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Abstract
This article presents the results of a field study of the 2008 Olympic Flame Relay in Delhi, India, where Tibetan and pro-Tibetan protests against the Chinese Olympic hosts generated a state security transformation of Olympic ritual and a parallel Tibetan counter-performance. These events are placed in the context of earlier Indian practices of indigenization of the Olympic Flame Relay in 1960, 1964, and 2004. If Delhi 2004 represented a further hybridization of indigenous and international ‘best practices’ models for flame relays, Delhi 2008 demonstrated the failure of the standard model to cope with the political and moral forces unleashed when the host nation is as challenged as China in the field of human rights. This article concludes with an analysis of the Queen's Baton Relay for the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games, showing the chaotic caricature that results when transnational standard practices for relays of sports festival icons are completely set aside.
Notes
1 CitationButalia, ‘Jwalamukhi: The Olympia of India’.
2 CitationButalia, ‘Jwalamukhi: The Olympia of India’, 36–7.
3 CitationButalia, ‘Jwalamukhi: The Olympia of India’, 38.
4 CitationButalia, ‘Jwalamukhi: The Olympia of India’
5 Datta, ‘Keep Politics Away From Sports: Protests, Boycotts Only Affect the Athletes’. The Times of India [New Delhi], April 16, 2008.
6 See MacAloon, ‘Introduction’ and ‘Flame Relay Operations under a “World's Best Practices” Regime’, in this volume.
7 See Amelidou, ‘The 2004 International Relay’, in this volume.
8 Interview with Virender Sehwag on the flame relay, 20 June 2004.
9 Interview with Virender Sehwag on the flame relay, 20 June 2004
10 All of these letters were published in The Hindu, 14 June 2004.
11 P.T. Usha, ‘the Queen of Indian athletics’, won five gold medals in a single Asian Track and Field Championships (1985), was five times named best woman Asian Athlete of the Year, and won the top female athlete award at the 1986 Seoul Asian Games.
12 For details, see http://www.rediff.com/sports/2004/jun/10usha.htm (accessed September 11, 2011).
13 For details, see http://www.rediff.com/sports/2004/jun/10usha.htm (accessed September 11, 2011) The Arjuna Award is India's top honor in Olympic-style sport. Cricket is not, of course, an Olympic sport though it today reigns supreme in Indian sporting and popular culture. On the place of Olympic sport in the overall Indian ‘space of sports’, see CitationMajumdar and Mehta, India and the Olympics.
14 Thakur, ‘Tibetan Protests Banned in Arunachal’, The Times of India [New Delhi], April 16, 2008.
15 The protest ban in Arunachal and the heavy security was scathingly critiqued as a sign of Indian weakness before Beijing by many media publications. See, for instance, Anonymous, ‘Torching the Lines’, The Indian Express [New Delhi], April 18, 2008.
16 The protest ban in Arunachal and the heavy security was scathingly critiqued as a sign of Indian weakness before Beijing by many media publications. See, for instance, Anonymous, ‘Torching the Lines’, The Indian Express [New Delhi], April 18, 2008
17 ‘Foolproof Security for the Torch Relay’, The Hindu [New Delhi], April 16, 2008.
18 This advisory was issued by UN security officers on 11 April 2008.
19 Times Now is India's most popular 24-hour English news channel. It is owned by Bennett and Coleman company which also runs The Times of India.
20 Personal interview at Rajghat on 17 April 2008.
21 Interview with Pasang Tsering, Tibetan protestor, New Delhi, 18 April 2008.
22 Dhondup, Dorji, Vice President, Tibetan Youth Congress, ‘Torch of Protest’, Times Now, special broadcast, 17 April 2008.
23 Dhondup, Dorji, Vice President, Tibetan Youth Congress, ‘Torch of Protest’, Times Now, special broadcast, 17 April 2008
24 For further ethnographic details of the day, see Majumdar and Mehta, India and the Olympics, 306–14.
25 Anusuya Mathur, report on NDTV 24x7, broadcast on 17 April 2008.
26 Jacque Rogges quoted in Associated Press (AP), ‘IOC: Don't Boycott Olympic Over Tibet’. 15 March 2008. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id = D8VE054O1&show_article = 1 (accessed March 31, 2009].
27 IOC Vice President Thomas Bach quoted in Associated Press (AP), ‘IOC: Don't Boycott Olympic Over Tibet’. 15 March 2008. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id = D8VE054O1&show_article = 1 (accessed March 31, 2009].
28 Saurav Ganguly later confirmed this to us in a personal interview on 4 May 2011.
29 See MacAloon, ‘Introduction’, this volume.
30 Telephone conversation with Suresh Kalmadi, then Chairman, Delhi 2010 Organising Committee, on the evening of 1 August 2010.
31 Interview with Suresh Kalmadi, then Chairman, Delhi 2010 Organising Committee, 13 August 2010.
32 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p007qdkn/The_Monday_Documentary_Soft_Power_India/ (accessed June 3, 2010).
33 See MacAloon, ‘Introduction’, this volume.