Is India’s dismal sports performance due to India being in the mode of goodness and sports being in passion?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question, is it true that India’s poor performance in sports like Olympics is due to Indian being a land in the mode of goodness and these sports being mostly passionate sports? Answer, not exactly, because India is not just a land in the mode of goodness, nor was it all, just a land in the mode of goodness ever. Even in the time when Vedic culture was there, there was Varanashram and Varanashram means that there are all four Varanas, the Brahmanas are in goodness and the Brahmanas are never the numerical majority, at least not in Kalyuga, maybe in earlier ages they might have been. Actually in earlier ages, most people would be in goodness, but in Kalyuga, there are all four Varanas and Kshatriyas are in passion, goodness and passion, Vaishyas are primarily in passion and Shudras are in ignorance.
So as far as sports is concerned, even if they involve physical prowess, that does not necessarily mean that a country which is spiritually minded will have to be poor in sports. Now Bhima was at his time the world’s greatest wrestler and he was in Bharat Varsha, what we now consider as India, and his nearest competitor at that time was Duryodhana, he was also from India. So wrestling, historically speaking also, Indians have been good at wrestling in whatever way we want to look at it.
So it’s a little superficial understanding that India’s poor sports performance is because India is primarily a spiritual country. If a country is spiritual, then that spiritual culture will also result in an all-round material development. You know, India had also got some of the greatest intellectuals in the world, Vedic mathematics, Ayurveda and many other branches of knowledge in India were very highly developed.
So of course, India’s distinctive contribution was that it had the most deep-rooted, widespread and systematically delineated spiritual culture in the world. So India’s unique contribution to the world is its profound spiritual wisdom and culture. But what is India’s unique contribution is not India’s only contribution.
If a culture, because it is spiritual and so it becomes materially defunct, at a material level is what most people are going to examine it, and people will not be attracted to it. So a spiritual culture also leads to all-round material development. And Krishna also, when he talks about sports in the Bhagavad Gita, he says, So in 6.17, he uses the word Vihara.
So Vihara means recreation and he says the recreation should be Yukta, regulated. Regulated means that one should not go into it disproportionately. So the real problem with sports is that the infatuation with it today is totally disproportionate.
First of all, sports should be, if Vihara is there, recreation is there, that can be one part of life, one small part of life, which enables one to relax. But today’s sports is not just, is not a small part of life and is not even for recreation. Sports has become a major occupant in people’s imagination and that is also evident from the prominent place that sports news acquires in the daily newspapers.
Even 10 years ago, then sports news would at best be in the, would be in the last pages, now it’s in the front page headlines. So when Krishna is talking about Yukta Vihara, he’s referring to somebody participating in sports. So participating in sports is one thing, observing sports is entirely another thing.
And observing sports for hours and hours together and then betting money in terms of lakhs of rupees on it and then making sports into a multi-million dollar profession, which also naturally brings corruption and match fixing and all that with it, is certainly regrettable. So the infatuation, over infatuation with sports and the commercialization of sports is what is unfortunate and undesirable. But sports as a recreational activity, it has its place in Vedic culture.
Now as devotees, Srila Prabhupada has given us not just the Vedic culture but the best of Vedic culture. So the best of Vedic culture means that Srila Prabhupada is urging us to aspire for pure devotional service in this very life. So even in Vedic times, it is not that everybody was on the path of pure devotional service.
So there were others who were on a gradual path of spiritual advancement and those who were on that path, through Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha, they had a latitude in their practices. And because of that latitude in their practices, they could naturally engage in several activities, which as devotees who have now taken the fast track to spiritual advancement, who focus on trying to aspire for Paradharma, for pure devotional service, we don’t engage in those activities. So we may find in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, certain Kshatriyas may engage in some sports and others may also participate in those sports.
So participating in sports is not in any way sinful but it is emotionally entangling and so distracting from the spiritual path and that’s why Srila Prabhupada does not recommend that. He also tells us that it is best for us to stay away from it. Now we can have pure devotional Vihaar, we can dance in Kirtans, we can have devotional music, we can discuss Krishna Katha and we can get our recreation at a spiritual level.
At the same time, it is not that that which is a part of Vedic culture has to be entirely rejected when we are practicing, when we are sharing the topmost of Vedic culture with society today. The topmost of Vedic culture is pure devotional service and we don’t see Narada Muni engaging in sports and Narada Muni, when he’s talking about his previous life to Vyasadeva, it is specifically stated that although he was a child, he did not participate in sports. He would sit and hear Krishna Katha from the Bhaktivedantas, the travelling Vaishnavas who were there, who had come there and who were staying near the place where he and his mother were staying and he was very serious and then after that he left.
When those Bhaktivedantas left, his mother passed away, then also he did not engage in childish sports although he was just five years old. He focused on his search for God. So those are our models and that’s why as devotees, we may not engage in sports or we may not get ourselves emotionally entangled in sports by watching sports also.
But that doesn’t mean that just because Vedic culture, because India is in mode of Indians are in mode of goodness and these are physical sports, so we can’t have excellence in sports. Actually say India’s poor performance in sports is because of a lack of infrastructure, lack of social systems and lack of whatever. There are various material factors for this.
We surely can’t say that Indians are in the mode of goodness today. There is so much materialism in India today and India has the second largest population in the world and all this population growth doesn’t happen because of the mode of goodness. Procreation and activity that happens primarily in the mode of passion and India will soon become the world’s number one population.
India will become the world’s population champion. That is not a championship that people in the mode of goodness win. So it’s a very simplistic idea to say that because Indians are in the mode of goodness, so we are poor in sports.
Actually what we can and what we need to point out is Indians are so infatuated with sports. For example, with cricket. So India is not a cricket mad country.
India is an international cricket mad country. Cricket craze, when a cricketer performs well in the Ranji Trophy or Durip Trophy or at an interstate level, nobody takes notice. But then an Indian cricketer performs at an international level, even if he is under 19 tournament, he hits a winning century and he becomes a national sensation.
Why? Because India as a nation and Indians as citizens of this nation are in a search for a respectable global self-identity. That means India wants to be seen as respectable in the world’s eyes because of nearly a thousand years of subjugation by foreign powers. Indians to some extent have a sort of sense of insecurity about themselves.
We could even call it a national inferiority complex. And Indians try to get rid of this complex by proving on the international scene that we are great. And to some extent, for many Indians, cricket offers them the avenue by which they can prove that we are great.
Of course, greatness of India doesn’t last always because cricket is an unpredictable game and the performance of the Indian cricket team is unpredictable. And moreover, cricket is actually played by only a handful of nations in the world. So cricket is not really a very fit candidate for establishing India’s arrival on the global stage.
But anyway, if you look at the deeper psychology involved over here, then we can understand that actually, if India wants to become a major player on the global scene, if India wants a respectable identity in the global eyes, then India’s state of contribution, instead of being sports, can be spirituality. If India can share with the world its spiritual culture, then what India can do for the world is far, far greater than what it can do in any other field. There is an American journalist, author Philip Goldstein, who has written a book called American Veda.
And in this book, he describes, it’s a very curious title, American Veda. So the title itself indicates the content and in that book is described how, from over the last 200-250 years, actually India has, India and Indian culture has penetrated into the intellectual heart of America. Starting from the time when Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thorey read the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, they, in fact, they were so influenced by it that they were called as the American Transcendentalists.
And from that time onwards, through the centuries, generation after generation, Indian spiritual teachers have gone to America and have inspired hundreds and thousands of Americans with the profound spiritual culture and message that has been there in India for millennia. And so much so that yoga is practiced by millions of people in America. Almost one in five of Americans is a registered yoga practitioner.
Kirtans are so popular in America as a form of devotional music that there are even some Christian organizations who have taken the Hare Krishna chant and they have made it, because the Hare Krishna chant and dance is so popular that they have taken it and they have adapted Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare. So they have replaced Krishna with Krishna. So Kirtan is immensely popular and they do it not just because they want to make spiritual advancement but they may also do it because it’s just relaxing for the mind.
And there are proposals that in the future, in the Grammy Awards, Kirtan may be a category for these awards. So Kirtan has originated from India. So actually, yoga, Kirtan, all these have become a significant part of the American intellectual heart and culture.
So if India could redirect its search for a global identity from sports or economics or software to spirituality, then India can actually not only succeed in establishing its distinct or unique global self-identity, but also contribute to the world in a way that no other country can actually contribute. And that was Srila Prabhupada’s desire also. That is Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s desire also.
Those who are born in India, they actually share the spiritual message with the world. Srila Prabhupada would say that we are living on diamonds but begging for broken glass. Diamond is the spiritual culture of India and the broken glass is the technological advancement of the West.
So actually, certainly India’s distinctive and unique contribution to the world will be spiritual culture. But where the spiritual culture is developed, even success will be seen at the material level. So India had a very deep spiritual culture and because of that India was also the most prosperous country in the world.
And because it was prosperous, that’s why so many invaders came to India. How many invaders will go to invade a poverty-stricken country? In fact, they will spend more money in trying to conquer the country than what they will gain by conquering the country. So nobody will want to do that.
So we shouldn’t imagine, we shouldn’t fallaciously imagine or argue that just because India is spiritual, so that means Indians are meant to be dismal at the material level. No, of Bhaktisiddhanta Sri Thakur, one of the first books that he wrote was called Bangi Samanjikta, Sociality in Bengal. And there he says that the human being has Karma Indriyas and Gyan Indriyas.
So to the extent people are in the mode of passion and ignorance, they see action with the Karma Indriyas as the sign of activity, dynamism and expertise in the Karma Indriyas as the sign of success. And to the extent people are in the mode of goodness, people see expertise in the Gyan Indriyas, that means in observing and then thinking and then expressing those thoughts. So expertise in the Gyan Indriyas is the sign of progress and advancement.
So that’s why if India is seen from the perspective of those who are in modes of passion and ignorance, then naturally Indian culture may seem primitive or simplistic or unsophisticated or things like that. But when India is seen from the point of view of goodness, then actually India has a great spiritual depth and that is India’s unique potential. But the point which is even those who have Gyan Indriyas, they also have Karma Indriyas.
So Indians can certainly excel more in Gyan Indriyas and functions of the Gyan Indriyas. At the same time, when there is a deep-rooted culture which is based on spiritual knowledge,