“Shut up and Dribble”. Laura Ingharam’s words leave a sour taste in the mouth, but it raises one side of a debate as old as time: should professional athletes use their platform for political advocacy? On one hand, athletes do not have the nuanced and rounded grasp of complex political issues that experts that do not boast the same reach as them do, and on the other hand, why shouldn’t citizens in a democracy use their individual experiences to express viewpoints in public. It’s this debate that India grapples with, as its most renowned athletes defiantly backed the Modi government in the matter of the farmers’ protests that sweep Northern India.
A bit of backstory: millions of farmers from India’s northern states are marching towards the Indian capital city of New Delhi to protest against agricultural reforms that remove protections for farmers. The BJP (read: India’s equivalent of the Republican Party) government, which instituted these reforms, has taken a hardline stance against the protests and the farmers, using force to dispel protestors, as well as standing firm on the bills. During this approach, a number of high-profile celebrities, including Sachin Tendulkar, referred often in India as “God”, tweeted in fervent support of the government. The tweets rang a little similar, as if they were copied off the same BJP cheat sheet.
Now personally, I’m all for athlete activism; particularly in India, a country where cricketers have been famously silent on political matters, fearing attracting the ire of someone important. But something smells fishy here. Tendulkar is famously silent on political matters, and tweets with the exact hashtags used by other celebrities makes his comments against propaganda more than a little ironic. It’s interesting to note that the Maharashtra government, the state wherein Tendulkar and a vast majority of celebrities live, has filed a probe to investigate possible BJP interference in the tweets.
On the other hand, it’s difficult to fault athletes like Shubman Gill, Mandeep Singh and Yuvraj Singh, all from the northern state of Punjab, who have put their careers at risk by speaking up against the government’s handling of the issue. Without commenting on the rights and wrongs of the protests, India could use more athletes speaking their mind, and fewer being used as government mouthpieces.
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