<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>India, I love you for ignoring all that Olympic hype
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->IT WAS with great interest that I read the article '1.1 billion people, only 1 gold' (Aug 13). I have to say it offered some refreshingly different perspectives on sports and the Olympics.
The main thing that struck me was what Mr Sudhir Damodaran had to say: 'Unlike in the West, we Indians do not worship the human body...We see it as a mere temporary vehicle for the soul's journey towards salvation.'
If this is indeed representative of the general Indian outlook, I for one heartily applaud India's independent thinking - and no, I'm not being sarcastic.
The rest of the world may see India's indifference to athletic pursuits as a deficiency of sorts. But why should India go by what the rest think? Might it not rather be the rest of the world that has an issue here?
One may or may not believe in soul journeys, but come to think of it, what is so worthy of worship about something that will age, weaken and rot, and exude a foul smell if unwashed for a few days?
This is not to say that we should neglect the human body, in the sense of not caring for it at all. That's the opposite extreme.
By all means, take care of your body. Keep it trim and functional through physical exercise. But pushing its abilities to the limits in the name of one-upmanship - that's a different matter.
Frankly, what value is there in being able to run, jump or swim way better than others, or for your country to come up with large numbers of people with such extreme physical abilities?
Various members of the animal kingdom can easily beat any Olympic champion. And with all the technology available today, such extreme physical abilities - possessed only by a few at that - are about as useful as wings on a dodo.
Also, in many cases, Olympic athletes are actually crippled in the long term by all their training. So much for the Olympics being a promoter of physical fitness.
Nor does winning a large number of medals say anything about the general health condition of a country's population.
The United States has large numbers of Olympic medalists - and a large portion of its population is also overweight.
Maybe if it were all in a spirit of fun and enjoyment that athletes participated in the Games, without any special agenda, like friends coming together for a game of chess, that would be at least something.
Is that the story with the Games today? I doubt it.
Then there's the usual line that sports fosters the competitive spirit. That competition is supposed to be a good thing has become almost a sacred truth today.
But why is it good? We may need to be competitive to survive, but that's very different from saying it's a good thing.
We may merely have been forced into it by being placed in a highly unnatural socio-economic milieu created by modern man.
But perhaps the single greatest indictment of the Games is that they are an utter waste of valuable resources.
The current Olympics in Beijing cost US$40 billion (S$56 billion).
Imagine how much tragedy could have been avoided had all that money been used instead by China to build safer mines and sturdier school buildings that wouldn't topple at the slightest tremor.
One might argue that the Games would generate revenue for their host country as lots of people would be attracted from afar. Dream on, says Oklahoma City University economics professor Dr Jonathan Willner. In most cases, once the Games are over, the people leave. All the facilities you built become financial liabilities.
All things said, I really do think India is smart to maintain her intellectual independence, and not buy into all that hype about sport and the Olympics, let alone make a fetish out of them as if they were the very Holy Grail of national prestige.
So what if India has won only one gold medal so far?
Her worth is not revealed to me in such things, but in people like Tiruvalluvar, Shankara, Gandhi, Krishnamurti and the Buddha.
I love you, India. Ong Kok Tien
