With several recent bits of news, it’s been hard to think about this column, hard to focus. As often happens, I find myself wondering: what am I doing trying to write an essay about sports in a time when gangs of Indian men are thrashing African students in Noida? When those men actually believe African students are cannibals? When a MP won’t agree there is racism in India, because, well, “we worship a black God" and “we have black people around us"? When other gangs of men are lynching cattle transporters in Rajasthan, killing one? When another MP beats up an airline employee, boasts about it, claims he was the victim, refuses to apologize and the airline is officially ordered to fly him again? (Aside: Which dingy cell would you or I be occupying right now if we had assaulted that airline employee?)

Really, with all that going on and more, how must I pay attention to the essential frivolity of sports?

I can’t answer that. But if I now have your attention, I am going to use the rest of this essay to suggest to you that there have been and are times when assaults like these have been akin to sport.

That is, if we define sport as spectacle, spectacle as sport.

Perhaps you think I’m referring to ancient Rome, when gladiators fought each other to death in front of excited, cheering, bloodthirsty crowds. I am, and if they are revolting to our modern sensibilities, and if it’s a good thing they are ancient history, they must still have been some spectacles indeed.

In fact, at the time, gladiatoral contests were thought of and referred to as games. They were organized by the wealthy and powerful, originally as a part of funeral games, but later viewed as a service to amuse citizens. Julius Caesar often hosted elaborate gladiatorial games, once even at the tomb of his daughter.

In Rome, successful gladiators were in some ways reviled, but in some ways also the Tendulkars and Federers of their time, widely admired and glorified almost to the point of worship. There was even graffiti about them. Typical is this succinct note: “Celadus the Thracian, thrice victor and thrice crowned, the young girls' heart-throb."

But yes, that’s ancient history—though the bloodlust persists into modern times, in sports like boxing, or in arranged fights between animals. Take cockfighting, for example. In a remote West Bengal village several years ago, I watched men fasten long vicious-looking curved blades to the ankles of roosters, then send them into battle against other similarly armed roosters.

Trained to attack with their legs, the roosters fly at each other in a blur of feathers and spurting blood and, at least one time that drew gasps of admiration for the perpetrating bird, a gouged-out eye. The admiring crowd presses in to get a closer look at this champion, some especially delighted because there’ll be winnings to collect soon. If a bird tries to walk away, wounded or tired, its owner sends it back into action. There are roosters lying on the ground bleeding, held upside down bleeding, beaks open bleeding. And wherever there’s blood, there are men crowding around to gawk.

And a victorious bird? Its owner gently removes the blade, then he and his friends pet and feed and stroke and groom and generally make much of him. This is a champion, after all.

Maybe even a heart-throb.

There’s something disturbingly reminiscent of these sports in another spectacle of our times: lynching.

On 7 August 1930, three young black men were jailed in Marion, Indiana, in the US, accused of robbery, rape and murder. A mob of several thousand whites gathered outside and demanded that the three be handed over to them. They broken open the door and dragged them out, beat two to death and hung them from a tree. A local photographer took a shot of them and the crowd, later selling thousands of copies at 50 cents each to be used as postcards.

Take a good look at that image: Men in the crowd are pointing at the bodies and smiling. This is, you can tell in some faces, the best sport they have had in years.

In 2015, a mob of Indians did much the same to a man jailed in Dimapur, Nagaland, accused of rape. They broke down the door, pulled him out, bludgeoned him nearly to death and then dragged him behind a motorbike. No need for a professional photographer: most of the crowd had their cellphones out, taking their own souvenir shots of the murder. Just like in Marion, many are pointing and smiling as if, yes, this is the best sport they have had in years.

And it’s not just the bloodlust and smiles that form the ghastly parallels in all these spectacles. Remember the lynching in Dadri in 2015, of Mohammed Akhlaq? I’ll spare you the horrible details and the political games that are still playing out. But I will remind you of Ravin Sisodia.

22 year-old Sisodia was one of 18 men accused of the murder of Akhlaq and jailed. For whatever reason, he fell ill in jail and was taken to Lok Nayak Jaiprakash Hospital in Delhi for treatment. There, he died.

When his body returned to his village, the villagers draped it with the Indian flag.

That’s right: this man accused of lynching another man was treated after he died exactly like our soldiers who die in combat: as a hero.

Maybe even a heart-throb.

Once a computer scientist, Dilip D’Souza now lives in Mumbai and writes for his dinners. His latest book is Jukebox Mathemagic: Always One More Dance.

His Twitter handle is @DeathEndsFun

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