Reflections on Delhi's Commonwealth Games

What ‘Common’, whose ‘Wealth’, and who cares about ‘Games’ anyway? Reflecting on the ongoing Commonwealth Games in New Delhi these question jostle up in my mind immediately. Seventy one countries – not technically so considering Wales, Scotland and England participate separately [that’s another story entirely… Ed] – all brought together by the unchained melody of British colonialism. It still baffles many, why the Commonwealth stands as an ode to Colonialism exemplified in the Queen’s prerogative as the head of the organization. Why can it not be a celebration of the indigenous struggles for their own sovereignty in these various countries? Anyway, back to the Games.

To say that the opening ceremony of the games was a success would be to hide the point. It was a success when everyone was waiting for it to fail. The knives, in the international (or should I say Western, and I go by my mental ‘colonized’ maps rather than cartographic specifications by including Australia and New Zealand) media were already out. And when they did not find enough flesh to dig them in, they still made their point. In a more considerate article, Guardian reported: “After all the shameful tales of dengue fever and squalid bedrooms, Delhi finally got its chance on Sunday to show the world (or at least the Commonwealth) that India can organize things properly. And it did not disappoint.”

Indians are livid for obvious reasons. “Did not disappoint” is all you get after a 700 million rupees extravaganza that knitted together their country’s cultural diversity and displayed a blend of both India’s long history of civilization and modern reformation! And guys, we had ‘yoga’ in there too; precisely what you have always loved about India.

Or they ask – ‘Did not disappoint’, oh - what did you expect? Did you think we would have ‘Mogli’ shooting out of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Jungle Book’ especially after threats of dengue? Did you expect a country of ‘snakes and charmers’ on display? We did that as well - snake-charmers were there right in the beginning if you noticed. Frankly (wink!!), even we are surprised at our ability to ‘organize things properly’, we pulled it off (hurray!!)

For India, uncomfortable questions for now can hibernate until Mani Shakar Aiyar, the former Indian minister and Congress party MP known for his slight leanings towards the left, shoots his mouth, as promised, after the Games. To preempt him, we all know, he would point towards enormous corruption and unmitigated wasteful expenditure on the Games in a country that still has a huge percentage of some of the world’s poorest people. His detractors would raise a counterpoint describing how the Games have proven economically helpful with massive investments, employment opportunities and infrastructure development (only in Delhi). Nothing however would trip, they would confidently say, the augmentation of ‘brand’ India. “India”, as Suresh Kalmadi stated in his speech in the opening ceremony, “has arrived” and the world knows about it now.

This debate aside, there are other things that are even more ‘stale’. Driving through Delhi’s roads, I can see the massive clean up exercise seeking to white wash poverty. Roadside beggars have somehow gone missing, billboards of CWG and ‘Shera’ (the official mascot for the Games) wishing namaste serve the purpose of hiding slums behind their back (exemplifying how Delhi has turned its back on the poor, not to say that they were at any time welcomed), more than 300,000 people were evicted from their homes for CWG, and Blueline buses (people’s transport in Delhi) have been taken off the roads leaving Delhi’s poor and middle classes to fend for themselves (though to the government’s credit, it has taken the Metro rail to most parts of the city relieving some of people’s problems). The idea of ‘filth’, especially after the international outcry over it, is so despising that it better be hidden; the desperation was so palpable, that one CWG official stuck both his feet in his mouth by saying that ‘Indians have different standard of hygiene’.

However, what sounds scary to me is the fact that we have internalized the idea of ‘order’ so uncritically that any remnant of disorder, mess and poverty seems hazardous for a country’s image. The cleanliness, silence of order is not necessarily a virtue; for it is always a culmination of centuries of bloodbath. Danse macabre in the colonized countries, to bring back the memory of British Commonwealth, led to clean, silenced order in the west. How often have we not seen poor, not poverty, erased from the face of the earth in the name of development? The idea that people, actually poor people, have to pay the price for development for the sake of the country is revolting precisely because it makes more sense to extract out of the ‘haves’, not ‘have-nots’. Order may look beautiful, but it always has an ugly underbelly.

Delhi-o-Delhi, I love you even for your ‘filth’ because these clean roads stink much more.

[Article originally appeared on www.RogueDiplomat.Com - International Affairs, Culture & Travel (http://www.roguediplomat.com/).]