Sarita Devi incident: Adding insult To injustice?

The Sarita Devi episode has produced divided opinions. There are some who feel that however unfair the referee might have been, as an athlete she erred in refusing to accept the medal awarded to her while many feel that she was unjustly robbed, and that it was only fair that she stood up for her principles. To punish a sportsperson in such an instance was to compound the injustice, the feeling went. The athlete herself termed the incident, an insult to her and the nation, and this is a theme that has been aggressively repeated over the last few days in social media and otherwise.

This is a common theme now, this ‘insult to the nation’ business, but is that really what was at work here? It is easy to sympathise with Sarita Devi — she lost a bout that most felt that she had clearly won. Even her behaviour at the podium was not a calculated statement of any kind, but a deeply emotional act by someone clearly not in control of herself. Athletes work really hard and make many sacrifices, and get really very brief windows of opportunity before their bodies let them down (unless one is Mary Kom). Disappointment at decisions that are unfair is not uncommon, but the nature of sport is that artificially constructed rules must be treated as sacrosanct otherwise the entire edifice of make-believe that is sport collapses. Individual sportspersons cannot decide what is right and what is not, and Sarita Devi is by no means the first athlete to be given an unfair decision. Even if the referee was biased in favour of the Korean boxer, as is alleged, how exactly does that translate into an insult directed at India? If anything, the nationality of the losing boxer should have been of no consequence; the Korean boxer would have won in any case.

Calling something an insult transports the infraction from the arena of sport to one which is much larger and more fundamental. Now it is no longer just about a biased referee, it is about the self-respect of an entire country. The discussion is no longer about boxing but a prickly kind of nationalism, which confers victimhood on itself. By calling an act of unfairness an insult, one arms the action with a potent emotional charge, attributing deliberateness of intent to the other side and legitimising the intemperateness of one’s response. The problem with labelling things we don’t like as insults is that they justify a belief in one’s specialness. Because we have been insulted, we can stand above rules; indeed it is our duty to do so, the argument goes. Of course, if the roles had been reversed and it was a Korean boxer who had suffered at the hand of an Indian referee, not only would that not be called out as unfair but it is quite likely that any protest by the Korean athlete would also have been seen as an ‘insult’ to India. In any case, as it turns out, little can achieved by the use of the insult card, for Indian national pride, however important it might be in this country, does not cut ice at the AIBA, and Sarita Devi will find herself facing punishment as per the rules. Feeling insulted serves no useful purpose; it is simply a way of working up a self-righteous lather.