Rahul Dravid Speech

7/28/2019 Rahul Dravid Speech

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The Bradman Oration 2011

'Three formats cannot be played in equal

numbers'Rahul Dravid's speech at the Bradman Oration in Canberra, in which he covered issues

from flaws in cricket scheduling to the need for cricketers to be more transparent

December 14, 2011

Thank you for inviting me to deliver the Bradman Oration; the respect and the regard that camewith the invitation to speak tonight, is deeply appreciated.

I realise a very distinguished list of gentlemen have preceded me in the ten years that theBradman Oration has been held. I know that this Oration is held every year to appreciate the life

and career of Sir Don Bradman, a great Australian and a great cricketer. I understand that I am

supposed to speak about cricket and issues in the game - and I will.

Yet, but first before all else, I must say that I find myself humbled by the venue we find

ourselves in. Even though there is neither a pitch in sight, nor stumps or bat and balls, as acricketer, I feel I stand on very sacred ground tonight. When I was told that I would be speaking

at the National War Memorial, I thought of how often and how meaninglessly, the words 'war',

'battle', 'fight' are used to describe cricket matches.

Yes, we cricketers devote the better part of our adult lives to being prepared to perform for ourcountries, to persist and compete as intensely as we can - and more. This building, however,recognises the men and women who lived out the words - war, battle, fight - for real and then

gave it all up for their country, their lives left incomplete, futures extinguished.

The people of both our countries are often told that cricket is the one thing that brings Indians

and Australians together. That cricket is our single common denominator.

India's first Test series as a free country was played against Australia in November 1947, three

months after our independence. Yet the histories of our countries are linked together far more

deeply than we think and further back in time than 1947.

We share something else other than cricket. Before they played the first Test match against each

other, Indians and Australians fought wars together, on the same side. In Gallipoli, where, alongwith the thousands of Australians, over 1300 Indians also lost their lives. In World War II, there

were Indian and Australian soldiers in El Alamein, North Africa, in the Syria-Lebanon

campaign, in Burma, in the battle for Singapore.


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Before we were competitors, Indians and Australians were comrades. So it is only appropriate

that we are here this evening at the Australian War Memorial, where along with celebrating

cricket and cricketers, we remember the unknown soldiers of both nations.

It is however, incongruous, that I, an Indian, happen to be the first cricketer from outside

Australia, invited to deliver the the Bradman Oration. I don't say that only because Sir Don oncescored a hundred before lunch at Lord's and my 100 at Lord's this year took almost an entire day.

But more seriously, Sir Don played just five Tests against India; that was in the first India-Australia series in 1947-48, which was to be his last season at home. He didn't even play in

India, and remains the most venerated cricketer in India not to have played there.

We know that he set foot in India though, in May 1953, when on his way to England to report on

the Ashes for an English newspaper, his plane stopped in Calcutta airport. There were said to be

close to a 1000 people waiting to greet him; as you know, he was a very private person and sogot into an army jeep and rushed into a barricaded building, annoyed with the airline for having

'breached confidentiality.' That was all Indians of the time saw of Bradman who remains amythical figure.

For one generation of fans in my country, those who grew up in the 1930s, when India was still

under British rule, Bradman represented a cricketing excellence that belonged to somewhereoutside England. To a country taking its first steps in Test cricket, that meant something. Hissuccess against England at that time was thought of as our personal success. He was striking one

for all of us ruled by the common enemy. Or as your country has so poetically called them, the

Poms.

There are two stories that I thought I should bring to your notice. On June 28, 1930, the day

Bradman scored 254 at Lord's against England, was also the day Jawaharlal Nehru was arrestedby the police. Nehru was, at the time, one of the most prominent leaders of the Indian

independence movement and later, independent India's first Prime Minister. The coincidence of

the two events, was noted by a young boy KN Prabhu, who was both nationalist, cricket fan andlater became independent India's foremost cricket writer. In the 30s, as Nehru went in and out of

jail, Bradman went after the England bowling and, for KN Prabhu, became a kind of avenging

angel.

There's another story I've heard about the day in 1933, when the news reached India that

Bradman's record for the highest Test score of 334 had been broken by Wally Hammond. As

much as we love our records, they say some Indian fans at the time were not exactly happy.Now, there's a tale that a few even wanted to wear black bands to mourn the fact that this

precious record that belonged to Australia - and by extension, us - had gone back. To an

Englishman. We will never know if this is true, if black bands were ever worn, but as journalistssometimes tell me, why let facts get in the way of a good story.

My own link with Bradman was much like that of most other Indians - through history books,some old video footage and his wise words. About leaving the game better than you found it.

About playing it positively, as Bradman, then a selector, told Richie Benaud before the 1960-61


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West Indies tour of Australia. Of sending a right message out from cricket to its public. Of

players being temporary trustees of a great game.

While there may be very little similarity in our records or our strike-rates or our fielding - and I

can say this only today in front of all of you - I am actually pleased that I share something very

important with Sir Don.

He was, primarily, like me, a No.3 batsman. It is a tough, tough job.

We're the ones who make life easier for the kings of batting, the middle order that follows us.

Bradman did that with a bit more success and style than I did. He dominated bowling attacks andput bums on seats, if i bat for any length of time I am more likely to bore people to sleep. Still, it

is nice to have batted for a long time in a position, whose benchmark is, in fact, the benchmark

for batsmanship itself.

Before he retired from public life in his 80s, I do know that Bradman watched Sunil Gavaskar's

generation play a series in Australia. I remember the excitement that went through Indian cricketwhen we heard the news that Bradman had seen Sachin Tendulkar bat on TV and thought hebatted like him. It was more than mere approval, it was as if the great Don had finally, passed on

his torch. Not to an Aussie or an Englishman or a West Indian. But to one of our own.

One of the things, Bradman said has stayed in my mind. That the finest of athletes had, along

with skill, a few more essential qualities: to conduct their life with dignity, with integrity, with

courage and modesty. All this he believed, were totally compatible with pride, ambition,determination and competitiveness. Maybe those words should be put up in cricket dressing

rooms all over the world.

As all of you know, Don Bradman passed away on February 25, 2001, two days before the Indiav Australia series was to begin in Mumbai.

Whenever an important figure in cricket leaves us, cricket's global community pauses in the

midst of contests and debates, to remember what he represented of us, what he stood for, and

Bradman was the pinnacle. The standard against which all Test batsmen must take guard.

The series that followed two days after Bradman's death later went on to become what many

believe was one of the greatest in cricket. It is a series, I'd like to believe, he would have enjoyedfollowing.

A fierce contest between bat and ball went down to the final session of the final day of the finalTest. Between an Australian team who had risen to their most imposing powers and a young

Indian team determined to rewrite some chapters of its own history.

The 2001 series contained high-quality cricket from both sides and had a deep impact on the

careers of those who played a part in it. The Australians were near unbeatable in the first half of

the new decade, both home and away. As others floundered against them, India became the onlyteam that competed with them on even terms.


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India kept answering questions put to them by the Australians and asking a few themselves. The

quality demanded of those contests, sometimes acrimonious, sometimes uplifting, made us, the

Indian team, grow and rise. As individuals, we were asked to play to the absolute outer limits ofour capabilities and we often extended them.

Now, whenever India and Australia meet, there is expectation and anticipation - and as we getinto the next two months of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, players on both sides will want to

deliver their best.

When we toured in 2007-08, I thought it was going to be my last tour of Australia. The

Australians thought it was going to be the last time they would be seeing Sachin Tendulkar on

their shores. He received warm standing ovations from wonderful crowds all around the country.

Well, like a few, creaking Terminators, we're back. Older, wiser and I hope improved.

The Australian public will want to stand up to send Sachin off all over again this time. But I must

warn you, given how he's been playing these days, there are no guarantees about final goodbyes.

In all seriousness, though, the cricket world is going to stop and watch Australia and India. It is

Australia's first chance to defend their supremacy at home following defeat in the 2010 Ashes

and a drawn series against New Zealand. It is India's opportunity to prove that the defeat toEngland in the summer was an aberration that we will bounce back from.

If both teams look back to their last 2007-08 series in Australia, they will know that they should

have done things a little differently in the Sydney Test. But I think both sides have moved on

from there; we've played each other twice in India already and relations between the two teams

are much better than they have been as far as I can remember.

Thanks to the IPL, Indians and Australians have even shared dressing rooms. Shane Watson's

involvement in Rajasthan, Mike Hussey's role with Chennai to mention a few, are greatlyappreciated back home. And even Shane Warne likes India now. I really enjoyed playing

alongside him at Rajasthan last season and can confidently report to you that he is not eating

imported baked beans any more.

In fact, looking at him, it seems, he is not eating anything.

It is often said that cricketers are ambassadors for their country; when there's a match to be won,

sometimes we think that is an unreasonable demand. After all, what would career diplomats do if

the result of a Test series depended on them, say, walking? But, as ties between India andAustralia have strengthened and our contests have become more frequent, we realise that as

Indian players, we stand for a vast, varied, often unfathomable and endlessly fascinating country.

At the moment, to much of the outside world, Indian cricket represents only two things - money

and power. Yes, that aspect of Indian cricket is a part of the whole, but it is not the complete

picture. As a player, as a proud and privileged member of the Indian cricket team, I want to say


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that, this one-dimensional, often cliched image relentlessly repeated is not what Indian cricket is

really all about.

I cannot take all of you into the towns and villages our players come from, and introduce you to

their families, teachers, coaches, mentors and team-mates who made them international

cricketers. I cannot take all of you here to India to show you the belief, struggle, effort andsacrifice from hundreds of people that runs through our game.

As I stand here today, it is important for me to bring Indian cricket and its own remarkable storyto you. I believe it is very necessary that cricketing nations try to find out about each other, try to

understand each other and the different role cricket plays in different countries, because ours is,

eventually, a very small world.

In India, cricket is a buzzing, humming, living entity going through a most remarkable time, like

no other in our cricketing history. In this last decade, the Indian team represents more than everbefore, the country we come from - of people from vastly different cultures, who speak different

languages, follow different religions, belong to all classes of society. I went around our dressingroom to work out how many languages could be spoken in there and the number I have arrived at

is: 15, including Shona and Afrikaans.

Most foreign captains, I think, would baulk at the idea. But, when I led India, I enjoyed it, Imarvelled at the range of difference and the ability of people from so many differentbackgrounds to share a dressing room, to accept, accommodate and respect that difference. In a

world growing more insular, that is a precious quality to acquire, because it stays for life and

helps you understand people better, understand the significance of the other.

Let me tell you one of my favourite stories from my Under-19 days, when the India Under-19

team played a match against the New Zealand junior team. We had two bowlers in the team, onefrom the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh - he spoke only Hindi, which is usually a link

language for players from all over India, ahead even of English. It should have been all right,

except the other bowler came from Kerala, in the deep south, and he spoke only the state'sregional language, Malayalam. Now even that should have been okay as they were both bowlers

and could bowl simultaneous spells.

Yet in one game, they happened to come together at the crease. In the dressing room, we were in

splits, wondering how they were going to manage the business of a partnership, calling for runs

or sharing the strike. Neither man could understand a word of what the other was saying and they

were batting together. This could only happen in Indian cricket. Except that these two guys cameup with a 100-run partnership. Their common language was cricket and that worked out just fine.

The everyday richness of Indian cricket lies right there, not in the news you hear about million-dollar deals and television rights. When I look back over the 25 years I've spent in cricket, I

realise two things. First, rather alarmingly, that I am the oldest man in the game, older to even

Sachin by three months. More importantly, I realise that Indian cricket actually reflects ourcountry's own growth story during this time. Cricket is so much a part of our national fabric that


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as India - its economy, society and popular culture - transformed itself, so did our most-loved

sport.

As players we are appreciative beneficiaries of the financial strength of Indian cricket, but we are

more than just mascots of that economic power. The caricature often made of Indian cricket and

its cricketers in the rest of the world is that we are pampered superstars. Overpaid, underworked,treated like a cross between royalty and rock stars.

Yes, the Indian team has an enormous, emotional following and we do need security when weget around the country as a group. It is also why we make it a point to always try and conduct

ourselves with composure and dignity. On tour, I must point out, we don't attack fans or do drugs

or get into drunken theatrics. And at home, despite what some of you may have heard, we don'tlive in mansions with swimming pools.

The news about the money may well overpower all else, but along with it, our cricket is full ofstories the outside world does not see. Television rights generated around Indian cricket, are

much talked about. Let me tell you what the television - around those much sought-after rights -has done to our game.

A sport that was largely played and patronised by princes and businessmen in traditional urban

centres, cities like Bombay, Bangalore, Chennai, Baroda, Hyderabad, Delhi - has begun to pull incricketers from everywhere.

As the earnings from Indian cricket have grown in the past 2 decades, mainly through television,the BCCI has spread revenues to various pockets in the country and improved where we play.

The field is now spread wider than it ever has been, the ground covered by Indian cricket, has

shifted.

Twenty seven teams compete in our national championship, the Ranji Trophy. Last season

Rajasthan, a state best known for its palaces, fortresses and tourism won the Ranji Trophy titlefor the first time in its history. The national one-day championship also had a first-time winner in

the newly formed state of Jharkand, where our captain MS Dhoni comes from.

The growth and scale of cricket on our television was the engine of this population shift. Like

Bradman was the boy from Bowral, a stream of Indian cricketers now come from what you could

call India's outback.

Zaheer Khan belongs to the Maharashtra heartland, from a town that didn't have even one proper

turf wicket. He could have been an instrumentation engineer but was drawn to cricket throughTV and modelled his bowling by practising in front of the mirror on his cupboard at home, andfirst bowled with a proper cricket ball at the age of 17.

One day out of nowhere, a boy from a village in Gujarat turned up as India's fastest bowler. After

Munaf Patel made his debut for India, the road from the nearest railway station to his village had

to be improved because journalists and TV crews from the cities kept landing up there.


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We are delighted that Umesh Yadav didn't become a policeman like he was planning and turned

to cricket instead. He is the first cricketer from the central Indian first-class team of Vidarbha to

play Test cricket.

Virender Sehwag, it shouldn't surprise you, belongs to the wild west just outside Delhi. He had to

be enrolled in a college which had a good cricket programme and travelled 84kms every day bybus to get to practice and matches.

Every player in this room wearing an India blazer has a story like this. Here, ladies andgentlemen, is the heart and soul of Indian cricket.

Playing for India completely changes our lives. The game has given us a chance to pay back our

debt to all those who gave their time, energy and resources for us to be better cricketers: we can

build new homes for our parents, get our siblings married off in style, give our families very

comfortable lives.

The Indian cricket team is in fact, India itself, in microcosm. A sport that was played first byprinces, then their subordinates, then the urban elite, is now a sport played by all of India.Cricket, as my two under-19 team-mates proved, is India's most widely-spoken language. Even

Indian cinema has its regional favourites; a movie star in the south may not be popular in the

north. But a cricketer? Loved everywhere.

It is also a very tough environment to grow up in - criticism can be severe, responses to victory

and defeat extreme. There are invasions of privacy and stones have been thrown at our homesafter some defeats.

It takes time getting used to, extreme reactions can fill us with anger. But every cricketer realises

at some stage of his career, that the Indian cricket fan is best understood by remembering thesentiment of the majority, not the actions of a minority.

One of the things that has always lifted me as a player is looking out of the team bus when we

travelled somewhere in India. When people see the Indian bus going by, see some of us sitting

with our curtains drawn back, it always amazes me how much they light up. There is aninstantaneous smile, directed not just at the player they see - but at the game we play that, for

whatever reason, means something to people's lives. Win or lose, the man on the street will smile

and give you a wave.

After India won the World Cup this year, our players were not congratulated as much as they

were thanked by people they ran into. "You have given us everything," they were told, "all of ushave won." Cricket in India now stands not just for sport, but possibility, hope, opportunities.

On our way to the Indian team, we know of so many of our team-mates, some of whom mayhave been equally or more talented than those sitting here, who missed out. When I started out,

for a young Indian, cricket was the ultimate gamble - all or nothing, no safety nets. No second

chances for those without an education or a college degree or second careers. Indian cricket's

wealth now means a wider pool of well paid cricketers even at first-class level.


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For those of us who make it to the Indian team, cricket is not merely our livelihood, it is a gift we

have been given. Without the game, we would just be average people leading average lives. As

Indian cricketers, our sport has given us the chance do something worthwhile with our lives.How many people could say that?

This is the time Indian cricket should be flowering; we are the world champions in the shortgame, and over the space of the next 12 months should be involved in a tight contest with

Australia, South Africa and England to determine which one of us is the world's strongest Test

team.

Yet I believe this is also a time for introspection within our game, not only in india, but all over

the world. We have been given some alerts and responding to them quickly is the smart thing todo.

I was surprised a few months ago to see the lack of crowds in an ODI series featuring India. Bythat I don't mean the lack of full houses, I think it was the sight of empty stands I found

somewhat alarming.

India played its first one-day international at home in November 1981, when I was nine.

Between then and now India have played 227 ODIs at home; the October five-match series

against England was the first time that the grounds have not been full for an ODI featuring theIndian team.

In the summer of 1998, I played in a one-dayer against Kenya in Kolkata and the Eden Gardenswas full. Our next game was held in the 48-degree heat of Gwalior and the stands were heaving.

The October series against England was the first one at home after India's World Cup win. It was

called the 'revenge' series meant to wipe away the memory of a forgettable tour of England. Indiakept winning every game, and yet the stands did not fill up. Five days after a 5-0 victory 95,000

turned up to watch the India's first Formula One race.

A few weeks later I played in a Test match against West Indies in Calcutta, in front of what was

the lowest turn out in Eden Gardens' history. Yes we still wanted to win and our intensity did notdip. But at the end of the day, we are performers, entertainers and we love an audience. The

audience amplifies everything you are doing, the bigger the crowd the bigger the occasion, its

magnitude, its emotion. When I think about the Eden Gardens crowds this year, I wonder what

the famous Calcutta Test of 2001 would have felt like with 50,000 people less watching us.

Australia and South Africa played an exciting and thrilling Test series recently and two greatTest matches produced some fantastic performances from players of both teams, but were sadlyplayed in front of sparse crowds.

It is not the numbers that Test players need, it is the atmosphere of a Test that every player wants

to revel in and draw energy from. My first reaction to the lack of crowds for cricket was that

there had been a lot of cricket and so perhaps, a certain amount of spectator-fatigue. That is too

simplistic a view; it's the easy thing to say but might not be the only thing.


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The India v England ODI series had no context, because the two countries had played each other

in four Tests and five ODIs just a few weeks before. When India and West Indies played ODIs a

month after that the grounds were full, but this time the matches were played in smaller venuesthat didn't host too much international cricket. Maybe our clues are all there and we must remain

vigilant.

Unlike Australia or England, Indian cricket has never had to compete with other sports for a

share of revenues, mind space or crowd attendance at international matches. The lack of crowds

may not directly impact on revenues or how important the sport is to Indians, but we do need toaccept that there has definitely been a change in temperature over, I think, the last two years.

Whatever the reasons are - maybe it is too much cricket or too little by way of comfort forspectators - the fan has sent us a message and we must listen. This is not mere sentimentality.

Empty stands do not make for good television. Bad television can lead to a fall in ratings, the fall

in ratings will be felt by media planners and advertisers looking elsewhere.

If that happens, it is hard to see television rights around cricket being as sought after as they havealways been in the last 15 years. And where does that leave everyone? I'm not trying to be an

economist or doomsday prophet - this is just how I see it.

Let us not be so satisfied with the present, with deals and finances in hand that we get blindsided.Everything that has given cricket its power and influence in the world of sports has started fromthat fan in the stadium. They deserve our respect and let us not take them for granted.

Disrespecting fans is disrespecting the game. The fans have stood by our game through

everything. When we play, we need to think of them. As players, the balance betweencompetitiveness and fairness can be tough but it must be found.

If we stand up for the game's basic decencies, it will be far easier to tackle its bigger dangers -whether it is finding short cuts to easy money or being lured by the scourge of spot-fixing and

contemplating any involvement with the betting industry.

Cricket's financial success means it will face threats from outside the game and keep facing

them. The last two decades have proved this over and over again. The internet and modern

technology may just end up being a step ahead of every anti-corruption regulation in place in thegame. As players, the one way we can stay ahead for the game, is if we are willing to be

monitored and regulated closely.

Even if it means giving up a little bit of freedom of movement and privacy. If it means

undergoing dope tests, let us never say no. If it means undergoing lie-detector tests, let us

understand the technology, what purpose it serves and accept it. Now lie-detectors are by no

means perfect but they could actually help the innocent clear their names. Similarly, we shouldnot object to having our finances scrutinised if that is what is required.

When the first anti-corruption measures were put into place, we did moan a little bit about being

accredited and depositing our cell phones with the manager. But now we must treat it like we do

airport security because we know it is for our own good and our own security.


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Players should be ready to give up a little personal space and personal comfort for this game,

which has given us so much. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

Other sports have borrowed from cricket's anti-corruption measures to set up their own ethical

governance programmes and we must take pride in belonging to a sport that is professional and

progressive.

One of the biggest challenges that the game must respond to today, I believe, is charting out a

clear road map for the three formats. We now realise that the sport's three formats cannot beplayed in equal numbers - that will only throw scheduling and the true development of players

completely off gear.

There is a place for all three formats, though, we are the only sport I can think of which has three

versions. Cricket must treasure this originality. These three versions require different skills, skills

that have evolved, grown, changed over the last four decades, one impacting on the other.

Test cricket is the gold standard, it is the form the players want to play. The 50-over game is theone that has kept cricket's revenues alive for more than three decades now. Twenty20 has comeupon us and it is the format people, the fans want to see.

Cricket must find a middle path, it must scale down this mad merry-go-round that teams andplayers find themselves in: heading off for two-Test tours and seven-match ODI series with a

few Twenty20s thrown in.

Test cricket deserves to be protected, it is what the world's best know they will be judged by.

Where I come from, nation versus nation is what got people interested in cricket in the first

place. When I hear the news that a country is playing without some of its best players, I always

wonder, what do their fans think?

People may not be able to turn up to watch Test cricket but everyone follows the scores. We maynot fill 65,000 capacity stadiums for Test matches, but we must actively fight to get as many as

we can in, to create a Test match environment that the players and the fans feed off. Anything

but the sight of Tests played on empty grounds. For that, we have got to play Test cricket thatpeople can watch.

I don't think day-night Tests or a Test championship should be dismissed.

In March of last year I played a day-night first-class game in Abu Dhabi for the MCC and my

experience from that was that day-night Tests is an idea seriously worth exploring. There may besome challenges in places where there is dew but the visibility and durability of the pink cricket

ball was not an issue.

Similarly, a Test championship, with every team and player driving themselves to be winners of

a sought after title, seems like it would have a context to every game.


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Keeping Tests alive may mean different innovations in different countries - maybe taking it to

smaller cities, playing it in grounds with smaller capacities like New Zealand has thought of

doing, maybe reviving some old venues in the West Indies, like the old Recreation Ground inAntigua.

When I was around seven years old, I remember my father taking a Friday off so that we couldwatch three days of Test cricket together. On occasions he couldn't, I would accompany one of

his friends, just to soak in a day of Test cricket and watch the drama slowly unfold.

What we have to do is find a way to ensure that Test matches fit into 21st century life, through

timing, environments and the venues they are held in. I am still convinced it can be done, even in

our fast-moving world with a short attention span. We will often get told that Test matches don'tmake financial sense, but no one ever fell in love with Test cricket because they wanted to be a

businessman. Not everything of value comes at a price.

There is a proposal doing the rounds about scrapping the 50-over game completely. I am not sure

I agree with that - I certainly know that the 50-over game helped us innovate strokes in ourbatting which we were then able to take into Test matches. We all know that the 50-over game

has been responsible for improving fielding standards all over the world.

The future may well lie in playing one-day internationals centered around ICC events, like theChampions Trophy and the World Cups. This would ensure that all 50-over matches would buildup for those tournaments.

That will cut back the number of one-day internationals played every year but at least those

matches will have context. Since about I think 1985, people have been saying that there is too

much meaningless one-day cricket. Maybe it's finally time to do something about it.

The Twenty20 game as we know has as many critics as it has supporters in the public. Given that

an acceptable strike rate in T20 these days is about 120, I should probably complain about it themost. The crowd and revenue numbers, though, tell us that if we don't handle Twenty20

correctly, we may well have more and more private players stepping in to offer not just slices of

pie, but maybe even bigger pies themselves.

So I'll re-iterate what I've just said very quickly because balancing three formats is important:

We have Test cricket like we have always had, nation versus nation, but carefully scheduled to

attract crowds and planned fairly so that every Test playing country gets its fair share of Tests.

And playing for a championship or a cup, not just a ranking.

The 50-overs format focused around fewer, significant multi-nation ICC events like the

Champions Trophy and the World Cup. In the four-year cycle between World Cups, plan theODI calendar and devise rankings around these few important events. Anything makes more

sense than seven-match ODI series.


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The best role for Twenty20 is as a domestic competition through official leagues, which will

make it financially attractive for cricketers. That could also keep cricket viable in countries

where it fights for space and attention.

Because the game is bigger than us all, we must think way ahead of how it stands today. Where

do we want it to be in the year 2020? Or say in 2027, when it will be 150 years since the firstTest match was played. If you think about it, cricket has been with us longer than the modern

motor car, it existed before modern air travel took off.

As much as cricket's revenues are important to its growth, its traditions and its vibrancy are a

necessary part of its progress in the future. We shouldn't let either go because we played too

much of one format and too little of the other.

Professionalism has given cricketers of my generation privileged lives and we know it, even

though you may often hear us whining about burn-out, travel and the lack of recovery time.

Whenever we begin to get into that mindset, it's good to remember a piece of Sachin'sconversation with Bradman. Sachin told us that he had asked Sir Don how he had mentallyprepared for big games, what his routines were. Sir Don said, that well, before a game he would

go to work and after the game go back to work. Whenever a cricketer feels a whinge coming on,

that would be good to remember.

Before I conclude, I also want to talk briefly about an experience I have often had over the

course of my career. It is not to do with individuals or incidents, but one I believe is important toshare. I have sometimes found myself in the middle of a big game, standing at slip or even at the

non-strikers end and suddenly realised that everything else has vanished. At that moment, all that

exists is the contest and the very real sense of the joy that comes from playing the game.

It is an almost meditative experience, where you reconnect with the game just like you did years

ago, when you first began, when you hit your first boundary, took the first catch, scored yourfirst century, or were involved in a big victory. It lasts for a very fleeting passage of time, but it

is a very precious instant and every cricketer should hang on to it.

I know it is utterly fanciful to expect professional cricketers to play the game like amateurs; but

the trick, I believe, is taking the spirit of the amateur - of discovery, of learning, of pure joy, of

playing by the rules - into our profession. Taking it to practice or play, even when there's an

epidemic of white-line fever breaking out all over the field.

In every cricketer there lies a competitor who hates losing, and yes, winning matters. But it is notthe only thing that matters when you play cricket. How it is played is as important for everymember of every team because every game we play leaves a footprint in cricket's history. We

must never forget that.

What we do as professionals is easily carried over into the amateur game, in every way - batting,

bowling, fielding, appealing, celebration, dissent, argument. In the players of 2027, we will see a

reflection of this time and of ourselves and it had better not annoy or anguish us 50-year-olds.


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As the game's custodians, it is important we are not tempted by the short-term gains of the

backward step. We can be remembered for being the generation that could take the giant stride.

Thank you for the invitation to address all of you tonight, and your attention.

Breaking the Silence

Why we dont talk about inequalityand how to start again

By PRATAP BHANU MEHTA | October 1, 2012

1

The New Challenge of Inequality

THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUALITY is having a revolutionary effect on life in contemporary

India. This was the considered assessment of the eminent American political scientist Myron

Weiner, writing forForeign Affairs in 1962. In a society still marked by egregiously obsceneforms of inequality, the term revolutionary seems extravagant, even five decades after Weiner

pronounced his judgment. But determining what constitutes revolutionary social change

depends on how that change is measuredand in the second decade after Independence, thedistance that India had travelled from its starting point would have indeed seemed immense.

Political equality had been enshrined in the Constitution, untouchability had been delegitimised,

political representation was widely shared, zamindari had been abolished, a new developmentparadigm was instituted, and the state defined its goals in terms of common welfare.

And yet by another measureof how much more India would have to achieve to become a

minimally equal societyeven this progress was small comfort. Formal political equality did nottranslate into substantive empowerment; abolishing untouchability barely cracked open the

hierarchies of caste; political representation coexisted with deep prejudice; zamindari abolition

did little to alleviate the vulnerabilities of small farmers and landless labour; development wasshockingly slow at expanding opportunities; and the states promise of welfare seemed like a

cruel mirage to hundreds of millions of Indians condemned to poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy

and disease.

Much has transpired since Weiners preliminary assessment of the career of equality in India.

Economically, India has broken out of the paradigm of low growth that always seemed to make

material prosperity so elusive. This new growth is producing far-reaching changes in income,occupational structures, lifestyles and aspirations. Politically, Indias democracy has deepened,

giving hitherto marginalised groups impressive representation and recognition. Administratively,

the state has acquired unprecedented resources to spend on programs ostensibly designed forinclusion. And there is a palpable change in social consciousness: political democracy has
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induced a sense of agency and empowerment across different groups in society; today inclusion

is a demand of citizens, not a gift given from on high.

Yet these very changes are compelling the debate over equality to take a paradoxical turn. On the

one hand, there is impatience with the idea of equality. While an acknowledgement of formal

equality is now enshrined in Indias self-image, the politics of equality are often associated withhypocrisy and pretense. One camp in the debate blames Indias ills in large part on an excessive

rhetoric of equalitytalk that is regarded as a license for maintaining outmoded forms of state

control that for decades trapped Indias economy. From this perspective, equality talk has alwaysbeen a license for economic irrationality: it was used to justify all manner of subsidies, controls

and patronage schemes that did nothing but retard development. Growth may be producing new

forms of economic inequality, the argument goes, but at least it is more effective at reducing

poverty. It is also creating the conditions for a more durable equality of opportunity, byproviding the resources for things like education. An excessive preoccupation with equality is

seen as a stumbling block: it produces policies that do nothing but appease the conscience of

Indias privileged, even as these policies do little to dismantle deep structures of inequality. Let

us get on with growth, it is argued, and the opportunities it produces will, somehow, at somepoint, take care of equality concerns. Equality, on this view, is both a ruse and a distraction.

This sentiment captures a scepticism generated by Indias development experience. It is also of a

piece with new Indias self-image of tough-mindedness, not bound by pieties of the past. Yet, on

the other hand, this posture is deeply fragile. While equality talk may not have served us well,

deep social and economic inequality remain obdurate realities in India. It may be a crudemeasure, but Indias Gini coefficienta measurement of the uneven distribution of wealthis

rising. Acute forms of social segregation remain a reality. A large number of social struggles

continue to be animated by the indignity of inequality and powerlessness. Despite significantreductions in poverty, it is difficult to deny that India still breathes an oppressive atmosphere of

social inequality. The idea that growth and economic development represent our best chance of

unsettling fixed hierarchies of power has some truth to it. But we cannot get away from the fact

that growth is bringing in new challenges of inequality, which we ignore at our peril. It is alsotrue that much of the political discourse of equality has been hypocritical. But here we must

acknowledge that debates over growth and equality rarely manage to dent the psychological

resistance we have erected to avoid confronting uncomfortable facts about inequality.

This essay is premised on the idea that the way we thinkabout inequality matters a lot to the

shape it takes and to the prospects for its diminishment. At present, Indian thinking aboutinequality suffers from a triple burden. The topic is cloaked by a deep and pervasive culture of

avoidance. But even when it becomes a focus of political reflection, the outmoded idioms

through which we imagine equality become new straitjackets that impede solutions. And this, in

turn, distorts the understanding of the instruments we use to address the problem. This essaycannot do justice to the full complexity of the problem; it is a modest attempt at clearing some

cobwebs. But India urgently needs to confront this issue anew. Or else inequality will remain

Indias original sin: reappearing in the face of every resistance, casting a shadow over all socialrelations, acting forever as a rebuke to the Indian experiment.

2


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The Culture of Avoidance

THE TOPIC OF EQUALITY IS A DIFFICULT one in any society; it conjures up a complexof hopes and fears. The greatest modern theorist of the psychological burdens of equality, Alexis

de Tocqueville, proposed that societies that enshrined formal political equality would find it

difficult to talk about real inequalities, because formal equality allows us to throw a veil overdeep social inequalities. But in India it is a particularly difficult subject to discuss. The

experience of inequalityand its associated indignitiesis commonplace and visceral. To

confront it fully is so existentially disturbing that it is often kept at bay by a whole series ofinterdictions and stratagems.

For those at the bottom of a deep well, the mere act of looking up at the heights to be scaled canbe dispiriting; for those at the top, the act of looking to the depths at which human beings are

confined is likely to cause vertigo. The net result is a taciturn avoidance played out in Indian

homes and streets. It is not that the poor are not aware of the deep indignities they experience or

the chains that bind them. It is not that the privileged are not aware of their deep complicity in a

disfigured social system of inequality. But any frontal representation of this reality is more likelyto induce an intellectual and moral paralysis.

Powerful representations of this realitylike the astonishing literature produced by Dalitsare

politely acknowledged, but rarely internalised in our consciousness. When books like Katherine

BoosBehind the Beautiful Forevers, or even Hollywood entertainments like SlumdogMillionaire, enter middle-class consciousness, they cause discomfort. This is not because they

remind Indians of something we had forgotten, but because they represent an assault on the

elaborate psychological fortifications we have constructed to cope with a reality we know all too

well. It is precisely because the indignities associated with inequality are so widespread that wefind it hard to talk about them. But the avoidance has created a self-perpetuating system, which is

rarely frontally challenged. Everyone hopes the system will change, but absolves themselves ofthe responsibility for bringing about that change.

This deep existential discomfort with the topic might seem to be at odds with the fact that the

struggle over equality defines a great deal of modern Indian history. Certainly it is impossible toimagine any modern society that does not take equality seriously. But taking equality seriously

only gets us so far. The nature of our foundational commitments to equality varies

considerablyand even if we achieved clarity over those commitments, transforming them intoa social reality requires confronting a complex set of forces. Concepts do not automatically

translate into reality: which is why equality can often seem both normatively inescapable and

socially impossible at the same timean ideal on which everyone agrees but one that can never

be entirely fulfilled.

For similar reasonsthat commitments do not necessarily entail outcomesit is also a mistake

to think that foundational religious commitments explain much of the story of equality. In thecanonical story of equality in the West outlined by Tocqueville, Christianity did provide a

standpoint from which to affirm equalitybut then it took almost two millennia for this

discovery to be embodied in social institutions. In India, this story is usually told in reverse:Hinduism, the dominant conceptual framework of the subcontinent, constructed a deep, enduring


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and disfiguring ideological edifice of inequality. This framework, with its fusion of coercive,

ideological, economic and religious power, pitilessly condemned large masses to the most

insidious forms of subordination mankind has known.

In fact, many of the ideological polemics against inequality in India are just critiques of

Hinduism in various formswhich have in turn spawned a series of reactions that attempt tosever the connection between Hinduism and caste, or to point out that the tradition was not quite

what its detractors made it out to be. These polemics have their place, even though they often fail

to get historical nuances right and simplify a complex historical inheritance to the point ofcaricature. But all these historical arguments run up against one paradoxical and incontrovertible

fact of Indian history. India has produced immense intellectual radicalism, heterodoxy and

dissent, all of which could be put in the service of equality. And yet this intellectual radicalism

whether in the Mahabharata, Buddhism, Kabir or Nanakhas been so easily reconciled with theorthodoxy of social structure; the facts of inequality seem to swallow all religious or

metaphysical attempts to escape it.

So the obsession with the question of whether Indians believe in equality, or whether theconcept has any cultural roots here, is therefore somewhat misplaced. John Locke could

believe in Christianity and equality, and yet put up with slaverythe issue is not so simple.

As the philosopher Bernard Williams pointed out, in all societies the demands of equality and

justice are often immobilised in the name of something called social and economic necessity.The issue is where and how these lines of necessity come to be drawn. For example, all societies

tolerate high degrees of inequality in property and income, not because they are just, but because

these are seen as necessary, often for the preservation of other goals like efficiency. These

institutions then come to be seen as necessary ones. What drives equality is not so much a seriesof abstract arguments about concepts, or large changes in the character of people, but some

inchoate sense of the boundaries of social and economic necessity. It is rarely the case thatarguments for equality move us towards particular social arrangements. Indeed, it is often thereverse: the degree to which particular economic and social arrangements are seen as necessary

determine the boundaries of equality. We first justify the structure of privilege in terms of

necessityaccording to imperatives of economic efficiency or social stability, for exampleandthen limit our commitment to equality to adapt to that necessity. The issue is not a belief in

equality, but how its demands are immobilised in the name of some necessity.

ONE MODEST ACHIEVEMENT of modern India is that gross inequalities are no longer

legitimised. We still put up with them as a reality; often as a deplorable necessity, but a necessity

nonetheless. As a result, our conceptual innovations, ideological entanglements, or appeals to

traditionour ideas about equality, in shortseem to mean very little when they come face toface with an unyielding social reality.

As the renowned Dalit writer Om Prakash Valmiki once asked: What possible meaning couldanyone give to an oft-quoted phrase like Vasudeiva KutmbakamThe World is My Family

in the face of an oppressively suffocating experience of subordination? How can we explain the

persistence of countless sites that inflict needless indignityforms of domestic servitude,


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manual scavenging, inhuman labour conditions? Instead of occasioning a discourse of justice,

these very realities seem to silence its demands.

To be sure, all societies experience versions of this silencing; this is not Indias monopoly. But

one must admit that the scale of this silencing is unusual in a society that has so many other

things going for it: pluralism, a reflective and argumentative culture, and democratic politics.Some would point to the circular character of inequality: we dont care because we are unequal,

and because we dont care inequality will persist. In fact, many of Indias poor outcomes in areas

ranging from health to education are explained away through this logic, which is similar to whatcontemporary social science calls the equality paradox: you need to already have some equality

and reciprocity to make progress towards more.

In a society riven by deep inequality there is not even the minimal basis for mutual concern.

Where social distance makes human beings almost a different species in each others eyes, why

would you expect anything else? Why would a contractor care if one of his construction workers

used his hands rather than a brush to apply a dangerous chemical? The more inequality there is,

the harder it is to imagine what it is like to be in someone elses shoes. It has to be admitted thateven the most well-meaning and sensitive find it hard to imagine what the suffocation, darkness

and sheer physical suffering of being at the bottom of a social hierarchy might be really like. Thevery thing you would expect to instigate questions of justice makes it hard to raise them.

There are other variations on this theme. Greater social distance reduces trust and makescollective action more difficult. Inequality produces a society with low self-esteem all around:

the poor, who are made conscious of their subordinate status at every turn, internalise the view

that achievement is beyond their reach. The privileged, wracked by the anxiety of domination,

sincerely believe if they give an inch the poor will take a mile. Deplorable social facts oftenproduce a personal anxiety in the privileged; they are read as accusations of personal complicity

which, in turn, produce a defensiveness. Or somewhat more benignly, the sheer scale of humansuffering leads one to naturalise it. It is hard for individuals to bring about change. You dontmind change, but you just hope someone else, perhaps the state, brings it about with the least

pain possible. In the meantime, the best you can do is erect barriers that allow you to escape your

bad faith. But the end result is that the idea of equality becomes more and more difficult toconfront.

There are often straightforwardly more malign representations as well. In this view the poor are athreat, to be cleansed away. In urban spaces, we attribute crime to them, often forgetting that it is

precisely their presence on the streets carrying out small trades that is more likely to make cities

safe. Horror stories of the crimes of domestic servants aboundso they are seen as potential

thieves, and we forget they are far more often extraordinary examples of fortitude and self-restraint, leading a life of self-denial that we could not even imagine. These overdrawn negative

images certainly perform an ideological function, by legitimising inequity, and a psychological

function, by making it easier to avoid examining ones own complicity. But they further entrench

the culture of avoidance.

And finally, there is the self-perception of Indias middle classes. Nowhere is the gap in thepolitics of equality more evident than in the fact that there are two diametrically opposed


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constructions of the middle class. On the one hand the middle class is seen as a symbol of

inherited privilege. It is dominated by erstwhile upper castes, and in income and property terms

has an immense advantage over the rest of society. On the other hand the middle class sees itselfas the product of acquired rather than inherited privilegeas the product of a meritocratic

system, which has had to work through a whole range of exams and formal certifications to

achieve what it has. So on the one hand there is a construction of a middle class whose privilegesare illegitimate, in some sense; on the other hand there is the self-perception of the middleclasses that they have passed the only test this society has to offermerit.

It is astonishing how difficult it has been to conduct a conversation across this divide. It is

possible that within the middle classes, which have a sense that they have risen on the dint of

merit, there is even less support for an egalitarian politics. This is because a society which links

achievement to educational attainment also gives the achievers a sense of entitlement. It maybe easier to shame an aristocracy by claiming their wealth is undeserved; it is harder to induce

guilt in those whose self-perception is that they have attained wealth by legitimate means. While

an expanding professional middle class may support the expansion of education, they may also

have less patience with any politics of equality, because their own sense of entitlement derivesfrom a meritocratic conception of educational attainment; this will be even truer for newer

entrants to this class.

There are, therefore, deep psychological barriers to confront before we can even discuss equality;

it is a subject on which any utterance seems meaningless or in bad faith. The barriers of distrust

remain deep. The marginalised suspect that most talk of equality is at best a strategy to avoid theissue, and at worst a ruse of power. The privileged see every such discussion as an attack on their

legitimate claims. Before we explore the complex conceptual terrain of equality, we need to

break these deep fortifications we refuse to cross, where we cope with the questions inequalityraises by simply avoiding them.

THIS CULTURE OF AVOIDANCE becomes a self-perpetuating cycle in two respects. Themore we deny the indignity of inequality, the more reason we have to make the oppressed

indignant. And the more indignant they are, the more sharply battle lines will be drawn.

The unique strength of Indian democracy, which staved off a bloody revolution, has also been

cause for complacency. For decades after Independence, Indias poor and marginalised were

confined to a politics of sheer survivaloften because they were so vulnerable that no resistanceto the existing order seemed possible. Democratic politics and the state exploited this

vulnerability by enlisting them in clientelistic relations, where their first objective was survival.

The pitilessness of this arrangement was that it often made them complicit in their own

oppression. Rather than resist corruption, they had to use corruption to find slivers of breathingspace in an otherwise suffocating system.

Slow economic growth and even slower alleviation of poverty ensured that for many decades,Indias poor had nothing but a politics of survival. But with greater growth, in factwith some

improvement in the poors well-being and prospectsquestions of equality will become more,

not less, insistent. It is true that the past decade has seen unprecedented improvement in the livesof many poor Indians. We can statistically debate the extent of this improvement, but there is no


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doubt that today there is considerable optimism that the future will be better than the past. This

optimism has made for great political stability, and has led to a great drive for self-improvement,

as seen in the revolution in demand for education, to take just one example.

But as Tocqueville noted, the prospects for potentially violent conflict are often greatest not

when things are at their absolute worst, but when they are actually getting better. Political actorshave more resources and confidence with which to mobilise. The entry into the ranks of the

middle and lower middle classes of hitherto marginalised groups will mean accommodation by

segregation is no longer an option. Economic growth, coupled with some state support, producesnew forms of mobilityand one feature of that mobility is that segregated spaces are no longer

possible. As the story published in these pages of a Dalit students tragic suicide at AIIMS

showed, even our most progressive institutions are struggling to evolve an ethic of equality that

meets a minimum standard of decent human interaction. Our schools are going to struggle tocreate shared spaces for rich and poor alike.

In short, up until now the discourse of equality was in some ways very abstract for the ruling

classes. A few hand-outs here, a few reservations there, and our equality thing was done. In away equality was easy because social reality was segmented: each group occupied its own

social space; these spaces may not have been equal, but they were not in competition. The natureof this separation is nicely captured in Dalit discourse about caste: in North India, Dalits often

use the word samaj to describe the worlds of different castes. The idea that different social

groups are, in some senses, different societies sums up the practice of social difference in

Indiaboth in terms of the mostly endogamous nature of separate groups and the vast distancebetween them.

The political equality introduced by Indian democracy proved, in practice, to be quite compatiblewith this form of social segregation. It converted questions of justice into simple calculations of

how to distribute whatever goods the state had to offer. These were important considerations. Butthey left unmet the real ethical challenges posed by social practice: segregated spaces meant thatthe subtler ways in which caste hierarchies insinuate themselves went unchallenged. It is only

when some degree of mobility becomes possiblewhen some shared spaces, whether in

colleges, workplaces, or in civic culture, begin to emergethat the ethical questions of equalityare experienced with a more insistent force. What norms of conduct are required to ensure people

receive equal treatment in these spaces? The idea that we can practice toleration or equality by

simply confining groups to their own spaces is no longer tenable.

Although still limited, new mobility and aspirations are breaking down the idea that Indian

society can exist as a collection of samajs. But our ethical consciousness lags far behind these

imminent social changes. It is small wonder that schools are now the site of battles overintegration of poor children, colleges are sites of caste conflict, and workplaces are repositories

of subtle discrimination. Instead of being sites of a new mixing and the evolution of a new

consciousness of equality, these have become zones of deep conflict and contestation. What will

it take to cultivate forms of human interchange that involve a minimal degree of reciprocity,where we dont feel slighted or defensive? All the evidence indicates that we are going to have a

very hard time, because the culture of avoidance has become so ingrained.


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For decades, the politics of equality had largely been eclipsed by the politics of survivaland

this quiescence also contributed to deepening the culture of avoidance. But as India grows, and

as new forms of social mobility are unleashed, its citizens will demand something more than thepolitics of survival or the evasions of benign segregation. They will ask hard questions about the

nature of our social practices.

3

THE EXHAUSTED IDIOMS OF EQUALITY

ON THE SURFACE, Indian politics is defined by a concern with equality. But the impetus forthat concern has often come from commitments that had little to do with the ethical content of

equality or the belief that it was desirable as an end in itself. To a certain extent, this is natural:

all societies struggle to define and understand the nature of their commitment to an idea of

equality. Equality is a difficult idea. Societies evolve different idioms to express itways ofthinking about its definition, its attainability, its importance and its benefits. These idioms are

themselves shaped by inherited ideas, but often they are forged in the mould of inheritedinequalities. The hopes and fears associated with equality in a society that has emerged from

revolution look very different from those in societies that never experienced the turmoil ofhaving social orders overturned; nations where slavery was practiced cannot dissociate equality

from race.

In India, the modern discourse of equality was similarly shaped by historical experience, which

gave rise, over time, to a series of separate and distinct ways of imagining equalityand these,

in turn, defined the idioms in which the politics of equality was conducted. Each of these idiomsleft an indelible mark on Indian society, and yet, as we shall see, each one had its own limitations

as a transformative project, and their failures have left our politics of equality unhinged. Each

one offered some possibilities of progress, but they did not quite manage to make enough of adent in the cultural and material practices that produce inequality.

The idea of equality in modern Indian political discourse has murky origins. In traditionalthinking there are references to the ideal, but largely in metaphysical discussions of the nature of

the Soul rather than the social context of Power. In modern Indian texts there is a reticence to

discuss such foundational issues: most texts deal with particular injustices, but they rarely probethe ethical foundations of the ideathe questions of what constitutes equality, whether it is

desirable, and why it should be so. Is equality, for example, a descriptive fact? Are we by nature

equal? Or is it a culturally specific ideal? The claim that we are naturally free and equal is more

often than not simply treated as a political postulatebut from what foundations does this claimderive its authority?

One way of expressing the value of equality would be to state that we ought to treat each other asequals, because this will allow us to form a political community we might not otherwise have.

This is an attractive ideal, but its appeal depends largely upon creating a romance around what

might be attractive about a political community where we actually treated one another as equals.The hard labour of creating that romance has in a sense been sidelined by the various other


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idioms in which equality has been imagined, each of which has seen equality not as a value in

itself but as a component in the pursuit of other ends.

The idea of treating equality as political claim comes from the fact that this idea takes modern

form in the crucible of anti-colonial politics. Whatever the indigenous traditions of thinking

about the matter, the advent of colonialism marked a radical political rupture with the past.Colonialism had a paradoxical effect on Indian social thinking. On the one hand, the experience

of colonialism led to a radical questioning of Indian society. The forms of social relations that

had existed in India were deemed illegitimate in some sense of the term: they were associatedwith oppression, a denial of individuality and a subjugation of the human spirit that forever

condemned Indian society to a form of servitude.

In the literature that began proliferating, first in Bengal and then elsewhere, Indians began to

wonder whether inherited inequality and difference had led to Indias easy subjugation by

colonial powers. There are very few writings in Indian intellectual history that treat equality

directly as a subject. But Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay explicitly raised this

possibility in his polemical essay Samya(Equality), published in 1879: the poison ofinequality, he wrote, is the main reason for the deterioration in the lot of Indiassubjects.

On the other hand, the experience of colonial rule reinforced the rigidities of traditional society.

In a bid to maintain its rule, the colonial state began to systematically codify traditional

society. The very categories it used to understand Indian society, whether through theformalisation ofdharmashastra texts, or the categories associated with the census, had the effect

of creating traditional categories anew, as it were. The complex histories and social realities of

caste were now refracted through the templates of modern law, censuses, and a stylised textual

understanding of tradition.

This duality gave Indians a split consciousness that still marks them. On the one hand, caste, andits associated inequality, is a sign of backwardness; it is associated with the idea that Indiansociety has not arrived at the egalitarian plateau of modernity. But on the other hand, no account

of Indian society could be formulated without the very categories we were supposed to escape. In

other words, India was not modern because individuality was subordinate to the demands ofcompulsory identitiesbut at the same time, India would not be India, it would not be true to its

own essence, if we did not make constant reference to these same identities.

India was shown the promise of liberation, in which freedom would allow us to overcome the

past; but the self-understanding of individuals would always be marked by these identities, and

the state would also recognise them primarily through this prism.

In some ways the discourse of equality in India becomes almost impossible to imagine, precisely

because thinking of an identity outside caste seemed always something of a conceptualimpossibility. The biggest failure of the modern Indian political imagination, and the social

science that undergirds it, is this fact: while promising emancipation it also made caste categories

inescapable.


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EQUALITY MADE ITS FIRST POWERFUL ENTRY into the political realm through the

imperatives of nationalismas an instrument to reverse the domination of Indias colonisers.

After 1857, the British legitimised their rule not simply by reference to their own superiority, butalso with the idea that the colonised societies were not considered nations at all. In response, the

indigenous ruling elites needed to create a new basis for their own legitimacy, so they could be

considered representatives of a nation. But positing the existence of a nation, at the very least,required some proof that they drew their power from the people of this nationwhich meant thatthe people needed to possess at least minimal political rights.

Indian nationalism and political equality were born together; one was not imaginable without the

other. So political equality was the easiest value to institutionalise, and found profound

expression in the powerful political idioms of the Indian constitution.

This constitutional framework was no mean achievement. It created a basic framework that made

political equality an article of faith. In this sense, the Constitution was Indian nationalisms gift

to the nation. Furthermore, the fact that BR Ambedkar played a prominent part in shaping it gave

the Constitution even more legitimacy than any of the founders could have imagined. For Dalits,the Constitution became the centrepiece of an emancipatory narrative, setting out the terms of a

new social contract; and in turn it gave them an emancipatory figure who came to be deified.

But the very success of the Constitution also proved its limits, as Ambedkar feared: its success at

institutionalising formal political equality also defused any drive towards greater or moresubstantial forms of genuine empowerment. It is harder to mobilise a politics of equality in a

society whose elites have just acquired the self-conception that they are egalitarian. The

Constitution was not just a psychological life raft for Dalits; it also gave Indias elites a means to

overcome their own burdens of bad conscience, and allowed them entry into the respectableworld of modernity.

But the transition to democracy did not massively disrupt the established social order: the fact isthat democracies have turned out to be extremely conservative, and slow to combat inequality.

Back in the 18th century, Adam Smith had predicted that a democracy, the United States, would

be among the last countries to abolish slavery, and it took a brutal civil war to bring that about.Almost no democracy has seriously expropriated the richand there is a case to be made that

elites enthusiastically embraced democracy precisely because they recognised that the big fear it

once induced, of the poor voting out the rich, proved to be largely groundless.

Democracy, in the Indian context, proved the surest way of keeping more radical and

revolutionary forces at bay. The powerful quickly realised that far from dispossessing them,democracy would allow them to exercise power in new ways. It would take a long essay to

describe why democracy has turned out to be a relatively conservative force. But it is fair to say

that democracy served the interests of power more than it went against them.

The acknowledgment of the necessity of democracy was followed by claims for the functional

necessity of equality in the modern world, on what we might call the grounds of efficiency. Thisidiom also had its genesis in the independence movement, as thinker after thinker came to the

conclusion that the superiority of the West consisted largely in the capacity of its states to enlist


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the productive energies of the entirety of their populations. Prosperity and power demanded

enhanced productive capacity. At some point, this thinking went, caste might have been a

functional mode of social organisation; it had a historical role in the distribution of productivecapacity, and even promoted the development of individual skills in designated occupations. But

it no longer conformed to the functional requirements of modern society. The mode of

organising society had to make a transition from hierarchy to equality because this was afunctional necessity. This argument, first devised in the context of caste, could easily beextended to other categories like gender. Inclusion, as it were, became a desirable goal because it

was necessary for growth.

The attraction of this argument is not to be underestimated. Arguably even now whatever little

commitment we have to welfare and human development is not motivated by ethical concerns: it

is driven, if at all, by the practical necessities of running a modern economy. Our lack of humandevelopment, for instance, evokes less an ethical anxiety about inequality, and more a concern

for national competitiveness. The people still remain a subject to be worked on, so they can be

enlisted in the project of unleashing the nations productive power. The problem is that this

concern goes only so far as the elites perceive these things to be practically necessary.

In spite of their limitations, these instrumentalist policies could have contributed to alleviatingthe spectre of human suffering if they had actually given citizens the means to participate in a

modern economy. The state tried, and partly succeeded. But an odd mixture of the failure of

democratic accountability, administrative myopia, and some startlingly obtuse policy choices

made this project less credible, even on its own terms. In some ways, the failure of the stateexacerbated the trust deficit that is at the heart of the politics of inequality. Among the

privileged, even those who would have been inclined to let the state take actions to increase

equality recoiled at the prospect of a state that fed its own insatiable logic rather than achievingconcrete outcomes. While the poor continued to regard the state as oppressive at worst, and at

best an institution from which political ingenuity could extract small favours.

WHILE ELITES HAD THEIR REASONS to infuse equality with some content through their

ideas of democracy and development, a more powerful impetus was given to the idea by the

struggles of oppressed groups themselves, led by figures like Narayana Guru, Jyotirao Phule andAmbedkar. If there has been anything revolutionary at all about social change in India, it is the

transformation in the consciousness of hitherto marginalised groups like Dalits, who at every

turn began to resist the chains of subordination. This transformation manifests itself in several

ways: in large scale caste-based social movements; in the extraordinary production of writingand literature that has still not been noticed by the mainstream; in quiet but confident acts of

daily resistance; and in the sheer drive to defeat the odds. This is an undoing of inequality

through acts of agency and resistance, a refusal to let social necessity determine the horizon of

possibility.

These social movements revolutionised the consciousness of oppressed groups, and produced a

new sense of dignity and self-esteem that is behind so much of the new energy in India. But intheir current form there are inherent limitations to what they can achieve. If Indias elites

obfuscated the distinction between being anti-untouchability and being anti-caste, many of these

movements conflated the politics of being anti-upper caste with being anti-caste. In politics,


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many of these movements managed to displace existing power holders. But as Sudipta Kaviraj

has pointed out, they were based on a logic of equality that measured progress on the basis of

caste: in this equation, the degree of equality is defined by the share of caste power in institutionslike the state.

But one consequence of this conception of equality is that it has placed an enormous burden onreservations as the instrument of equality. As a result, reservations based on anything other than

an ascriptive criteria like caste are not seen as expressing a politics of equality. There are several

reasons for this. Consider, first, what the phrase equality of classes might mean: as a matter ofdistributive justice, it can only mean the abolition of classes; equality of classes without their

abolition would be an oxymoron. For the reasons mentioned above, we do not have any

instruments for the abolition of class. But equality of caste, by contrast, does not require the

abolition of casteand the degree to which equality in this sense has been achieved can becrudely measured by the share of different caste groups in structures of power.

To continue this line of thinking, let us consider the differences between how we understand

caste mobility and class mobility. If a poor person becomes middle class, this is a positivedevelopment, and may reflect the fact that society has opened up avenues of opportunity. But

this individual, by virtue of his mobility, is no longer poorhe is now middle class. This kind ofmobility is obviously a desirable characteristic in a modern society; it potently expresses the

aspiration that where one is born should not determine ones opportunities. But class mobility

does not negate the continued existence of class and inequality; there are still lower classes and

upper classes. When an individual changes their position on this scale, their position on the axisof deprivation changes; they no longer represent the class they came from. The ability for

individuals to change classes provides an important measure of mobility; it is not seen,

however, as providing a measure of equality, since it does not shift the distribution of privilegeamong classes.

But caste operates differently: a Mala or Maddiga may become rich, and thereby change theirclass, but they remain a Mala or Maddiga, and they can still represent their caste in the calculus

of power-sharing. They may have become rich or powerful, but their position on the axis of

deprivation being measured (in this case, caste) does not change.

This is one of the ethical dilemmas posed by reservation, in that it perpetuates a compulsory

identity through officially sanctioned categories, at least in the eyes of the state: once a memberof a particular caste, always a member of that caste. But this feature of caste, which leads to its

perpetuation as a compulsory identity, also makes it attractive as a locus of social justice: caste

comes to be a measure of equality by virtue of its being an immutable characteristic. Caste, in

this sense, offers an answer to the question Equality in what respect? in a way no othercategory does, precisely because of its immutability. Equality with respect to class would

require the abolition of class; equality with respect to caste does not require its abolition. So

while we believe equality can be measured, at least in one respect, by counting the

representatives of each caste given a share of power, with class this would be impossible,because the mere fact of gaining access to power transforms the individuals class status.


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This institutionalisation of caste as the basis of equality has some interesting consequences. It

displaces the need to take class difference seriously: since we have limited instruments to

achieve deep equality, class is now seen as an almost legitimate form of inequality. Caste hasbecome the form in which the politics of social justice is expressed. While this has drawn our

attention to a central truththat caste is important in the reproduction of inequalityit has

helped to hide another essential truth: that other things also matter to the production of equality.While this point may sound banal, the way caste plays out in politics consistently obscures thisfact.

In India there is no serious discourse on the relationship between justice and discrimination. This

is in part due to the fact that the category of discrimination was seen as specific to the Dalit

experience. But it is also a result of the contemporary discourse of reservations, in which power-

sharing rather than the absence of discrimination has become the central category in our thinkingabout justice. One consequence of this development is among the upper castes: there is now a

tacit assumption that since shares in power have been reserved, discrimination is no longer a

category that requires our attention. All in all, this politics has been good at opening the doors to

power-sharing; it has not, however, lowered the relational barriers between castes.

TWO FURTHER IDIOMS OF EQUALITY emerged from more traditional sourcesor,more accurately, from attempts at their reinvention and reinvigoration. The first of these came

from a series of efforts, now loosely clustered under the term Hindu Reform Movements,

premised on an acute sense that Indian traditions had been ethically hollowed from the inside.

Much like the abolitionists who thought abolishing slavery was necessary to preserve thelegitimacy of Christianity, these thinkers sensed that Indian tradition needed to be made more

egalitarian if it was to survive.

This was the current that went from Vivekanada to Gandhi, and it was quite honest in its

appraisal of the depravity into which Indian social relations had fallen, though only Gandhi sawthe degree of existential self-reformation real social reform would require. The reformmovements envisioned a kind of Sanskritisation induced from the top, whereby elites would

open the doors of previously restricted traditions to newer groups, and the marginalised would

acquire a sense of identity by reclaiming the traditions they had been denied. For a time, this wasarguably the big cultural project of modern India, but it ran aground for several reasons. First,

because this project could not overcome the taint of being patronising. Ambedkar made that

charge stick even to a figure like Gandhi, and it was a charge that became even more credible

when the sole repositories of this tradition became groups like the RSS. Second, the project waspremised on a renewed vitality in Indian thinking, but when Hindu reform hollowed out to the

point where all that was left of it was an insecure nationalism, the whole project began to lose

steam. In the early 1960s, the great sociologist MN Srinivas posited that Sanskritisation and

Westernisation were the two possible idioms through which marginalised groups could seekrecognition. The great cultural story of equality today is that Sanskritisation is almost dead as a

social project, and has been replaced almost entirely by Westernisation.

The final idiom in which equality has been framed in India came from a radical ethical vision,

shared by an assortment of thinkers ranging from Vivekanada and Gandhi to the non-Marxist

left. India has not produced many systematic tracts on equalitya revealing fact in its own light.


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But in the non-Marxist tradition from Gandhi to Ram Manohar Lohia, equality has been seen not

in terms of political or social relations, but as related to the perfecting of the self. To simplify

somewhat, relations of inequality are produced largely because the individual self is not orderedin the right way. Either the self is in the grip of ignorance caused by egoism; or the self is

possessed by the wrong kind of desire, which requires it to exercise power over others. On this

view, the primary challenge of equality is not about our relationship with others, it is primarilyabout crafting the right relationship with ones own self. The root of inequality, in some form orthe other, always lies in an exaltation of materialism, which compels us to seek domination over

others.

There is much that is acute in this kind of analysis, and it does focus attention on what kind of

people we would have to be to practise egalitarian politics seriously. But as a means of achieving

equality, it proved counter-productive, for it immediately tied the politics of equality to an idiomof renunciation. As a cultural ideal, this had an enormous appealeven now, there is a strong

cultural association between the politics of egalitarianism and the politics of self-denial. Its great

achievement was to create a certain embarrassment about wealth, or at least conspicuous

consumption, and to induce a form of self-restraint that is now wearing thin. But the associationof saintliness and the politics of equality made it an ideal few in the human species could

practise. This ethical critique of the self could not provide a workable politics of equality for anation committed to harnessing productive growthand where the scourge of poverty maderenunciation, paradoxically, seem like a luxury few could afford.

The net result was that in Indian politics, the critique of inequality was so closely tied with acritique of materialism that it became identified with a glorification of poverty itself. It did

no

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Rahul Dravid Speech

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