That the Games are being held in London, surely the greatest city in this or any other universe, is an appropriate time to reflect on how much Britain has given the world in terms of sporting rules and, indeed, the sporting temperament – and how India is the natural heir to this Anglo-spherical tendency. Why, then, has India not taken up this obvious heritage? An answer can be discerned, surely, in the sagacious statements of Stanley Baldwin, speaking in a Commons debate on the Armenian Question in 1933. Warning against the reckless mediocrity that the Labour Party threatened to introduce into the life and conduct of the Empire, he predicted that Great Britain, the first sporting nation, would lose its dominance of what he called “the playing fields of Elysium” if Socialism were to have its way. India, sadly, was born into the crucible of Fabianism, which has crippled its growth as a sporting power…