Constitutional patriotism

Don’t ask.

I read the above phrase in a news article detailing the pronouncements of a judge of the Indian Supreme Court, in the context of a PIL (Public Interest Litigation) “seeking a set of parameters on what amounts to abuse of the anthem”.

A small detour: Why is this in public interest? Is “public” in the singular or plural? PIL, a legal innovation, admired by judges of impeccable integrity, was to give voice to the voiceless, a way to establish locus standi of people who have great difficulty accessing the Supreme Court, typically on matters affecting public weal.

The PIL was brought on by a well-meaning individual, of course. How did he sense a level of urgency in this matter? Did he see a horde of people abusing it? I doubt it. That is, the matter perhaps is in the interest of the public, in the plural, but not enough to bring on a PIL. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court took it up. I suspect it felt that the justices have enough time on their hands; the system overload is not an overload, after all!

But, is the matter “abuse of anthem”, of any great significance, immediately and even in the foreseeable future? My humble opinion is, it is not. The court case, to be uncharitable and cynical too, merely allows one to enjoy his 15 minutes of fame. This PIL may have died a natural death, but something happened that triggered it.

As the telling goes, “The Supreme Court’s decision to consider this PIL followed after [sic] a wheel-chair bound woman man was assaulted by a couple at a cinema hall in Panaji for not standing up during the rendition of the anthem.” I would point out quickly that if you sense a cause-effect link, disabuse yourself o that line of thinking. Note that the PIL was brought on prior to this incident, which is one of public nuisance, and not much more.

Now, to the substantive matter at hand and what the Bench said; and it said many things.

For starters, “People must feel this is my country. This is my motherland... Arrey, who are you? You are an Indian first.”

I have some issues with that. Not that I am challenging what the highest court of the land said (as though I am in any position to do so), but I simply cannot understand how forcing people to hear the national anthem standing up in a darkened hall would instil any kind of patriotism, much less, “a sense of committed patriotism and nationalism."

The follow-up unease – there is something called “uncommitted patriotism.” The way I understand, either you are a patriot or you are not. It is almost like “unnecessary waste.” How can anything be necessary and be waste, simultaneously?

Take friction. It is fashionable to say it is a “necessary evil”. In fact, I declare that in my first year class on mechanics. But, I quickly reboot my thoughts and say, “No! No! Friction is necessary ... period. To see it as waste is complete nonsense.” Taking a cue, I can only wish that the Bench will clarify that the adjective it used did not belong.

The next point – is there a difference between a patriot and nationalist? That is, can you have a patriotic anti-national; or, to go the other way, an unpatriotic nationalist? Is there any way we can differentiate the two?

As I understand it, our Constitution starts, in the preamble (copying the US Constitution), “We the people ...” We have decided that we would follow these rules. Following the rules that we set for ourselves, is that not enough show of our patriotism? We already have the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act of 1951. Why has the Court been asked to pronounce on what has already been averred?

Oh, you say, the word “Insult” is the point here. Fine. If that be so, why single out cinema halls? Oh, you say that was the petition. So, your patriotism will be tested only in cinema halls; and that too only till the film starts. Our jurisprudence almost regularly does not blink an eye when extending the remit far and beyond what has been petitioned, but suddenly it got sharply focussed. Go figure!

When does life begin? We do not want to discuss that here. But, when does an IPL match begin? I would tend to think, given all the focus on the coin toss, at the toss. Therefore, for the sake of consistency, the anthem must be played before the coin toss, when, typically, the stadium is practically empty. Will that be disrespectful, singing to empty seats? But, now it is played only much later. Is IPL disrespecting the national anthem and flag? Someone has to think of bringing in a PIL against IPL!

Unfortunately, the Bench, it appears, did not want to take cognizance of insults to national symbols, the flag and the anthem, at other events. If the anthem should be played at the beginning of the movie, how can it be allowed at the end of other events? This is happening. By my reckoning, it indeed must precede the regular first item on the program: “Invocation”. In many college functions, with constitutional functionaries in attendance, the anthem is played at the end. So, your patriotism is attested to only for those few seconds, at the very end when you are tired of listening and your torture (by the pure fact of compulsion) is extended - not necessarily a place and time to invoke patriotism, you would agree. I can only hope that the final judgment puts paid to this implicit discrimination.

The next point: How does one identify “undesirable and disgraceful” places? Is it not context-specific, whether a place is “undesirable” and/or “disgraceful”? I think so. Then what the judgment, interim it may be, has done is to invite further court cases, now the petitions seeking guidance from the Supreme Court on case-to-case basis. As I said earlier, the case load is just not too heavy!

Now I want to go beyond our shores and reach into the SCOTUS. America witnessed the spectacle of an athlete kneeling in disrespect of the national anthem, and saying that it is his protest against what is happening in his nation, implicitly endorsing the Black Lives Matter movement, and he would continue doing so till the nation respects the flag and the anthem.

His stance was endorsed by many but also criticized, by some powerful people, including one of the so-called liberal judges of SCOTUS. She said that the act was “dumb and disrespectful”. This must have been a shock to many who were aware that SCOTUS had earlier declared that any law infringing upon the freedom of expression of a citizen – including burning the national flag – is unconstitutional. The honourable judge of the SCOTUS later said, in a manner of walking back her comment, that it was “inappropriately dismissive and harsh. I should have declined to respond.”

Now, our Supreme Court justices need not walk back their judgment in toto. But they must balance it. How? Extend it to all occasions in which the anthem would be played. You must think I am crazy. I am not.

Go back a few decades, about four, and there was this anthem playing at the end of film shows. Slowly but steadily people stopped waiting for it to end and started towards the exit even as it was playing. Finally, the anthem stopped playing. My guess is, if the judgment is extended across all events, it would be ignored over time.   

Compelling one to show respect ensures that one cannot judge whether that show of respect is meaningful. You have heard about the famous “Double-slit experiment” physics. The moment you monitor through which slit the particle negotiates the obstacle, you lose information about its true behaviour, which anyway is indescribably weird.

Likewise, the moment you start commanding respect, you lose track of who truly respects the article/person intended for veneration.

I respect our Supreme Court but whatever criticism I have directed at it in this post will be measured in precisely the terms opposite to my intention and feelings towards it. That sounds like a disclaimer but it is not.

Go deeper, higher and definitely think harder; as I did when I reached Gangotri more than a decade ago. The intense feeling I felt there, looking at the gushing waters and the snow-clad mountain peaks against the backdrop of deep blue sky, people taking in the harsh conditions T more than 4,500 m altitude) in their stride, was: This land is mine! These people are mine! I am in love! I am proud!

The above is my way of expressing whatever – you call it patriotism, committed or not, that is OK with me. You call it nationalism, that is OK with me too. These, I differentiate from the real thing, my deep feelings.

I am not sure listening to the National Anthem in the darkened cinema hall is going to evoke that feeling in me.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Some suggested changes for IPL

I had been contemplating putting down my thoughts on how IPL should change, how it should not be just another T20 tournament, how it should develop its own USP. And that is when I came across the article Power-hitting, the stand-out aspect of T20 cricket, by S. Dinakar in The Hindu of May 2, 2014. The article starts out “The sixes have been bludgeoned rather than timed in the on-going Indian Premier League”.

I noticed the difference immediately – in the title it is T20 but in the first sentence it is IPL. Save Erapalli Prasanna, a favorite cricketer of mine when I was growing up, none of the people quoted in this piece made the distinction between T20 and IPL. Then, I thought I should join Prasanna and cement this distinction, going far beyond what I suspect my hero would have liked to. Sorry Prasanna!

To start mild, I would say that as IPL has to discard this toss ritual. The designated home team must bat first, no matter the conditions. As each team plays every other team on a home-and-away basis through the season, each team will be forced to exhibit its wherewithal in setting a target as well as in chasing one. With some tweaks this can be taken into the play-off games also.

The field restrictions must go. This would bring in dynamism to the match. It is up to the captain to marshal his strengths strategically and tactically too. Where he placed his fielders for a particular bowler at a particular stage in the contest must be his prerogative and his alone.

The faster IPL sheds power plays, the better it would be. These look such a patchwork of rules and regulations. The bowling captain should give the nod to the fact that any ball bowled is a potential wicket or the clichéd “maximum”. He has to do a risk assessment – after all he has a battery of laptops working for him. On the other hand, I do not see any harm in keeping the no ball, short pitched ball and wide rules.

In American baseball, one of the funniest and most entertaining things to watch is the signal from the dugouts to the players in the middle. I miss these in IPL. IPL should bring in these, one signal, as decided by the captain taking feedback from the coaches, to all in the field. There should be detailed playbook with each combination of bowlers, batsmen and field positions given a specific code.  It will be a choreographed dance’ like touching the nose, pulling the right ear, slapping oneself on the right cheek etc. and we could be spared the pom-pom shaking of the cheer leaders!

The umpire’s status must be lowered. As it is, even for the most obvious decisions, the third umpire is consulted. It is the decision board that conveys the decision. The umpire is becoming increasingly redundant. Then, I do not see the need for the exalted position given to umpires. They must become more like the ball boys and girls in tennis!

And, here comes the big one. Each team must comprise two sub-teams, one batting and the other fielding. The batting sub-team must have no more than six players. The bowling team may have either eight or nine players; that is, six or seven players to cover the field. No restrictions on how many players can be shared between the two sides (the maximum, of course, is six!)

I will hint at the logic behind these suggestions. With only six wickets to lose, and even with only six or seven fielders roaming the field, the batting side will be wary of “bludgeoning”. The effect of “field restrictions” is brought out through another mechanism. The batsmen can go in for his shots but has to bear the risk of things not going well. There has to be heightened level of confidence behind a shot as the number of wickets to be sacrificed is fewer. The batting side will not carry the deadwood of bowlers trying to swat any and every ball out of the park. There will be some cricket left in IPL, unlike today.

If all these changes are brought in IPL would cease to be T20. A new name can be thought for this format of the game. Prasanna’s distinction will be valid and I will be satisfied. Why worry about the others?

Raghuram Ekambaram

In defense of cheerleading

Six years ago, if you had told me that I will be posting on cheerleading, I would have defenestrated you. But that is precisely what I am doing (posting and not throwing you out the window), indeed driven to do it, by IPL, of all things. Truly sad.

In a recent post on IPL I had written, “Get the cheerleaders out.” A good friend commented that I got it all wrong and my suggestions to improve IPL must include “[H]ow to increase suggestive moves for cheerleaders,” in the interest of profit maximization. Given the state of affairs in IPL with such sharp focus on selling to the exclusion of everything else, I could not disagree with him; yet, I wanted the context of cheerleading to be teased out of my experiences.

My first experience of cheerleading was at a NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) football game that the University of Kentucky was playing at the Commonwealth Stadium in Lexington, Kentucky in the Fall of 1978, at which time I did not know even the meaning of the word / phrase. Whenever there was a pause in the game, (and, in American Football there are more and longer pauses than action!), a set of athletic-looking students and a group of bewitching co-eds (yes, female students in US universities were merely co-eds, to their male counterparts) gather at the center of the field or line themselves in front of the partisan home crowd, to invoke some rah rah to get the team to perform better (and fail miserably, at least in the Commonwealth Stadium) – to lead the cheer for the team. It was all, I felt then, quite senseless.

Yet, sooner than later, I managed to internalize at least part of the logic of cheerleading. First, it is the cultural aspect. Cheerleading starts at the school level, as a show of solidarity with the contestants. It just evolves and fits into the university niche. Then, as I saw more and more of the stunts the students do while leading the cheer – invariably every routine ends up with a roar from the crowd, in all probability appreciation for the routine as well as exhorting the team– go way beyond shaking of pom poms and other things. These stunts are at the very least quasi-gymnastics. The performers, are at least quasi-athletes; on par with Rhythmic Gymnasts with props like colorful balls, ribbons, and rings?

In a hurry to post this piece, I denied myself the pleasure of mining through the hundreds of photographs, at least some of them of cheerleaders, I had taken at the games, both football and basketball of the University of Kentucky teams to include here. Instead, I chose the following from the stock available on the Net. I think you will excuse me.

No, I am not going to deny there is much suggestiveness, even in the costumes, but that is not all. I discerned certain commitment to cheering for the team. How effective these are, I am no judge.    

I do not know the motivations these cheerleaders may have had to get into this act. They get to travel to away games; they get the choicest points to watch the games from. They get their regular exercise routine. They gain exposure in the university and perhaps popularity too. There may even be some scholarships, I can’t remember. Of course, there are sacrifices, like studies (?), additional expenses. Anyways, the norm then could also have been for the co-eds to scour for suitable mates in universities, and cheerleading opened up such avenues. But, let that be.

It is when the NFL team Dallas Cowboys brought in Dallas Cowgirls (!) and NBA team Los Angeles Lakers got high profile Hollywoodian cheerleading to the professional ranks, I had to do another rethink on cheerleading. None, and I mean none, of the rationale for cheerleading at colleges scaled up to the professional ranks. It was just a job. Do you remember the flash-in-the-pan Paula Abdul? Good, if you do not.

Cheerleading for professional teams, like at the IPL, are mere dance routines and the only tangible prop is the pom pom. Of course, the intangibles are galore – the suggestive shakes, shimmying, the revealing costumes etc. Only the name Cheerleading is common between the high school / university and professional versions.

But my friend and perhaps most others who have been taken in by IPL version of cheerleading have not had the opportunity to contemplate as to how it may have come about, evolved. For them, cheerleading does not have an evolutionary background; it is more like the skyhook that dropped fully made human beings on the earth, like the Intelligent Designers (IDiots) and Creation Scientists claim (Philosopher Daniel Dennett’s imagery). Perhaps this is true of how cheerleading got to IPL, but there is more to it, at least some of which redeem the activity. 

This post is to disabuse them of this notion, with the help of Wikipedia:

“Cheerleading (ˈtʃɪərˌlidɪŋ) is an intense physical activity based upon organized routines, usually ranging anywhere from one to three minutes, which contains many components of tumbling, dance, jumps, cheers and stunting in order to direct spectators of events to cheer for sports teams at games …”

Hope I have succeeded enough to elicit some pom poming by cheerleaders!

Raghuram Ekambaram   

On T20 & IPL

IPL is a nice diversion for me in the evening, a few minutes of unwinding after a few hours of not-too-taxing work at the office. No wonder, then, as my eyes take in the feast of cheer leaders waving pom poms , my mind works overtime on the format of T20 and conduct of IPL.

The following are some of my brief observations:

1.    In T20, there is no need to carry the full contingent of 11 players in each inning. The team should be split into, say, 7 players, all batsmen, on the batting side (six wickets make up an inning) and 8 (bowlers and fielders), for the fielding side. Each sub-team (as in American Football) can sport specialists, which may also include all-rounders. In the sub-bullets below, I point out the rationale for such a split.

a.    There will be no also-rans hitting boundaries towards the end of an inning, as each batsman is a genuine batsman and no bowler will be called into bat.

b.    Runs will be scored by batsman playing cricketing shots (and slogging if needed) and not by bowlers hitting “Hail Mary!” shots (in American football, desperate heaves by the QB are called “Hail Mary!” passes!).

c.    The value of defending one’s wicket will go up, each wicket to be defended for 20 balls on average instead of for 12.

d.    No need to have special provisions like Power Play overs or field restrictions. Risk assessment and risk taking will be negotiated solely by the batting team, indeed by the batsman facing the bowler – some demand on intelligence.

e.    There will be no less opportunities for scoring as there will be three less fielders.

f.     More players on the team will truly earn their salary, as the number of players on the field is likely to be more than 11.

2.    In IPL, the coin toss should be done away with. The home team will choose either to bat or field first. No matter how much the experts rate and evaluate the pitch, I do not believe they have actually predicted what the batsmen face.

3.    Stipulate against meaningless statistics. In a match the day after the Gayle blitz, a projected score of 245 was flashed on the TV screen with the score reading something like 30+ in about 15 or so balls. To the eternal shame of MS Excel adherents, the final tally in the innings was between 150 and 160. Now, what kind of a projection was that? Indeed, even in the later parts of an innings, the screen shows “XXX at x runs per over”, “YYY at y runs per over” etc. The information content is zero. If such projections are indeed deemed necessary, IPL should get some cricketing professionals / statisticians to assess the situation and throw up some meaningful, realizable number, not a tasteless smorgasbord.

4.    Delete the award ceremony after each match. Photo-ops for corporates and politicians – gag me with a fork!

5.    Let IPL show some form of social responsibility and institute one-year scholarship for students in schools (excluding the fancy ones) or spruce up the labs / library etc. in the name of the MVP of each match in the host city. After all, it is the city that supports the franchise, at the gates and beyond TV revenue. Abolish all the other awards.

6.    Let the players know that they are playing for the owners of the team. If they get booed, it comes with the territory. No national sentiment can be carried on to the IPL – this comment is directed at Virat Kohli.  

7.    Get the cheer leaders out. Even in the first edition, the novelty factor did not score much and now it is decidedly dragging. Oh, those ethnic dresses on cheer leaders – so disgusting.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Australians are afraid

Australians have been declared by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) as the loser in their Davis Cup Asia/Oceania Group I tie with India scheduled for May 8-10 at Chennai, says this news report. You must read the full report, even perhaps source additional material from other media outlets to understand the paranoia of Australians.

Australians are hesitant to come to Chennai, Tennis Australia (TA) says, on account of the security concerns. TA president Geoff Pollard said, “… we have major security concerns for the players, particularly during the election.” India is “an area of such high risk.”

Mr Pollard has been joined by John Fitzgerald, the Davis Cup captain in detailing and elaborating the risk. Mr Fitzgerald believes that ITF should have “followed the move to switch the Indian Premier League to South Africa due to security concerns.” Dismissing the assurance from various sources, including the positive reports of the security review, Mr Fitzgerald lists the recent events that have drip fed his concerns – “… dozens of people are killed along the campaign trail of the event … [a] train was hijacked.” He discounted the safe conduct of the ATP tour event in Chennai in January. He asks, if all the safety assurances are satisfactory, why did IPL move to South Africa?

Now, come to Todd Woodbridge, the most capped Australian Davis Cupper. He characterized the Indian situation as a “very, very difficult predicament with the way their social system’s running.” Suddenly, a tennis player has become the sociology professor!

My replies, which of course, Messrs Pollard, Fitzgerald and Woodbridge shall remain obviously oblivious to. IPL is a sustained campaign involving at least eight venues in eight cities with fifty nine matches to be played over a span of about a little more than a month. Davis Cup tie is a three day affair, at one location. The minimum seating capacity in an IPL arena is about 25,000 and that is at least twice as large as the capacity of the stadium for the tennis tie. The size of any one IPL contingent should be at least thrice as big as that for the Davis Cup.

That is, there is at least an order of difference between the security efforts required at the IPL campaign vis-à-vis the Davis Cup tie. It is really surprising that no one hit the three Australian Musketeers with this feature of their anomalous comparison.

Let me teach a few points of Indian sociology to the good Australian professor and his compatriots! India adds to its population nearly an Australian population every year (India’s eighteen million to Australia’s twenty one million). Our society is functional even under this ever increasing burden. What is a mere dozens of deaths in a surcharged atmosphere where 714 million people (thirty five times the population of Australia!) are exercising their rights? Will the Australian players be walking along the campaign trail, which is where such violence is encountered? I, as much as any Indian, would like to play out the ideal scenario - violence-free elections. But, when there are deviations from the idyll, we need to bring in the context. When we do, we see that India during elections is a model to emulate. Indeed, India is a country of low risk.

Pray tell how many of the Australian Davis Cuppers are going to travel by train, to cite as a concern the brief hijacking drama of a train in a place far from Chennai where the match is to be played. Please do not play up the fear factor because you end up undermining your arguments. That is my advice to Mr Fitzgerald et al.

By the time, the matches roll around, the election fever will be on the down side, having completed more than 80% of it. Chennai goes to poll on May 13th, the last of the five phases, three days after the Davis Cup tie. By then, the Australians would be ensconced quite comfortably in their native land, if not with a warm feeling of having entered the World Group (that is my prognosis for the event that is now not to be).

Now, I want to ask the Australians a few questions. Aren’t Australians going on vacation to Bali? Did the English team not come back after the Mumbai event to play out the test series? Was the English team not protected during the event and evacuated safely to their country? Will you refuse to go to the US to play a Davis Cup tie, because, after all the terror-defining 9/11 happened there? Did the Australian players not take part in Wimbledon when the IRA was active? You must remember that Louis Mountbatten was assassinated by the IRA. Japan has had terror attacks and so has China and not to talk of Russia, Israel, South Africa, Spain, Germany. Where will you play, please tell us. Iceland? Or, perhaps Antarctica? If I had the choice, I will send you off to Afghanistan. If you want to hide behind the reason of safety from terror attacks, you really have no place to hide.

Now, to conclude, I know why the Australians are not coming. They are afraid. They are not afraid for their safety but for their performance against India. It is better to lick the wounds before they are inflicted.

Raghuram Ekambaram