RSS leader Dattatreya Hosabale turns gaze to FIFA World Cup 2014, says football a great leveller

NEW DELHI: With elections out of the way, the RSS seems to have turned its gaze on the next big contest, the FIFA World Cup. RSS sahkaryavah, Dattatreya Hosabale, in his blog termed football (while not mentioning cricket) as a great leveller, “played by all strata of society”.

“Football has been a great unifier, having admirers, fans, adherents and adepts across civilisations, continents and borders. It has been so since ages —in ancient India, as in ancient Greece the game of tackling the ball and hitting it around with the foot was a hugely popular sport enjoyed by the vast majority — ruler as well as the commoner. At another dimension too football is indeed a great leveller — as a game loved and played by all sections and strata of society in a majority of the countries of the world — this game deprives no one from partaking of its joys,” writes Hosabale.

In an almost elegy to the game of football, he compares its virtues to India’s civilisational core and a rejection of “all that is static, stagnant and stultifying”. “It is a game which is dominated by the attempt and the urge to reach the goal.”

He seems to share this enthusiasm for football with Narendra Modi who lost no time in releasing commemorative stamps on the FIFA World Cup just before the tournament began.