An Indian won a gold medal in one of those shooting events that nobody cares about (unless he is a pistol shooter who has his right hand blown off by a hand grenade, so he trains himself to shoot left handed and comes back to win two gold medals, then it's pretty cool), causing the billion people of India to notice, hey, there's an Olympics going on!
Why are Indians so underrepresented in sports?
In 2000, I wrote in VDARE.com:
Once again, however, the biggest loser in the Olympics was India. For the second straight Games, its one billion people brought home - a single bronze medal.
Indians just don't seem to care about any sports besides cricket. Even in field hockey, a game they ruled through the middle of the 20th Century, they stunk up the place again.
Perhaps Indians are just too cheerful, friendly, and polite to care much about winning at sports. Interestingly, their few sportsmen tend to come from the traditional warrior racial groups like the Sikhs. The British recognized that the Sikhs, along with the East Asian Gurkhas of Nepal, made the finest fighting men in South Asia. Sikhs remain the backbone of independent India's officer corps. Similarly, guys named Singh (i.e. Sikhs) hold about half of India's national track records.
It's long been theorized that militaristic nations should be best at sports, since sport is fundamentally training for and recreation from fighting and hunting. This correlation, however, has proved hard to test since practically every nation on Earth has a pugnacious history. Ancient nations that didn't like war tended to be put to the sword.
The most obvious exceptions: the peoples of India, who have repeatedly been the passive victims of invaders. So perhaps there is something to this old saw after all.
India is a poor country overall, but out of over a billion people, there are at least as many with Australian levels of income as there are Australians, yet the 17 million Australians win one to two orders of magnitude more medals.
Also, most countries allow their overseas diasporas to compete for the ancestral country (e.g., the American born center of the LA Clippers isn't good enough to make the American basketball team, so he's playing for Germany, where his grandparents came from). There are several million prosperous Indians all over the world who could compete for India if they aren't good enough to make, say, the US team.
One member of the 2008 bronze-medal winning US men's gymnastic team is South Asian.
In general, my impression from reading the local sports section's coverage of Southern California high school sports, though, is that South Asians raised in America aren't making much of a splash in youth sports.
They kick ass in the National Spelling Bee, however!
By the way, the only golfer in the world in this decade to knock Tiger Woods off the #1 ranking was Vijay Singh in 2004-2005. Singh is an ethnic Indian (Sikh) from Fiji. He's won more PGA tournaments since he turned 40 than Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer did combined.
Singh is also, by far, the darkest-skinned player on the PGA Tour (much darker than Tiger), yet you almost never ever hear about him in the American press as "breaking racial boundaries," "subverting stereotypes," or otherwise bringing the blessings of diversity to white-bread golf. That just goes to show that race isn't, actually, about skin color, it's about ancestry. And it also shows that Americans aren't interested in race in general, they're just obsessed with black-white questions.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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54 comments:
"Apart from cricket"
But the Indians are mad about Cricket. They are revolutionising the game at the moment with the Indian Premier League and the India-Pakistan matches are the biggest grudge match in cricket, perhaps of team sports (the Ashes no longer really count since all those Australians who retreated from Galipoli have died).
"They kick ass in the National Spelling Bee, however!"
When one tries to read up on Indian history, the most amazing thing one notices is the almost total lack of written records until relatively modern times. Instead of writing things down they memorized them. They memorized historical records, mythology, enormous literary works, treatises on grammar and many other things. Because of how archaic the language is and because of the subject matter historians think that the oldest of the vedas were composed about 3,500 years ago and then passed down orally, through rote memorization of sometimes no-longer-intelligeable verses for about a hundred generations. It's really bizarre.
From this and from their disproportionate success and willingness to participate in spelling bees one is drawn towards the suspicion that something genetic may be going on here.
Talking about sikhs
60% of sikhs are Jats
an upper-peasant caste of Punjab
( Sikh and Hindu jats form 25% of the Indian army and have a history of fighting muslims for the last 300 years )
3 Indian Jats ( hindus from Punjab )
have entered the boxing quarter finals
All are from the same gym
and 2 are cousins
The Indian who won the shooting medal was from a punjabi merchant caste
His father built a shooting range and financed the training with his own money
Given the physiology it is unlikely for south asians to do well in olympic sports that emphasize speed or gym or swimming
In the next olympics I tend to see Indians winning a lot of medals in shooting, archery, light-medium weight wrestling and boxing and weight lifting
Indians will never do well in heavy weight boxing, wrestling, weight lifting, gym, and track and field
Indian businessmen such as Mittal are now funding a lot of talented sportsmen
The main problem is in the Indian context, if someone takes up sport, he is not going to get into engineering college and get a good job
Australia's population increased by a record amount last year.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-08-14-voa11.cfm
Australia's population clock.
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/1647509ef7e25faaca2568a900154b63?opendocument
Indians also kick ass in the National Geographic bee and
in the US math olympiad team
2 of the 6 in the team are Indians
The Indian dominance in the National geographic bee is almost as great as in the spelling bee
and to be specific
Merchant and brahmin castes are the ones dominant in Spelling and geographic bees
You will not find caribbean hindus who come from a low caste blend do well in spelling bees
And regarding memorization
that is a brahmin skill set and to a lesser extent merchant skill set
you will not find peasants here
(e.g., the American born center of the LA Clippers isn't good enough to make the American basketball team, so he's playing for Germany, where his grandparents came from)
Anyone going to accuse this fellow of dual loyalties or denigrate him as a "cosmopolitan"? Or do we only do that with Jews?
South Asians may be bad at sports because they are not that aggressive. India has a passive culture(s) that could be related to the fact that many people do not eat red meat. It could also be the reason that India may be the only country where diversity does not have the violent consequences you see in every other country. In addition, India is not even the best cricket-playing country. That would be Australia, especially when you count for the number of people to draw from.
It could also be the reason that India may be the only country where diversity does not have the violent consequences you see in every other country.
You are kidding, right? How about the India-Pakistan-Bangladesh partition just this past century?
http://www.breitbart.tv/html/153493.html
Democratic Party Chairman calls GOP the white party.
anonymous wrote
You are kidding, right? How about the India-Pakistan-Bangladesh partition just this past century?
--
That was muslim initiated and even then most of the anti-muslim reprisals were done by the more masculine punjabi sikhs and hindus and not much by the effeminate and intellectual-commie bengali hindus, who are now facing another islamic partition thanks to illegal immigration from bangladesh and muslim demographic warfare
Anonymous, I think he tried to represent America but couldn't because of too much competition.
Of course if he chose not to represent America but made aliyah to Germany, his national homeland, to represent the Vaterland, I would consider him to have dual loyalties.
If so, he can stay in Germany as far as I am concerned. I am sure he would be much happier. As would others in America who are confused.
As far as being a cosmopolitan, I really couldn't say. Wisconsin Germans are relatively equally divided between city dwellers and farmers, so it would be hard to say.
You are right about Vijay Singh being much darker than Tiger Woods. The blacks like to claim that Woods has no choice but to be "black" because he "looks black." They don't dare to insult Vijay Singh by claiming HIM. Of course, no one will publicly call the blacks on this because they are held to the standards normally expected of retarded children. This is that liberal America calls "equality."
I think some of the posters are reading a little too much into caste backgrounds. If you look at the Indian cricket team, it draws players from a lot of different caste and regional backgrounds. It's also the most representative atheletic body in India.
I'd like to point out a lot of India's best cricketers are from the south, which has been traditionally stereotyped as being a less sports oriented region of the nation. I think this is because the south tends to be more economically developed than other parts of the country and has more resources to field atheletes.
Spelling Bee also draws Indian-Americans from a lot of different regional and caste backgrounds.
Oh, and Indian kids do well in the Spelling Bees because they study hard and their parents put their nose to the grindstone. I wouldn't discount a substanial IQ advantage, but my impression of most IA youth is that they're probably not as smart as their achievements would indicate. Like Asians, their primary advantage comes from their academic work ethic. IQ is of less importance.
Steve, you're not seeing many Indian kids in the sports pages because they don't do too well in traditional Amercian sports like football and basketball. Indians are good at tennis, cricket, golf, and badminton. These sports don't take much muscularity or height, which Indians tend to severely lack. I think if India got its act together and provided some decent funding to sports, we'd probably see some good Indian atheletes in these areas.
not just spelling bees... 2 / 6 of the USA math Olympiad team is Indian.
And we're way overrepresented in professional fields in the US...but will always suck at sports.
If only all the smart Indians could get a country of their own, like Israel, they'd be a force to be reckoned with. Back of the envelope indicates 2 mill US Indians. Add up the British and some of the Canadian Indos (not the jats) and you've got a pretty high IQ nation...
Now if only we had a mythic nation like Israel to harken to. Brahmaputra is the best I've found...
Anyone going to accuse this fellow of dual loyalties or denigrate him as a "cosmopolitan"? Or do we only do that with Jews?
Depends. How many German-Americans are engaging in such practice?
Oh, and Indian kids do well in the Spelling Bees because they study hard and their parents put their nose to the grindstone.
Indeed. Same holds for all Asian groups in the US. There is no telling how much potential has been flushed down the toilet in America thanks to pop culture - especially TV - and two income homes with their latchkey kids.
Vijay Singh isn't Sikh, he's Hindu. It's not entirely surprising -- he doesn't look anything like a native Punjabi.
Many Hindus in the diaspora are named "Singh" or have names which are mutated by the misunderstandings and mis-transliteration of colonial officials (e.g., I know of one family named Misir instead of Mishra, which is a Brahmin name found in Uttar Pradesh and environs). Many diaspora Ksyatriya families seem to have taken the appellation Singh, though that's based more on my anecdotal experience than rigorous enumeration.
Steve --
You once said something along the lines of, "Let's face it, sports are basically just a testosterone contest." On a purely personal, anecdotal level, it's always been my impression that sub-continental Indians simply have less testosterone. I know, it's a poor country, and they'remostly vegetarian, and those two things have widespread consequences as far as muscularity go. But even in the US, most of the Indians I know -- who eat meat and are not poor -- just seem wimpy. I've always found the prettier Indian women very appealing, largely because of their natural femininity. But that same quality also translates to a lack of athleticism among both sexes. You simply don't see Indian guys who are "jacked". I know, it's not part of their culture, but I can't help but think that if they were more gentically gifted in that direction, it would become part of their culture.
diversity does not have the violent consequences you see in every other country.
huh? there are over 40 different separtist movements - remember the sikh riots 5000 sikhs killed while police looked the other way...
tamil tigers in sri lanka and on and on...
Vijay singh is from the Fiji Indian diaspora, which is a blend of 50% North Indian Dalit ( untouchable ) and 50% North Indian peasant
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The center of gravity of the Indian diaspora in the US is the Patel
( northern merchant )
but the academic awards are won by brahmins, jains and khatris
To see Indian guys who are jacked
visit the jat sikhs of vancouver
Their lifestyle, a lot like redneck whites, prone to violence, hard drinking, but they dont have illegitmacy
It's interesting that India has a tradition of physical culture that goes back thousands of years, and they were one of the first non-western nations to get with weightlifting and bodybuilding, as early as the 1920's and 1930's. It's odd that they haven't done better in the Olympic Weight Lifting events. Of course, talking about "India" isn't really very useful, considering that each region and each caste is almost a seperate country, so that anything one says about "Indians" is likely to be true of some group or another.
If you're interested, some old-time Indian physical culture and weightlifting stuff can be found here:
http://www.sandowplus.co.uk/India/india.htm
Tschafer
anonymous squirmer said, "Anyone going to accuse this fellow of dual loyalties or denigrate him as a "cosmopolitan"? Or do we only do that with Jews?"
Flag-waving Anglo-Americans used to do that type of thing with German-Americans all the time, from pre-WWI until the Good War, sometimes for good reason, sometimes not. Read Red-White-and-Blue hacks like John Gunther. Then something weird happened along the way, and the country known as "Germany" didn't seem to really represent the inhabitants known as "Germans" anymore.
As far as accusations of "dual-loyalty" go, the Israel of today, with its blood and soil ideology, can in no way be compared to the Germany of today. Or the England. Or France. Or Ireland. Or Norway. Or Australia. Or Spain. Or Poland. Or Italy.
Ugh, why couldn't this thread have stuck with the Hindoos and their athleticism?
I do think that South Asians are poor athletes on average compared to, well, everybody else; however, if India and the others were as sports-obssessed as Australia and had the Aussies' sports infrastructure, then with well over a billion people Inida would certainly be in the top 10 of medal winners and Pakistan and Bangladesh would have respectable counts as well.
I agree with others who have suggested that the lack of muscle mass (male hormones) is a big reason for the lack of South Asian athletic prowess. I would specifically focus on the legs. I have noticed that South Asian men tend to have rather puny legs compared to whites, thick-calved East Asians, and certainly the treetrunks of athletic black men.
As far as Olympic underachievers based on demographics is concerned, I think the biggest underachiever is Brazil. With 90-95 million whites, about 85 million people of partial or full West African ancestry (mostly partial), and even about 4-5 million East Asians, I think the Brazilians would be daunting competition for the Americans if they had the sports infrastructure of a developed country. The Brazilians are world-beaters in the only two sports they care about, which uncoincidentally require little infrastructure - soccer and volleyball.
I've noticed a related matter with respect to Indian men: for the most part, they're not given to displays of machismo or whatever you want to call it. The lack of athletic competitiveness may be related to this because so many of them have not had to compete for mates because of arranged marriage. The whole idea of jock swagger is simply superfluous.
Asians aren't given to displays of machismo either, but they seem to do fine in a lot of sports. As I said above, Indians would do better if the government threw some funding behind their atheletes.
The Jat Sikhs in Vancouver, B.C. aren't "jacked" in the sense African-American or Irish-American guys are. They more resemble the big and obese 2nd/3rd gen Latinos one might see waddling through LA and the rest of Southern Cali. Despite their sizable population, Indo-Canadians are poorly represented in Canadian sports. Being big alone doesn't guarantee atheletic success, unless it's accompanied by strength and speed.
Indeed. Same holds for all Asian groups in the US. There is no telling how much potential has been flushed down the toilet in America thanks to pop culture - especially TV - and two income homes with their latchkey kids.
Most Indian-Americans can tell you horror stories about the academic fanaticism of their parents. For all the success that Indian and East Asian kids have obtained in academics though, I can't help but notice that a lot of Western countries with reputations for academic laxness (Australia, Italy, UK, U.S.) seem to be doing just fine for themselves. In the long term, I think forcing kids to cram and study, rather than go out and play some ball, doesn't make them all that much more productive anyway. It does, however, give Asian immigrant kids a leg up in university admissions.
I was reading on GNXP that Flynn reviewed numerous IQ tests and found Chinese and Japanese raised in America actually scored slightly lower than whites on IQ tests, but massively overachieved academically. The same trend can be noticed in the UK, with Indians scoring lower on IQ tests and yet getting better grades than white British kids.
"I have noticed that South Asian men tend to have rather puny legs compared to whites, thick-calved East Asians, and certainly the treetrunks of athletic black men."
Black guys tend to have poor leg genetics in bodybuilding compared to whites and certainly Asians.
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Also Indian folk culture is not passive and non-violent (more to India than Jainism influenced Gujarati culture popularized by Gandhi). For example traditional sports in the country are often aggresive,violent and involve gratuitous animal cruelty .
For an urban middle-class Indian, physical sports are a low-status activity (things like singing, and dancing are also still associated with low caste minstrels despite the success of Bollywood).
Indian Americans are part of the affluent nerd class who make up the bulk of the Indian gentry, and don't care to be associated with such plebian activities.
darwin wrote
--
The lack of athletic competitiveness may be related to this because so many of them have not had to compete for mates because of arranged marriage. The whole idea of jock swagger is simply superfluous.
--
Until recently famine was common in India and the main function of a man was to earn a living
and looks did not matter much for men
However in recent decades, high earning Indian males are finding out the hard way that Indian women dont care for them anymore if they dont look like a hunk
Part of it has to do with physiology. Indians tend to have thin builds, with smaller torsos, as an adaptation for living in a hot climate.
Part of it also has to do with the fact that Indians really hate physical activity. This doesn't apply to all Indians of course, I have several uncles who were very athletic. But I think there's a lot more of us compared to folks of other races who prefer sedentary indoor/intellectual activities.
I'm proud of the fact that unlike those Chinese or Soviet Russians or Nazi Germans we don't see ourselves through the prism of maximizing our take of Olympic medals in sports most of us don't give a damn about in the first place just to redeem ourselves as a race.
Also, I don't think Indian kids in the states spend all their time studying, just because they're not playing sports. They likely spend more time watching movies or playing video games. They get ahead because they're smart. No amount of parental pressure is going to make an idiot get ahead, and in the long term high school success pales in comparison to college and graduate school performance where the parents aren't around. If you have brains but not the athletic skills of course you're going to spend your time getting ahead in academics and academic extracurricular instead of running ball all day hoping that Ohio State will come knocking at your door. I can't believe this discussion has devolved to the point where people are griefing one of the few groups in America that actually do like to study things like science and engineering for not wasting more of their time gunning for athletic scholarships like most white/black kids.
"That was muslim initiated and even then most of the anti-muslim reprisals were done by the more masculine punjabi sikhs and hindus and not much by the effeminate and intellectual-commie bengali hindus"
Ah yes - the Masculine Punjabi and Effeminate Bengali make their re-appearance. Of course, you can just as easily describe it as Punjabis being far more prone to violence, regardless of religion than their more level-headed Bengali counterparts. Bengal saw some horrific violence at Partition, but once the pointlessness of it became apparent, it calmed down.
OTOH, Punjabis seemed to want to set a record for how many corpses they could pile into rail cars.
As Naipaul noted, after Bangladesh gained its independence, Pakistan became a much dumber country. Bengalis had higher rates of education than their Punjabi cousins. And in 2008, Bangladesh has done better on many social indicators, particularly female literacy, than either Punjabi-dominated Pakistan or India.
In New Delhi, which is largely Punjabi in character - a group of women will find it impossible to go about their business without facing some sort of harassment. While such harassment is seen throughout India, it is generally understood that no place is as bad as New Delhi.
In Canada, where Punjabis are a disproportionate share of the Indian community - they have brought over gang culture, honor killing, and run the drug racket in Vancouver.
In the U.S., where you have more commericially-minded Gujaratis, bookish Bengalis, and absurdly smart South Indians, the negative aspects of Punjabi culture are kept in check.
Has anyone ever seen a buff Indian?
> Has anyone ever seen a buff Indian?
Here's Matador, of pickup fame, sitting next to Mystery.
http://www.vh1.com/photos/gallery/?fid=23496&pid=2624169&dyn=isSeriesDyn
In Canada, where Punjabis are a disproportionate share of the Indian community - they have brought over gang culture, honor killing, and run the drug racket in Vancouver.
---
It must be noted that this behavior is JAT behavior
The Jat Sikhs are a peasant caste and violent because of constant anti-muslim warfare for 300 years
Punjabi Khatris almost never do this
Among Khatris are Bobby Jindal, Kanwal Rekhi, Vinod Khosla, Vinod Dham, Sabeer Bhatia etc
The khatris are a merchant caste, and while many khatris are in the Indian army, they tend more to be officers, whereas the jats are mostly enlisted men
Ah yes - the Masculine Punjabi and Effeminate Bengali make their re-appearance.
...
In the U.S., where you have more commericially-minded Gujaratis, bookish Bengalis, and absurdly smart South Indians, the negative aspects of Punjabi culture are kept in check.
Just a tid bit of information, one that probably would have been worth knowing before getting worked up and writing this screed, this comment was made not by a Punjabi but by one of those of "absurdly smart South Indians" you seem to be so fond of.
As for Jats or Jat Sikhs being jacked, I have to agree with the other commenter that we, on the whole, seem to lean toward being overweight than being muscular.
More generally, do others have the impression that there is a higher frequency of ectomorph and endomorph body types than mesomorphs among Indians? I have this sense from observing american Desis so ectomorph frequency can't be just chalked up to poor nutrition.
I have known a great many Indians (I'm in the software business), almost all of whom are South Indians, and the great majority of them are ectomorphs. And I've never met one I've disliked.
My impression from talking with them is that North India is so different from the South that it might as well be a different country.
And they all seem to be proud that they can't speak Hindi or any of the other north Indian languages. Many of them brag that they have never been to the north and don't know much about it.
What's so different about the south from the north?
Different ethnic groups, different cultures, different languages. The north indians speak Indo-European languages descended from Sanscrit, while the southerners speak Dravidian languages, which are a whole different family. The north has also suffered a lot more wars and invasions than the south.
And the south has hotter (spicier) cuisine. (Dangerously so, in my opinion.)
According to the southerners, their area is more modern and high-tech, while the northerners are mostly goat herders still in the middle ages. I'm sure that's an exaggeration, but there does seem to be some regional rivaly going on.
Have you noticed how the North East Asian trio of China, Japan and South Korea (Upto a smaller extent N. Korea and Taiwan, Mongolia’s population is too low, but they perform better on a per capita basis) tend to display the best sporting prowess in Asia. These three always dominate the Asian games.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Asian_Games
So let me see North East Asians outscore other Asians in IQ and sporting powress, both brains and brawns. Some kind of master race within Asia would you say?
"So let me see North East Asians outscore other Asians in IQ and sporting powress, both brains and brawns. Some kind of master race within Asia would you say?"
And yet it doesn't seem to help them at all with getting the ladies
That's one sexually frustrated master race! South Asian men weren't included in the study, but they appear as a group to have higher rates of outmarriage in the US than east asians, a potential indicator they don't face the same handicaps in the dating market.
Wouldn't it be nice if people followed Steve's example and evaluated human biodiversity with some objectivity instead of just cherrypicking the data for master race fantasies. Would keep the bickering down, and the information content up.
I was just joking about the 'master race' bit. I am not North East Asian BTW. I am Bangladeshi and I am not Razib. Anyways North East Asian men do not get ladies in certain western nations like U.S.A, Britain or say Australia. But they do very well in getting chicks in Russia and Eastern Europe in general and Latin America. Chinese men did quite well in the Caribbean with many marrying black women.
2 reasons for this is
1] In Latin America for example, women are more feminine and having a stable relationship with a high earning male is very important for women. North East Asian men rule in that sector.
2] Women tend to look for many qualities in men which are hard to define exactly like confidence. Looks are important when choosing men but not that important as it is when men choose women. These preferences can be easily manipulated by the media. The media in most western countries are pro-black, pro-Mediterranean but anti-North East Asian and anti-Northern European in portraying men. Without the need of a stable provider (women in western nations are very independent) the media plays a very big role in 'brainwashing' women about what is 'desirable'. BTW Nortther European men do very well in Brazil.
There was this contestant with a great voice in the Indian version of American Idol, Meiyang Chang who belonged to the Chinese minority of India. Yes a Chinese guy singing songs in Hindi! His ancestors had come to India about four generations back but he considers himself fully Indian. He was very popular among the ladies in India, regularly getting the ‘female vote’.
Watch his video and see the reaction of those attractive ladies just at the end of his song at about 2.38 minutes at.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZOR0fo7WlM&feature=related
And this is the reaction of the ladies when he exited the contest. Alisha Chinoy who is a pop star in India walked away crying at 3.02 minutes at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVn6pyPmMt8&feature=related
> Anyways North East Asian men do not get ladies in certain western nations like U.S.A, Britain or say Australia. But they do very well in getting chicks in Russia and Eastern Europe in general and Latin America. Chinese men did quite well in the Caribbean with many marrying black women.
Could you give me a reference for the Russian and East European women? My only experience is with Russian dating sites which, admittedly, is not necessarily representative, but it's a whole lot different than what you suggest.
I'm not sure about the Latin American experience (though it seems logical)... but I can verify the Caribbean Chinese experience. The Chinese men tended, moreover, to get the aspirant black bourgeois women rather than the usual run-of-the-mill sort.
I have a friend in Canada who is half-Chinese Jamaican and half-African Jamaican... though his Chinese father (a doctor) adopted the social mores of his black Jamaican counterparts and divorced his wife (also a doctor) after a couple years (this was in the mid-70s, when the divorce rate was a fraction of what it is today).
Sushil Kumar, a Hindu JAT who is also vegetarian won the bronze medal in wrestling
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/351461.html
20 to a room, two to a bed: This is where the medal came from
Shreya Chakravertty
Posted online: Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 0256 hrs Print Email
New Delhi, August 20: Switching off their television set, Sushil Kumar’s wrestling buddies at Satpal’s akhada in Chhatrasal Stadium in Delhi didn’t waste a minute to begin the frenzied celebrations. Their sport wasn’t even mentioned among the medal prospects in the run-up to Beijing, but along came this man, seemingly out of nowhere, to break India’s one-medal jinx at the Olympics.
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The celebrations will continue for a while, but a peek into the everyday lives of the country’s second medallist at the Games shows he had to battle a lot more than his opponents in Beijing. Squeezed into tiny rooms at the stadium’s residential facility, with rats, cockroaches and cobwebs for company, the conditions are not really conducive to breed a champion. But for these men, it’s just a way of life.
The disbelief grows as one enters the dingy room. It looks dark despite the light outside, and with barely any space to walk between the beds, the room gives the impression of being much smaller than it is. The shelf at the back has a number of trunks thrown together, taking up precious space, but it’s all they have to spare for their belongings.
Sumit, one of the wrestlers who bunks in the same room as Sushil, proudly points out his now famous colleague’s mattress among nine others in the small room. “See, this is where he sleeps. In the summer he sleeps this side, but in winter he moves to the other mattress. We have to manage with just these two coolers, so he moves to be more comfortable,” he says.
“With this medal, we hope our needs are better looked after than before. Here, there are 20 people to a room with two people to a bed. Not all rooms have coolers like ours, and we have to share the space with rats and other animals. Here, there’s room for everybody,” laughs Arvind, another inmate cheerfully resigned to the conditions.
For their food and lodging, they pay a sum of Rs 1000-1500, depending on the size of the room. “This is how we’ve been living. We have to make do with what we have. It’s very tough, but what choice do we have?” says Sumit, before adding: “Perhaps now that Sushil had got a medal, more money will come into the sport. We have brought it to the attention of the authorities many times but it hasn’t made a difference, so we carry on.”
Sumit makes a hasty attempt to make the room presentable by pushing away a pile of clothes into a corner, but it doesn’t work. The lack of coolers means they have to leave the doors open while they sleep but all that it does is invite mosquitoes.
Surrounded by this gloom, a couple of framed pictures of Sushil, displayed in the only available space — a ledge near the exhaust fan high above the mess — provide a temporary distraction. “This is him with his 2005 Arjuna Award. And here’s another during the 1998 Asian Cadet junior meet where he won gold. Now he has an Olympic medal!” says another colleague, Rajendra. “We are all very proud of what he has achieved, and we can’t wait to meet him at the airport.”
Coach Virender Kumar acknowledges things are tough. “Sushil also had the same difficulties, but he had said he’ll win a medal and he did. Here at the stadium, there are wrestlers from all over the country who are living in these conditions, and I hope they are all inspired by what he has done. Wrestlers don’t get jobs, so many are unwilling to take it up seriously, but now things will be different,” he says.
Even at NIS, Patiala, where India’s Beijing-bound wrestlers were training, the conditions had been difficult. Before they left for the Olympics, the wrestlers had told The Indian Express that the “callous attitude of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) administration could seriously hamper India’s medal prospects”.
“Right from filling water-coolers to sweating it out in wrestling halls with not even air-cooling facilities, it was tough for them,” said a local wrestler on Wednesday. “I have seen with my eyes how the wrestling staff practised in the summer heat. But still they managed to get a medal.”
Hindu JAT
Vijender Kumar wins bronze medal in boxing
Boxing sensation Vijender Kumar assures India of another medal
With the entry of Vijender Kumar in the semi finals of 75 kg middleweight Boxing event, India is assured of another bronze medal. Hopes of another silver or even gold remain still alive.
In this olympics about 20 Indians reached the quarter finals in sports like shooting, boxing, wrestling,
and another 20 reached the last 16
in sports like archery, badminton and table tennis
This number ought to improve
From
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-08/07/content_659034.htm
Chinese husbands welcomed in Russia
By Li Qian (Chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-08-07 17:21
Recently Russian women are looking to marry Chinese men because of their trustworthiness and romanticism, Chinanews.com reported Monday.
"Can you introduce some nice Chinese guys to me?" 25-year-old Russian Nadya asked her Chinese boss Zhao Hong, chairwoman of the local Chinese Association in Russia's fifth largest city Krasnoyarsk, who often receives such requests.
Among the more than one hundred Chinese families Zhao knows in the city, there are at least five Russian women married to men who work as businessmen, planters, or teachers at a national university.
Chinese migrant to Russia Ge Youjin and his Russian wife Tatiana had their third child recently. Tatiana said her husband is responsible. "He cherishes our love and doesn't drink or spend a lot," she said.
Ge too admires his wife. "She is hardworking and considerate like other Russian women, and she takes care of the family well."
Tatiana has a decent job, and cooks Northeast Chinese cuisine, which makes her husband feel at home. Tatiana now favors rice as a staple food, instead of Russian black bread.
Guo Jinchang, who has worked in a local farm for a dozen years, noticed some of his Chinese friends married Russian wives. "Chinese are comparatively conservative, which can add to their characteristic charms," he said.
Because of World War II, the population of men in Russia has been smaller than that of women, with 47 percent male and 53 percent female, according to figures from the Russian Federation Committee of Statistics.
Outlook India
Article on Sushil Kumar, JAT,
who won bronze medal in olympics
Najafgarh has a new star in addition to cricketer Virender Sehwag. Perhaps India's biggest advertisement for vegetarianism, he thinks that the availability of more doctors, trainers and physiotherapists would help the cause of athletes. ...
Rohit Mahajan interviews Sushil Kumar
Sushil Kumar is perhaps India's biggest advertisement for vegetarianism -- well, sort of, because he's just five-feet-four.
In wrestling, perhaps more than in most sporting activity, you need muscle power. Because he doesn't eat meat or eggs, Sushil depends entirely on milk, almonds, ghee and such like to build strength.
In old times, they used to say that you get strong if you eat a lot -- 10 litres of milk, kilos of ghee and almonds everyday…
Itna toh na khaa paate! This is only talk! But I do drink about three-four kilos of milk everyday. I'm a vegetarian, most of the wrestlers in India are vegetarian.
Wrestlers are mostly followers of Hanuman. Are you?
I have a photo, a full little temple at my room here! I don't read the Hanuman Chalisa in the mornings, though I do listen to the recordings.
Traditional Hindu wrestling gyms are part of the sect of Hanuman
( monkey god )
where it is obligatory to be vegetarian and avoid alchohol
JAT martial prowess, not sikh martial prowess
Jats have won the broze medal in wrestling and boxing
Jats are found in a radius of about 200 miles around Delhi
In the Province of Punjab, they are sikhs, in other places they are hindus
They run a parallel govt in the countryside and run kangaroo courts with honor killings
Ritually they are peasant caste, but in practise they lynch anyone who tries to elope with a jat woman
including brahmins and Khatris ( merchants )
Starting 1650, many of them converted to sikhism and the hitherto peaceful sikhs became violent
Hindu Jats started an anti-muslim revolt in 1650, Sikh jats started their own anti-muslim revolts in 1700
After suffering several defeats and massacres at the hands of the muslim emperors, they finally started to win and carved out several sikh and hindu jat kingdoms
The jat sikhs conquered pakistan, kashmir and parts of tibet
Thats why kashmir and parts of tibet ( ladakh ) are with India now
60% of sikhs are jats
The other sikhs get a free ride
based on jat martial reputation
When the mullahs declared jihad against the sikhs, the Jat sikhs invaded Afghanistan and at the battle of balakot, 1830, despite being outnumbered 5:1, won and cut to pieces and burnt alive the jihadi mullah Syed Barelvi ( the osama of his times )
Are the Jats related to the Pathans (Pushtuns) by any chance?
Are the Jats related to the Pathans (Pushtuns) by any chance?
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No, they have centuries of warfare between them
The Jat Sikhs defeated the Pushtuns and captured the Pushtun ruled Kashmir, Pakistan, and many parts of Afghanistan
Thats why Pakistan now has Pushtun provinces such as FATA, NWFP are now in Pakistan instead of Afghanistan
Incidentally During Jat Sikh rule, the Pushtuns ( who harbor the taliban ) were peaceful, since the sikh generals had a policy of general massacre of civilians in any area where the jihad turned active
The british toppled the Jat Sikhs in 1846 and inherited the islamic pushtun problem which since then the west and soviets have been unable to solve since they lacked the ruthlessness of the Jat Sikhs
Jat Sikh - Pushtun wars in the early 19th century
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Jihad and retribalisation in Pakistan - Ayesha Jalal’s new book
Jump to Comments
This is an important book. We are posting another review by Khaled Ahmed here. This review also cites some revealing passages..
BOOK REVIEW: Jihad and retribalisation in Pakistan
Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia
By Ayesha Jalal
Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore 2008
Pp373: Price Rs 695
Available at bookstores in Pakistan
Not far from Balakot, the votaries of the Sayyid are fighting on the side of Al Qaeda against ‘imperialist’ America and its client state, Pakistan, and killing more Muslims in the process than Americans, just as the Sayyid killed more Muslims than he killed Sikhs
Ayesha Jalal studies the jihad of Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed (1786-1831) in India as the most immaculate articulation of the theory of jihad in Islam. Sayyid Ahmad may have conceived his holy war against East India Company while living in Rai Bareilly in the central region of northern India, but he moved his warriors to where Pakistan’s North Western Frontier (NWFP) province is today because he thought that the Pashtun living in the tribal areas under non-Muslim Sikh occupation were better Muslims than the settled Muslims of the plains.
Here was the first indication that Islamic utopia could be constructed more easily in a tribal society. He probably wanted to take on the British after creating a mini-state on the pattern of Madina in the NWFP and probably hoped to reform the contaminated Muslims of the plains as a means of enhancing his challenge to the British. Al Qaeda too discovered the Pashtun straddling the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan as the tribal matrix where an Islamic utopia would grow into a centre of the global caliphate devoted to reforming and uniting Muslims living unhappily as subjects of today’s nation-states.
Sayyid Ahmad was feared by Muslims in the urban centres of India and was wrongly called a Wahhabi — a negative term pointing to the intimidation and violence associated with Saudi Islam — because they thought he would use ‘retribalisation’ as a method of returning them to the true faith. Pakistan fears Al Qaeda and its Pashtun foot soldiers as it sees the same kind of process in evidence under what is called Talibanisation.
Historian Ayesha Jalal has a fair claim to knowing the various communal narratives of Muslim India, as proved in her 2000 monumental work Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850. One can say that her latest book on Jihad has grown out of this earlier work and that her identification of one of the most ideologically ‘explained’ holy wars in the 19th century India is intended to understand the location of Al Qaeda inside Pakistan’s Tribal Areas in the 21st century. She writes on page 16:
‘The geographic focal point of the jihad of 1826 to 1831 on the northwest frontier of the subcontinent corresponds to the nerve centre of the current confrontation between Islamic radicals and the West. The jihad movement directed primarily against the Sikhs was transmuted in the course of the war into a conflict pitting Muslim against Muslim. This feature of intrafaith conflict in a jihad as armed struggle has not diminished its appeal for contemporary militants, who evidence many of the same failings that undermined Sayyid Ahmad’s high ideals. The martyrdom of those who fell at Balakot continues to weave its spell, making it imperative to investigate the myth in its making’.
The story goes like this. Sayyid Ahmad, convinced of his own semi-divinity and admired by a large number of followers for his exact adherence to Islam, marched from Rai Bareilly in Central India in 1826 in the direction of the north-western city of Peshawar with a an ‘army’ of 600 local Muslims optimistically posing as warriors. The aim was to establish an Islamic state on the land of the Pashtun. As he meandered through the various regions of India and Afghanistan, he was greeted by Muslim rulers not very keen to support him in his jihad. But in Kandahar, 200 Pashtun warriors joined him, clearly in expectation of the loot which jihad in their view brought in its wake. Some Yusufzai tribesmen, irritated by Sikh rule, also joined his lashkar.
If he thought he was walking into a ‘people’ of uniform views, he was mistaken. The Durrani Pashtun of Peshawar were not particularly enthusiastic about his movement. Scared of the internecine Pashtun warfare, they had become allies of the Sikhs and paid tribute to them.
In the first engagement with the Sikh army near Peshawar Sayyid Ahmad suffered a defeat because his soldiers took to looting after the first attack and thereby allowed the Sikhs to regroup and attack again. The next battle at Hazro met with the same fate: the Pashtun warriors took to looting before the battle was won and failed to gain decisive edge later on. The warriors fought over the spoils of war and the various groups carried off what they thought was their share, no one listening to the Sayyid.
The lure of loot attracted 80,000 more local warriors to his lashkar which now became an army. At the battle of Shaidu, the warriors of Islam outnumbered the army of Budh Singh, the general who represented the suzerain Maharaja of Lahore, Ranjit Singh. This time a part of the Islamic army refused to fight, and the Durranis actually poisoned the Sayyid fearing his growing spiritual power, and let him be defeated as their imam. Weakened by poisoning, he nevertheless sought solace in marrying an Ismaili girl as his third wife. :roll: A RAPE trait/Paki gens used to have a good time in their bunkers with women in 1971 while their trrops were suffering direct hots from Indian arty
As author Jalal points out, the parallels are shockingly close. Sayyid Ahmad’s main objective was the expulsion of the British from India (p.70). Osama bin Laden’s foray into Pakistan is also a phase in his jihad against America. Sayyid Ahmad was under pressure from the puritans of the faith from India to first wage war against the ‘Muslim infidels’ and for this he had to enforce sharia on the Pashtun population of Hazara which was under his military control:
‘The scope of the laws was broadly defined to include the compulsory enforcement of Islamic injunctions relating to prayers and fasting, as well as a ban on usury, polygamy, consumption of wine, distribution of a deceased man’s wife and children among his brothers, and involvement in family feuds. Anyone transgressing the sharia after swearing allegiance to Sayyid Ahmad was to be treated as a sinner and a rebel. Any breach was punishable by death, and Muslims were prohibited from saying prayers at the funerals of such people. Two weeks later, after another meeting of tribesmen, Sayyid Ahmad began appointing judges in different parts of the frontier…the moves infringed on the temporal powers of the tribal chiefs and seriously undermined the prerogatives of local religious leaders (p.94)’.
The three conditions that Sayyid Ahmad and the Taliban fill are: fighting enemy number one (the British, the Americans) through a secondary enemy (the Sikhs, Pakistan); mixing local Islam with hardline Arab Islam; and using the tribal order as matrix of Islam. The Taliban derive their radical Islam from the Wahhabi severity of the money-distributing Arabs; the mujahideen of Sayyid Ahmad derived their puritanism from Shah Waliullah’s ‘contact’ with the Arabs in Hijaz in 1730.
In the battle of Balakot, Sikh commander Sher Singh finally overwhelmed Sayyid Ahmad after he was informed about his hideout by his Pashtun allies. Ahmad fought bravely but was soon cut down. To prevent a tomb from being erected on his corpse, the Sikhs cut him to pieces but ‘an old woman found the Sayyid’s severed head which was later buried in the place considered to be his tomb’ (p.105).
Author Jalal notes that in the battlefield of Balakot, where Sayyid Ahmad of Rai Bareilly was martyred in 1831, another kind of ‘cross-border’ deniable jihad is being carried out by other mujahideen. She writes: ‘To this day Balakot where the Sayyid lies buried is a spot that has been greatly revered, not only by militants in contemporary Pakistan, some of whom have set up training camps near Balakot, but also by anti-colonial nationalists who interpreted the movement as a prelude to a jihad against the British in India’ (p.61).
Not far from Balakot, the votaries of the Sayyid are fighting on the side of Al Qaeda against ‘imperialist’ America and its client state, Pakistan, and killing more Muslims in the process than Americans, just as the Sayyid killed more Muslims than he killed Sikhs.
So are the Jats India's best line of defense against the Muslims?
jmr said...
So are the Jats India's best line of defense against the Muslims?
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There are 15 million sikh jats and 25 million hindu jats
In this olympics, about 20 jats reached the last 16 in boxing and wrestling ( vegetarian jats )
Yes, I would put the jats and gurkhas ( 10 mil inside India and 20 mil inside nepal )
as the front line against the jihadis
The jats and gurkhas have a very good track record against the jihadis in kashmir
The british still recruit gurkhas
as infantry ( fought in falklands war )
There is possibly another 100 mil with hereditary martial caste background
However, historically one of the most successful
anti-muslim generals, was a southern brahmin, Peshwa Baji Rao
who liberated most of india in 1720-1750
And currently the tamils who were classified as non-martial have waged a very powerful civil war in sri lanka
The main muslim problem is street rioting inside Indian cities and creation of no-go zones like in western europe and the army is not of much use in this type of situation which needs armed police
All Sikhs have "Singh" in their name, but not all Singhs are Sikhs. Singhs can also be Hindu.
(Also, all Sikh women have "Kaur" in their name).
Vijay Singh is a Hindu, not a Sikh.
This article is dumb as crap, for one let me break some stuff down, let's look at the UK first, there are more British blacks in the UK, but most of all the successful British boxers besides Ricky Hatton are Pakis, Amir Khan, a silver Olympic medalist and one match away from versing Mayweather, who beat Zab Judah and has a record of 27/3, and is regarded as having the third fastest hands in boxing, Amer Khan former undefeated light heavy weight boxer, central area championship winner, Tanveer Ahmed, for light weight boxer, WBO intercontinental champion, Jawaid Khaliq, first British Asian to win a title belt,Nadeem Saudiqque, former welterweight boxer, multiple title winner, Qasim Beg undefeated kickboxing champion 2 time world champion, Imran Khan 2x muay thai champions, Umer Kayani British Paki cage fighter, and there is one thing that scientist can't even figure, how come Pakistani bowlers are the fastest bowlers on the planet, I mean the Caribbean and Australia both play cricket like crazy, but none can match Pakis speed, Pakis are the only ones that can clock 100 mph continuously, no Caribbean bowler or Australian bowler can do that, the only one that's gotten close was Brett Lee, who only came to 99 mph, while Pakistan has Shoaib Akthar, who is in the Guiness book for the fastest delivery and even Mohammad Sami clocked 100 mph, and so Imran Khan and Wasim Akram all had way more pace then anybody on the Caribbean or Australian team, and the thing that scientist can't understand is that the Indian bowlers can't even continously hit 90 mph, which is lower than the Caribbean and Australia, and don't forget Indians used to be regarded by European scientist as intellectually inferior with iq levels less than African Americans with Richard Lynn claiming them to be 81, and African Americans 85, now I know a country of 81 iq levels can't have 4 Nobel prize winners in Physics and take over the diamond exchange, but now European scientist are reevaluating the average Indian iq, and the last time I checked, the Jat Sikhs are slowly making their presence known in Canadian hockey, now I know India will probably not win many gold medals, because Indians are considered a race of people with too many extremes, so I think you might see more Indians in the Gunniess book of world records, like that one Indian who is known as the monkey king, who can literally climb like a monkey with any ropes or help, and that one Indian that can absorb lightening through his body and transmit it through the air, who was on superhumans, and even it's been proven that Indian Saddhu men have longest wangers sizes known in the animal world, yes they are bigger than horses too, with some coming as big as 19 inches, because they wrap their sizes around a stick for their whole lives, and also has anybody noticed that the Middle East with the exception of Iran has no Olympic medals either, that includes the rich Gulf areas where they live in first world conditions, even Africa doesn't have any medals besides sprinting and long distance running, and there is even a group of humans called the Tamahumara that can run 450 miles nonstop, way more than Olympic gold medalist from East Africa, go look them up, so give Indians a little bit of time, they will catch up.
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