Yes we indeed can compare India with Australia in cricket or Indian gymnasts with the Chinese or the Indian athletes with the Croatian, but the glory and greatness of India does not lie in its cricket or politics but in its spirituality. Brand India was and still is best known for its many-sided all-inclusive spirituality that has explored the realms of the Beyond from every angle and in every aspect and detail. Were we to draw comparison between the spiritual knowledge of India even as of date when it is still recovering its lost spiritual glory and light, all the nations of the world put together and all the religions and mystics would yet fall short.
Having said that there India must recover itself in every field as it once was. But the basis will always be spiritual. In sports it would mean not only winning the trophy but setting the perfect example of sportsmanship. Unfortunately money has spoilt everything and cricket and films are standing examples of how lust for power and greed for money is fast destroying these. But leaving that aside for the moment, it is important to understand how the Indian ethos works. We have always been hero worshippers and love exceptional achievements, exceptional quality, exceptional capacity rather than the number of achievers. In a certain degree this tendency is everywhere but in India it touches a peak. Hence we are happy for a generation if we produce one Kapil Dev, one Sunil Gavaskar, one Dara Singh, one Saina Nehwal, one Viswanathan Anand than a host of gold medal winners.
Of course the new age belongs not only to the exceptional few but also to the many who strive towards perfection in any field. There is a first awakening towards that as we saw in the recent Common Wealth Games. But frankly for this all-round development we need to get rid of the obsession with cricket, a legacy of the Empire, and focus on the strengths on several other fields that are neglected due to wrong emphasis on this one sport, but the greed for money interferes, I suppose.
