There are times in life and believe me, for most people, there are very few of these; when you genuinely feel proud about being born in your country. Given that we Indians are an emotional lot; these moments may be a few more than say our American compatriots (for them nationality and pride rarely go hand in hand; their favorite game is one they play amongst themselves; their most memorable movies deal with issues like superheroes; oil crisis etc) but even then we have very few of those moments where the emotion of patriotism overtakes our sensibilities. But 25 years back; there was one; one that even after so many years makes every Indian proud; makes me want to stand up in the theatre today and wholeheartedly sing the National Anthem - the 1983 Cricket World Cup Victory.
A lot of countries that have faced strife to earn an identity or have faced internal crises within the last century tend to value their own identity much more than the developed countries. For these countries, even a relatively small incident of world domination is a reason enough to celebrate. That's because it allows us as individuals sub consciously to believe that there's hope for us, a hope that someday very soon we'll be able to match the world in all frontiers. And it gives them a reason to believe that they can now stand shoulder to shoulder with their foreign compatriots.
And that's exactly what that 1983 world cup win did. A perfectly scripted fairy tale story; we rose from the ashes (literally from an 5 - 18 against Zim.) to go on and beat the Goliaths of the cricketing world. That one single moment when Mohinder Amarnath got Michael Holding's wickets and the Indian team went ballistic made it for us as Indians. It gave us our moment in the limelight; probably our first when we could proudly say we were Indian and felt not one bit of remorse about the fact. For a country that was still putting its building blocks in place and trying to find a consistent way of making development work; this one victory over the world did a phenomenal lot for its confidence beyond just its sporting implications.
Today, close to 60% of the people living in this country have no memory associated with that day because they weren't even born. Today, we live in a period where India is the world's next big white hope and where we're increasingly the dominators and not the suppressed. Today confidence is not an issue and "being Indian" is fashionable. But let's take a moment today and celebrate the occasion that, in a sense, was the first real show of domination in a period where confidence in our abilities and being Indian were both issues. Let's celebrate the moment when for that one day; we stood above the world and felt like kings. Let's celebrate the 1983 World Cup win.
A lot of countries that have faced strife to earn an identity or have faced internal crises within the last century tend to value their own identity much more than the developed countries. For these countries, even a relatively small incident of world domination is a reason enough to celebrate. That's because it allows us as individuals sub consciously to believe that there's hope for us, a hope that someday very soon we'll be able to match the world in all frontiers. And it gives them a reason to believe that they can now stand shoulder to shoulder with their foreign compatriots.
And that's exactly what that 1983 world cup win did. A perfectly scripted fairy tale story; we rose from the ashes (literally from an 5 - 18 against Zim.) to go on and beat the Goliaths of the cricketing world. That one single moment when Mohinder Amarnath got Michael Holding's wickets and the Indian team went ballistic made it for us as Indians. It gave us our moment in the limelight; probably our first when we could proudly say we were Indian and felt not one bit of remorse about the fact. For a country that was still putting its building blocks in place and trying to find a consistent way of making development work; this one victory over the world did a phenomenal lot for its confidence beyond just its sporting implications.
Today, close to 60% of the people living in this country have no memory associated with that day because they weren't even born. Today, we live in a period where India is the world's next big white hope and where we're increasingly the dominators and not the suppressed. Today confidence is not an issue and "being Indian" is fashionable. But let's take a moment today and celebrate the occasion that, in a sense, was the first real show of domination in a period where confidence in our abilities and being Indian were both issues. Let's celebrate the moment when for that one day; we stood above the world and felt like kings. Let's celebrate the 1983 World Cup win.
Comments