Tale of the two ‘rising super powers’, India & China, competition during the 2006 Doha Asian Olympics

Retrograde India wins 10 Gold medals at Doha– five less than it won in 1951 – while China sweeps the field by winning 165 Gold medals

An Indian male athlete caught in Doha trying to compete as a female

 



Washington, D.C., Wednesday, December 20, 2006 - Indian jingoists have been repeating by rote (and then believing their own lies) that India is ‘shining’ whenever they bracket India with China as one of the two rising powers of the 21st century Asia. Nothing could be further from the truth if one were to just look at the medal tally of the Asian Olympic games held every four years to see where China and India stand in the Olympic medals ‘derby’ and where they are heading.

For example, in 1951, India hosted and dominated the first Asian Olympic games held in British-built New Delhi (incidentally built by the British Colonials on stolen Sikh Gurdwara land) which has been inherited by the Nehru dynasty from the departing Colonial British in 1947 on independence. India, as the host, dominated the 1951 Asian Olympic meet, having come out unscathed, unlike the rest of Asia, from World War II. India won fifteen Gold medals in that first Asian Olympic meet held after the end of the World War. Starving China could not afford to muster a few athletes to attend the 1951 Asian Olympics, to show even its national flag, following the total destruction of that country in the two decades long civil war and Japanese occupation in the 1930’s and 1940’s, when it was a common sight to see dead bodies on the streets every morning and starving mothers selling their children on the streets of Shanghai. China was a No Show at the first Asian Olympics in 1951. (> http://ia.rediff.com/sports/doha06-india-record.html  <)

China finally made a low key first appearance, after a quarter century, in 1974, during the 7th Asian Olympics held in Tehran, Iran. In the 1978 Bangkok Olympic meet India, instead of improving, like every other Asian country, could win only 11 (eleven) Gold medals – four less than the number it had won in 1951 during the inaugural games in New Delhi. The same story has been repeated a little over a quarter century since 1978 (27 years to be precise) in the fifteenth Asian Olympics just concluded last week (on December 15, 2006) in Doha, Qatar.  China dominated the Doha Olympic games, in nearly every field, by winning 164 Gold medals (yes one hundred and sixty four Gold medals). India also with a population of over one billion like China, in marked contrast and to its eternal shame, won only ten gold medals – one less than it had won in 1978 and five less than India’s gold medal tally of fifteen in 1951, during the first Asian Olympics held in New Delhi. See Chart ‘A’ below. Instead of improving over the years, India as is its wont in everything else, has been going backwards – during the past half century - in the medals count, despite brazen cheating. The India modus operandi – its cheating operation - came to light when an Indian man was caught during medical examination, according to the BBC, after he won a silver medal posing as a female under the name of Santhi Soundararajan, during the latest Olympics held in Doha Qatar.  According to Indian press reports the Athletics Federation of India is to blame as it knew that Santhi Soundararajan had earlier failed a gender test conducted by Indian railway authorities when she/he applied for a job. Despite being privy to that information the Athletic Federation permitted her/him to participate in the Doha Asian Games in the women's category, which has led to great embarrassment. This can happen only in India! (> http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/6188775.stm  <) India some rising super power?  

 

Chart “A”

Country

Medal Tally during

1st Asian games held

 in Delhi, India

1951 *

Medal tally during

 14th Asian games held

 in Busan Korea

2002 **

Medal tally during

15th Asian games held

in Doha Qatar

2006 ***

China

 

150-gold

164 gold -Total 316

S. Korea

 

96-gold

58-gold Total 193

Japan

 

44-gold

50-gold Total 198

Kazakhistan

 

20-gold

23- gold Total 85

Thailand

 

14-gold

13- gold Total 54

Iran

 

8-gold

11- gold Total 47

Uzbekistan

 

15-gold

11- gold Total 39

INDIA

15-gold *

11-gold

10- gold Total 54

Taiwan

 

10-gold

9-gold Total 46

Malaysia

 

6-gold

8-gold Total 42

Qatar

 

4-gold

8-gold Total 30

Singapore

 

5-gold

8-gold Total 27

Saudi Arabia

 

7-gold

8-gold Total 14

Bahrain

 

3-gold

7-gold Total 21

*** Link for 2006 >  http://ia.rediff.com/sports/doha06-medals.html  <

Every four years, millions of people in India look at the Asian Games medals tally and start wondering, and feeling ashamed and angry, as to why India, with over a billion people, is still stuck below its medal tally of 1951, and stands in the company of small mini-states like Singapore, Bahrain and Qatar et.al., while the Chinese contingent amasses more medals every Olympics in an impressive collection of gold across a wide variety of sports. There is a lesson in China's relentless pursuit of sporting excellence, as an expression of its nationalism, strength and pride as a global player. China with 165 gold medals, in a total of 316 won during the Doha Olympics, China —who will  host the 2008 World Olympiad in Bejing — has been re-asserting its dominance in continental sports that has continued from the Delhi Asian Olympics in 1982 when it surpassed Japan. For a nation like China that had been in the Olympic wilderness between 1951 and 1979 and came into the Asian Games fold only in 1974, China's has emerged as a sports superpower in Asia and has risen to the second place behind the United States in the World Olympics standings. A truly amazing feat which says a book about Chinese progress, discipline and determination as a nation state. India on the other hand is marching backward as in most things that matter like the sad story of the basic daily need of every human being - access to proper sanitation or a latrine. According to UN’s Human Development Report 1995, page 161, during the period 1988 to 1993, 73% of the population (or 645.6 million Indians at that point in time) were without access to sanitation and they roamed around like animals, hiding behind bushes and culverts, to answer the daily call of nature. Ten years later in  the year 2004, according to the UN’s Human Development Report-2006, Chapter 7, page 307, 67% of India’s population of 1, 087 million (or over 723 million Indians) had no access to sanitation in 2004, an increase of over 77 million. In every country the number of people without access to sanitation has gradually decreased  over the years. Like the Asian Olympic gold medals India is going backwards in that after a decade the number of people without latrines has increased (population increase probably) by 77 million Indians.

India with a 400-plus contingent competing in 31 sports, in the Doha Olympics (probably half of them were non-playing free-loading officials) won 10 gold medals a rung lower than it did at Busan (South Korea) four years ago. The worse was the failure to gain even a bronze medal in field hockey, for the first time since the game was introduced in the Asiad in 1958. Coupled with the 11th-place finish in the World Cup last September, this setback in Hockey, marked by a stunning loss to new comer China at Doha, points to the appalling state of affairs in general, and Indian hockey in particular, which has gone to the dogs under the stewardship of that mercenary K. P. S. Gill who is guilty of murdering hundreds of Punjabi youth in the decade of the 1990’s on behalf of the Indian rulers. The Punjab alone used to provide half the hockey team in pre-partition India which won many a gold medal in the world Olympics from the 1930’s onwards for India. Unless the Indian rulers shed their lethargy and take immediate corrective measures, a game (field hockey) long celebrated as the country's national sport looks headed for a further decline like athletics and other Olympic games and everything else. India is not expected to win even ONE medal in the 2008 Olympiad in Bejing.

One can be sure that no one in India will re-evaluate the sports strategy for the 2008 World Olympiad being held in Bejing, China, in the light of the miserable Doha performance. Two years from now India will again send a planeload of free loaders and the team might win one bronze medal – maybe - just as they did in the 2004 Athens Olympiad and in the one before that. However, India could win a few medals in competition with ‘rising’ China, U.S.A., Japan and South Korea if it’s male athletes dressed up in Saris and competed as females a la Mr. Santhi Soundararajan.  

Punjab, the Sikh Homeland known for its muscular athletic prowess, and the winning ways of its youth on the playing fields during the British Raj, can only come back to the athletic glory of the past, if its parts company with misruled India and participates in the 2008 Bejing Olympiad as Occupied Punjab, Khalistan.