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Questions on how India selects its cricketers

Dec 25, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
Remember the days in the 1980’s when apartheid was under siege in South Africa? It was a time when West Indies Cricket was the dominant force in the cricketing world. Although small, the West Indies did their part to put the pressure on the South African apartheid regime by withholding their talents from playing in South Africa as long as that horrible system was in place. Imagine West Indies cricket having a system where players from, let’s say, the rural areas were discriminated against and were not eligible to play in the team. We would not have had the services of players like Rohan Kanhai, Roy Fredericks, Basil Butcher, Alvin Kallicharran, and so many others that made West Indies cricket famous. We would have been a much weaker team than the powerhouse we had.
Transfer this thought to the Indian cricket team. As great as Indian cricket teams have been throughout the years, they have not been fielding their best because of an apartheid-like system where a large number of potential players are prohibited from making the Indian national cricket team based simply on their birth. This castigated group is called Dalits or Harijans, more popularly known as the Untouchables.
Not much is said about this crippling system because this kind of apartheid is shrouded in religion.
In a nutshell, Hinduism is the dominant religion in India and in four-fold varna system, people are born into four major castes; Brahmins (the highest caste) which are the priests and religious teachers, Kshatriyas (second only to Brahmins) which consists of warriors and kings, Vaishyas (third in line) which are traditionally the artisans, merchants and farmers, and at the bottom of the four are the Sudras or Shudras who are the farm workers, servants and laborers. Untouchables are supposed to be the subhuman group below the Sudras. Officially they are not a part of the caste system but this group is seen by some as a fifth varna but outside of the four-caste system.
Ninety-nine percent of Indian cricketers we know are mostly Brahmins or the other higher castes. Brahmins make up 4% of India’s population but on average, have in excess of 70% representation in the cricket teams. Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Vinoo Mankad, Ajit Wadekar, G.R. Vishwanath, EAS Prassana, Ishant Sharma, Chatrhan Sharma, were all of the Brahmin caste. The list is too long to include here but here are a few more; Chandrashakar, Srikanth, Sivaramakrishman, Doshi, Joshi, Rohit Sharma, Prasad, Malhotra, Laxman, Karthik, Sreeshashant, Sardesai, manjrekar, Jaisimha, Rao and Shekar. The rest of the players who were not Brahmins were either Kshatriyas or Vaisyas. These include Kapil Dev, Yuvaraj Singh, Mongia, Jadeja, Chauhan, Bedi and Harbhajan Singh.
Untouchables or Dalits (as they preferred to be called) were generally and still are excluded from the Indian National team. Palwankar Baloo was the first Dalit to play for India and this was since the early 20th century and only at the insistence of some British players (remember India was a British colony at this time).
In all these years of glorious Indian cricket, only two (yes, two) Dalits have ever represented India. Vinod Kambli is supposed to be the other but there are doubts about his Dalit identity since it is claimed in some quarters that he belongs to a fisherman caste which means that technically he is not from the scheduled caste or Dalits. The bottom line is although Dalits make up just under 17% of India’s population one can safely say that less than five Dalits were allowed to represent India in cricket.
The question is; what do we call a system which bars a group from participating in national events based on nothing but their birth? How is this different from the apartheid system to which we all objected and had boycotted when it was active in South Africa? Why have we turned a blind eye to this apartheid in India?
Malcolm Alves

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