Somatic Nationalism: Indian Wrestling and Militant Hinduism

Abstract

In the West it is commonplace to regard sport as either an extracurricular form of leisure, or else as a business enterprise. Games and contests of all kinds are a form of distraction; and for some a very lucrative form at that (Smith 1978). Almost by definition sports direct our attention away from ‘real life’ to some form of fantasy world where there is high drama but little by way of the material or ideological substance of productive, pragmatic and ‘rational’ labor (cf. Rojek 1985; Simon 1985). Hand in hand with such a notion of marginal utility goes a folk attitude that sport is meaningless by virtue of its being purely and simply fun, as though pleasure and purpose are somehow antithetical.