a lost toss of the coin at the start of a match or the sun in the eyes of a fielder can transform the outcome of a game. Even the possibility that five tense, hotly contested, occasionally meandering days of cricketing could still end in a draw seems derived from ancient Indian philosophy, which accepts profoundly that in life the journey is as important as the destination. Not exactly the American Dream.
All together now: MACACA, PLEASE!
Seriously: What on earth are you talking about? And what does it tell us about what you see when you think of America, and what you see when you think of India? And with all due respect, what kind of UN Secretary General could you have possibly made with a worldview at once so rigid and so fey?
It’s tempting to engage in a line-item refutation exercise, going through the brother’s points, trivial and serious, one by one. For instance, it’s not Lapps, you’re supposed to call them Sami now. Don’t they teach you anything at those urbane cocktail parties? Also: Ever heard of jazz? And best of all, did you read the letter in the New York Times where the writer schooled you on the more-than-12 ways to get an out in baseball?
But all that is noise. What really disappointed me about this article, now that I’ve had a little time to think about it, is the unthinking, crude cultural nationalism, the willingness to truck in stereotypes, the implied view that no matter how much globalization and immigrant entrepreneurship and diasporic arts and international travel and trade mix our populations and produce hybrid souls like the bulk of the readers of this site, National Character is pre-determined and will prevail. Way to validate our concerns, our dreams, our debates, our professional and political and personal choices!
Instead we get us versus them, a view of the world that is positively Bush-like in its reductionism and reliance on obsolete understandings of the nation-state. Not surprising in the end, I guess, from someone whose novel was called “The Great Indian Novel” (oh but you see, that was ironic) and whose forthcoming book is “The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone: India, The Emerging 21st Century Power.â€
I’ll believe it when we beat Sri Lanka.
I could be wrong about this?
But it’s seems to me that desi’s youth in the United States and Canada are more likely to be into basketball then into baseball. Maybe it’s the impact of hip-hop influence into the NBA.
please, i’m sure Mr. Tharoor opined with a twinkle in his eye. lighten up everyone, it’s only another stupid game where the people who watch seem to be more involved than the ones playing it. baseball, cricket, football sorry soccer or did i mean football, anyone?
considering it was a prominent nyt op-ed, very little reaction from the blogosphere to the piece, according to a technorati search.
Just one more thing. Where did Shashi Tharoor learn his calculus? I mean, at a stretch, we could apply this to integral calculus (though “geometry” would be more accurate than “simple addition”). But if he’s talking differentiation, then he’s got his well-coifed head up his colon.
The thing with witty insults (and I presume Tharoor’s going for wit here) is: you’ve got to be accurate, for the full devastating effect. Addition, calculus, that’s lazy stuff. Of course it’s lazy. The fellow also thinks there’s only one improvisational music tradition in the world?
And that Kiri Te Kanawa/Anna Nicole Smith comparison is the worst use of rhetoric I’ve seen in a long time. It would make as much sense as an American saying, “We like Martha Nussbaum, but you folks prefer Bipasha Basu.” As Siddhartha says, this stuff is fey and rigid, a tricky mix at the best of times.
I think Tharoor’s going for a kind of sly humor in this piece–his tongue is firmly lodged in his cheek–but it falls flat because he’s too insistent about denigrating America and finding essentializing tropes to fit his argument. It’s as if he started off with a preposterous joke, and then suddenly realised that he could strike a blow for the oppressed at the same time. What might have worked well as a piece of sports-buffoonery (a genre, I must admit, that’s close to my heart) spectacularly fails once it becomes a lecture on benighted American exceptionalism.
I’m all for insults, but shape up Tharoor. We need sterner stuff than this.
It’s a genre?
‘Lota-washed pomaded colon’ would have worked better.
I hope it is. 🙂
Most sports have been transplanted onto other cultures through dominance – cricket through colonialism in the Commonwealth countries, baseball through America’s economic dominance of Latin America and Japan. When there is parity among nations or cultures, popularizing one nation’s sport in another is almost impossible. So Americans aren’t buying into cricket and India, now gaining a foothold among the powerful nations of the world, should have no reason to buy into baseball.
The NFL stages those ambitious exhibition games in Europe and Asia with the hopes of marketing yet another American product to the world as if sports were blue jeans. Has it worked? Americans can’t even sell a foreign sport to themselves. Soccer was imported forty years ago and is still floundering at the school level. There was an expectation that Americans would play soccer as children and then go on to do mega deals for the sports when they became grown ups.
But Mr. Tharoor, let’s give Americans their due for at least tuning into their voters and giving them cricket ovals if that’s what it takes to get re-elected. True story! I live in the Ft. Lauderdale-Miami metro where the Caribbean population is quite large. Of course, there are the ubiquitous desis, and thanks to our warm weather, sizable communities of Aussies and Brits as well. Can cricket be far behind! Several of our municipalities have allowed cricket pitches in public parks. One town went so far as to send its council members on a junket to the Caribbean to “study” cricket grounds prior to building an oval in their town. I have watched cricket there many times. The last time we desis were humiliated when St. Vincent – yes, if you can find it on the map – roundly beat Mother India. Oh well, they had a batsman who used to play for the West Indies, and all we have is slightly paunchy Motorola engineers who only played college level back in India.
Regarding Mr. Tharoor’s anti-American rant, it is unfortunately a global myth that America, Americans and American culture are simplistic and trivial. In fact, a sign of intellectual refinement is to dismiss America as a lucky accident of history – a big success, but no substance. Mr. Tharoor must have fallen into that popular pseudo-intellectual trap when he made those remarks.
Except football, which flourished in Latin America and Europe, where England did not dominate.
Mr Kobayashi, Please apologise to Ms. Bipasha Basu immediately, otherwise we will start burning your effigies.
🙂
Bipasha Basu said: “I still have to understand this. Most people, who tell me that I look sexy on screen, do so almost apologetically. It’s like, ‘You look so sexy in (insert movie name here).’ What I seem to hear under their breath is, ‘I’m sorry, but must you do that?'”
Martha Nussbaum said, “Through cosmopolitan education, we learn more about ourselves. One of the greatest barriers to rational deliberation in politics is the unexamined feeling that one’s own current preferences and ways are neutral and natural. An education that takes national boundaries as morally salient too often reinforces this kind of irrationality, by lending to what is an accident of history a false air of moral weight and glory. By looking at ourselves in the lens of the other, we come to see what in our practices is local and non-necessary, what more broadly or deeply shared. Our nation is appallingly ignorant of most of the rest of the world. I think that this means that it is also, in many crucial ways, ignorant of itself.”
That’s the long and short of it folks.
Are apologies really necessary? Can’t we all just get along?
(p.s. Please, Indianoguy, fax all effigies of Bipasha to my private line. Thx.)
This discussion comes up every fourth year in time for soccer world cup, when american and euros exchange insults towards eachother on basis of their sporting preferences. It always ends with, WW2, coward and soccer being a sissy sport on the one hand, and fat, lazy, stupid and NFL being the only elite sport where some people actually are fat (yes I know Sumo).
There is one thing funny with baseball, thw only two countries other than the US that have baseball as their sport numero Uno is Cuba and Venezuela…
Okay, so I’m a smarmy American who thinks that cricket and soccer are mind-numbingly boring. But I’m an equal opportunity snob; I feel the same way about every other televised sport except for college basketball (by the way, can somebody find a March Madness desi angle?). But during last year’s Word Cup I noticed a lot of Americans a few generations removed from the boat were bringing up soccer match results in casual conversation. I dunno, maybe it has something to do with New Yorkers attempting seem more “European.” Because then they would finish eating their fromage-stuffed crepes.
Tharoor said :
I guess thats why stupid morons in India did “yagna” and “havans” to please to gods so that India wins the world cup. How idiotic!! I guess Tharoor is proud of those people 🙂 Attitudes like Mr. Tharoor’s encourage this kind of stupidity.
What sports were popular in India before the Raj?
gilly dunda
Guha’s history of Indian cricket is a very good read. One learns about early “untouchable” players who made it big playing alongside caste Hindus, and how early teams were communal, viz., divided by religions. It was the “more British than the British” Parsis who first took up cricket in a big way – and they were unbeatable for a century!
Werd.
But mostly, Siddhartha, you are such a writer! Loan me some of that talent!
“It is interesting that America invented her own sports, whilst the rest of the world fell in love with football, cricket and rugby. Maybe it has something to do with how America defined herself as different from everyone else, especially Britain, after the war of independence. “
Basketball was invented by a Canadian…
American football was actually closer to what is now known as soccer till one of their universities (Harvard) played against McGill (in Montreal).
From Wiki: “Harvard was isolated from its US counterparts by the fact that it did not play soccer. As a result, in 1874, Harvard footballers welcomed a request from the rugby team of McGill University of Montreal to play a pair of games. In these games, the two teams alternated between the rules used by each college. It is from this home and home series that the game now known as American football entered the United States. Following these games, Harvard also adopted a game based on the rugby football code and played Yale under these rules in 1875 for the first edition of The Game. Within a few years, other US universities had also adopted rugby.[16])”
And Hockey is Canadian too.
3 of America’s 4 main sports has its roots in Canada. So there.
“I could be wrong about this?
But it’s seems to me that desi’s youth in the United States and Canada are more likely to be into basketball then into baseball. Maybe it’s the impact of hip-hop influence into the NBA. “
Yup that’s mostly true. Punjabi kids in the GTA seemed to have bucked the trend though, many being in hockey.
“I play both jazz and Indian classical music and there is absolutely no way Jazz can come close to the intricacies and complexities of Indian classical music.”
I thought this was interesting. I don’t know enough about jazz to say whether this comment is accurate or load of crap.
But I do know that one of the reasons Indian classical music (I don’t buy into the entirely rigid, strict divisions of Carnatic and Hindustani),along with Persian, Afghan, Turkish classical systems etc. is somewhat looked down on by proponents of Western Classical Music because of their “jazz” like improvisations and lack of harmony.
I’ve been singing Carnatic and Hindustani since I could open my mouth, and I learned how to play both the piano and western classical violin for almost ten years. I gave up the latter two, not because they weren’t sophisticated or challenging in their own right, but simply because my heart wasn’t in it anymore.
On the other hand, I have a cousin who, while she hasn’t learned any formal music, simply can’t stand Indian classical music as she makes the same points about lack of harmony, everything sounds like some sort of wailing, crying etc. She’s become quite the opera aficionado-which is something that other than as a light element in Hollywood background scores, I have little interest in (though I seriously gave it an effort). Anyways, my point is that tastes are simply tastes-it’s somewhat of a fool’s errand to say what’s better and what’s a “higher form” because ultimately what’s higher depends on what you value higher: harmony, rythymic complexity, melodic development, improvisation, composition, soul-belting or restraint and adherence to notes etc.
On the other note, Tharoor’s article, at least to me, had a very sarcastic tone to it. Although the poor fool should have realized the average reader was not going to pick up on that.
“But during last year’s Word Cup I noticed a lot of Americans a few generations removed from the boat were bringing up soccer match results in casual conversation. I dunno, maybe it has something to do with New Yorkers attempting seem more “European.” Because then they would finish eating their fromage-stuffed crepes.”
haha…I have to agree with you here to an extent. I lived in downtown NYC last year, and I knew too many kids in NYC who have never played soccer, nor follow it all during the regular seasons, but during the world cup were all into it. There’s definitely a bit of a “cosmopolitanism” to it in their heads, which is funny if you’ve ever been to a soccer match in the UK.
“Yeah but that’s more a question of wealth and agency than any inherent culture. Americans abroad stay ignorant and aloof because they can.”
Sorry ,but I dont agree with the above comment. Americans all over the world are famous for their dimwittedness and ignorance not because they can but because they live the life of a frog in a well…where American is the centre of teh universe for them….and all of a sudden now when they look around and find all their good jobs taken away by Indians or other communities not far away but right there in their own hometowns, its only now that they have rudely awakened and suddenly realise something that the rest of the world realiased logn back “Hey dude, it is important to go to college”. So puhhleeez dont give that crap load of justification as to why Ameicans abroad stay ignorant of other cultures or people or places…..
They live the life of a frog in a well because THEY CAN.
“They live the life of a frog in a well because THEY CAN.”
Thats right Americans! Keep telling yourselves that 😉
Puh-lease. Does that explain the sorry state of the educational system in, for example, India? Generally citizens of every country view their home as the center of the universe. The tired bashing of Americans as ignorant has reached a highly pitched whine, as Tharoor’s article indicates. Siddhartha got it right in bemoaning the “unthinking crude cultural nationalism.”
Come on guys! Clearly this is largely a tongue-in-cheek article not to be taken seriously. I thought it was brilliant! And just to be sure, it is NOT racist. As far as Mr. Tharoor is concerned, and in my personal experience, ABDs are in the same boat as Americans. It’s about the place where you grow up, not your genes. Just the way that someone describing how French food has a different character from English food, which in turn is different from Indian, or Chinese food is not showing “unthinking, crude cultural nationalism”; so it with culture. Anyone who has talked to an American about cricket knows that the only thing Americans know about the sport, in case they have heard of it, is that the game can go on for five days and not have a result. And that bothers them a lot…while it doesn’t bother the Indians so much. It is something cultural and that is all the article is saying. (Ok, I am making gross generalizations here. And so in Tharoor. But don’t you think replacing Americans by “99% of Americans I have met” in the article would hurt tremendously the readability of it?) I encourage you to read Bill Bryson’s take on cricket in “In a sunburned country”. It has some choice gems such as “there’s nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn’t fix in a hurry”, “I don’t wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way”, “It actually helps not to know quite what’s going on. In such a rarefied world of contentment and inactivity, comprehension would become a distration”, “The commentators were in calm agreement that they had not seen anyone caught behind with such panache since Tandoori took Rogan Josh for a stiffy at Vindaloo in ’61.”
It is an American’s take on cricket. It is full of inaccuracies and exaggerations. But it makes extremely amusing reading. In my opinion, it is in this spirit that the Tharoor article is written.
Was at the Hariharan’s show in UCLA the other day, he sang something he called Urdu Blues , a mix of Blues and Gazal, pretty nice!
Mr. Kobayashi writes: “Bipasha Basu said:
…
Martha Nussbaum said:
That’s the long and short of it folks.”
I seriously hope that was with tongue firmly in cheek. Otherwise the absurdity of the comparison is mind-blowing. What next? Should I respond with a comparison of quotes from George Bush and Vivekanda?
if you thought this lacked tact, you should read his article on Times of India asking women to wear sari.
Siddhartha -> writer -> jazz -> James Brown
“Now lookahere, if you ain’t got enough soul, let me know and I’ll loan you some. Ha! Boy, I got soul to burn!”
Oh, please don’t tell me he used that overdone photo of the sadhu with the cellphone on the cover.
Why did he have to go and act like such an idiot? Thanks Siddhartha for calling him out on his Dubya-inspired rhetoric. I hope he doesn’t ‘misunderestimate’ the cringe-worthiness of his own writing 😉
Oh lordy. I need an editor.
Siddhartha -> writer -> music -> James Brown
Wow, Canadians must be real proud of their state’s role in nurturing their country’s popular sports;)
Why? I go to matches all the time and the crowds are very cosmopolitan (especially at Arsenal — last week watching Match of the Day there was a bunch of Sikh Uncles at Old Trafford who are known as The Punjabi Reds)
And the game is the most cosmopolitan of them all — South America, Europe, Africa and Asia are all owned by football.
It’s probably just people taking interest in th best sporting even out there. Like how I don’t care for athletics but when the Olympics come around I’m stroking my chin and discussing track times knowledgably as if I’m an expert or something.
is that what they’re called? I noticed them for the first time watching United v Lille. They sit right smack in the middle of OT where players come on and off the pitch. In fact, I just checked right now- 4 sardars, a little round around the corners, 2 black pughs, 1 blue and 1 red, and one wearing that hideous AIG-stamped shirt. Great seats though, must cost a fortune.
My Man Utd supporting friend (also Sikh) says they’re rich businessmen from Manchester, and he remembers watching a documentary about them when they were youngsters back in the 1980’s, about desis into football.
IndianaJones/Anna: Switching handles in the same thread is not appreciated, especially if done to support or address points you previously made. It’s something we’ve banned for in the past. Consider this a friendly warning.
Desichick, I’ve never come across that sentiment. It would be pointless to say that b/c Baroque music is often compared to jazz in that both are about the soloist creating variations on a theme..that’s one reason, of many, why Wynton Marsalis excels in both genres. As for your cousin being an opera fan and not into Indian classical music….hey, coloratura arias found in many 19th cen operas, are an opportunity for a vocalist to show off her/his ability to improvise…sound familiar?
Parsing Shashi with a healthy hermeneutics-of-suspicion approach, what he is really saying is-
Oy vey. Chickity check yo self before you wreck yo self…
Red Snapper –
re the popularity worldwide of soccer, it’s due in large part to the fact that you don’t need any equipment except a ball (which is often not even a real ball in many poor countries). This makes it easier to play than basketball, football, baseball, tennis, hockey, golf, etc.
I don’t know what sport people choose when they have a choice, but I know that soccer is traditionally the choice in part because of its utilitarian lack of equipment needed.
All that, plus it’s the beautiful game, exciting, skilful, physical, depends on defence and attack, has a room for tough guys who break legs as well as highly talented artists, depends on individual talent as well as teamwork, and is sexy and fun too. All those things.
“On the other note, Tharoor’s article, at least to me, had a very sarcastic tone to it. Although the poor fool should have realized the average reader was not going to pick up on that.”
not even the average reader of the nyt?:) i guess they were overestimated. agree with #79 and #89. he was being serious/sarcastic at the same time (smart move! killing so many birds with one stone) but just isn’t as good a humor writer as a bill bryson who can insult cricket but still make you laugh despite your annoyance. perhaps that’s because tharoor appears to have been trying to kill too many birds with one stone (as #89 pointed out).
Yeah Bill Bryson is very funny….but even then he’s gently mocking himself and his inability to understand cricket as an incomprehending American, so his humour is very very sophisticated and layered, even though it seems so simple, which is part of what makes him such a great and subtle humorist — Tharoor’s piece in comparison is straining for effect, trying too hard.
“All that, plus it’s the beautiful game, exciting, skilful, physical, depends on defence and attack, has a room for tough guys who break legs as well as highly talented artists, depends on individual talent as well as teamwork, and is sexy and fun too. All those things.”
That describes American Football perfectly! And beneath its sheer physicality is very intricate planning, almost resembling a general’s tactics in the battlefield. In fact, its goal is similar to that of a battle – to advance into enemy territory one step at a time.
Not to take anything away from the greatness of soccer, experts say it didn’t captivate the US because it is a very low scoring game. What will be the harm in tinkering with the rules a little to generate 10 to 15 scores a game? Look at how cricket has evolved from the test match format to fixed number of overs of the World Cup.
“is somewhat looked down on by proponents of Western Classical Music because of their “jazz” like improvisations and lack of harmony.”
Indian Classic Music simply does not permit jazz-like improvisations. The jazz analogy is used so rampantly that people forget that it is just a loose analogy to explain Indian classical to lay people. The biggest difference between the two is that the improvisation permitted to an Indian classical musician is very tightly circumscribed by the raag and taal, making improvisation quite premeditated and extremely challenging. Imagine giving somebody your grandma’s chocolate cake recipe which calls for a precise measurement of every ingredient, then telling the person not to deviate from the recipe one iota but still find a way put his or her unique flavor to the cake so that it tastes different than grandma’s. I won’t comment on the freedom allowed in jazz. I am not an expert on jazz, though I enjoy it very much.
It is interesting to see Shashi Tharoor having ‘provoked’ people from all spheres of life including blogoshere with his NY Times column on cricket! … I can see that the world is still seething and is all out to scathe Shashi for his ‘a bit carried away’ display of love and longing for the beautiful game of cricket. … I think we need to understand that even a great personality like Shashi Tharoor – an accomplished author and diplomatic – can sound like an ordinary human being on a particular day. … More importantly, we, his ‘Indian’ fans, should not just enjoy his writings on his ‘good’ days but rather be with him in his ‘not so good days’ by not joining the Americans in his condemnation, even if we do not necessarily agree with his viewpoint.
Oops, forgot to plug my family’s classical music web site, which is purely a public service effort for us. A lot of good information on something all desis should be proud of.
http://www.classicalmusicofindia.com
It doesnt have to — it’s the global sport already.
“Not to take anything away from the greatness of soccer, experts say it didn’t captivate the US because it is a very low scoring game.”
isn’t baseball a low scoring game? and it goes on for much longer than a football match, yet it is still low scoring.
I think soccer did not take off in the US because of choice. New immigrants made a choice to assimilate and baseball became one of the major routes by which new immigrants assimilated, leaving sports such as soccer behind. Joe Dimaggio was a hero to italian-americans for this reason, Hank Greenberg was loved by jewish-americans, and Jackie Robinson’s efforts at integration riveted the country. Baseball was in a way integral to what it meant to be american