[ad_1]
QUESTION: What team sport does not require special equipment or gear and attracts a bunch of rappers, football and soccer players, wrestlers, and bodybuilders who vie to get on the competing teams?
Answer: kabaddi.
If you have never heard of kabaddi, you are not alone.
It is an ancient sport that has deep roots in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, and a number of other Asian countries. It is a mix of red rover, wrestling, and tag. It tests the players’ stamina and agility.
Some enthusiasts claim the sport is 4,000 years old and connect it to the ancient Hindu mythology. However, no one knows for sure. That it is deeply rooted in the soil of the Indian subcontinent is beyond doubt.
The game is played in a field divided into two halves and with a demarcating line between the two. Each team has seven players. The idea is for one player to take a deep breath, cross the demarcating line, and enter into the other team’s territory.
There the player tries to touch or tag players of the opposite side and avoid being tackled and pulled down to the ground. If that happens, the attacker is out of the game. Before the player has to take a fresh breath, he must make it back to his side of the field.
The rules of the game require the charging player to chant kabaddi, kabaddi, kabaddi when in the opponent’s half of the field. This way the player can’t cheat by breathing.
In the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) and many other countries, it was the underclass who played the native games and kept them alive. When the European colonists came to these lands, they introduced their own games to the native population.
In the case of the British, they introduced and encouraged the natives in the upper crust of the society to play lawn tennis, squash racquets, cricket, soccer, and field hockey. However, the common folks in the rural hinterlands continued to cling to the old ways and the old sports.
The game of kabaddi was first introduced internationally in the 1936 summer Olympics in Munich when the Indians played an exhibition match. Soon thereafter in 1938 it became part of the Indian National games. Since the early 1950s, it has seen a resurgence as one of the national sports in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The favorite pastime of the so-called backward underclass has now blossomed into a national and international sport.
Its spread to the Far East is a rather recent phenomenon from the late 1970s. In 1980, kabaddi was included in the Asian Games. Thereafter, a Kabaddi World Cup was the logical step.
In the recently concluded World Cup, teams from India, Iran, Bangladesh, Thailand, Australia, Japan, South Korea, England, Poland, Kenya. Argentina, and the United States took part.
The American team, drawn mostly from the Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, was the newcomer to the game. Its captain Troy Bacon, a dreadlocked former Alabama State football player, is an enthusiastic “convert” to the game. He now plays for Patna Pirates, a professional kabaddi club in India. It is interesting that the American squad also includes rappers, bodybuilders, and even entrepreneurs.
Trappings of the professional kabaddi aside, the game is still played in the raw in the villages in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. It is a treat to go to a village or small-town fair, not unlike the county fairs in America, and partake of food delicacies and watch spirited sporting contests. These festivals are integral parts of the landscape where people in colorful dresses come from distances to trade and barter livestock, grain, and other commodities and watch kabaddi, wrestling, and horsemanship contests.
We played kabaddi as schoolchildren, but somehow the tendency to imitate our colonial rulers pushed the native sports toward oblivion. It is refreshing to see the revival of kabaddi and other sports where these sports are now played and watched with as much enthusiasm as a game of cricket.
Colonial occupation of much of Asia and the Far East had played havoc with the psyche of the native populations. In the postmodern world, it is worthwhile to remember a quote by the Jamaican writer and journalist Marcus Gavey:
“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.”
S. Amjad Hussain is an emeritus professor of surgery and humanities at the University of Toledo. His column appears every other Monday in The Blade. Contact him at: aghaji@bex.net.
[ad_2]
EmoticonEmoticon