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Delivered at
1st All India Seminar on
History of Physical Education & Sports
On July 29 - 31, 1994 At Amaravati University, Amaravati.

At the outset I must thank the organizers of Hanuman Vyayam Prasarak Mandal for having invited me to deliver this Key-note address at this August-gathering.

I feel myself honoured to get associated with H.V.P. Mandal which has done pioneering work in the field of Traditional Indian and modern sports and physical education. This grand complex and a band of dedicated coaches, instructors, sportsmen and sportswomen is a testimony to these efforts of yours for the last 7 to B decades. The founders of this mandal were great visionaries who conceived this idea of imparting physical education to citizens, promoting sport in traditional Indian style, which helped the society to achieve the goal of " a sound mind in a healthy body". Undoubtedly it is these people who got instructions in this institution before independence who have contributed a lot in the struggle for freedom. In the post-independence period also this institute is playing a cardinal role in promoting physical education and sports with its emphasis on 'Indianness'. This seminar, I believe, on the subject of "History of physical Education and sports" is also a part of that effort. The Organizers have asked the scholars to delve deep in the indigenous source material which will make us richer in knowledge in this subject by the end of this seminar. I must confess here and admit my limitations that I am neither a scholar nor an expert on this subject, I am only presenting my observations as a student on Indian Culture.

    I would like to begin my address with a question "What are we aiming at?" Are we aiming at " History" of physical education and sports which traditionally means arranging events in a chronological order with the help of source material which in the case of history is Archaeology with all its modern branches, Epigraphy, Numismetics, Classical and Prakrit literature on various topics? Or are we in the search of a "Guiding principle" which inspired the people of this land and was responsible for these events with a specific style and meaning with reference to the society they lived in?

     The former one is like examining a fossil of a bird and the latter is like seeing the same bird flying in front of your own eyes. The first one is mere mechanical, descriptive and deterministic, while the second one is related more with actual experience, to have insight and intuition. The first one is complimentary to the second one but inadequate to grasp or describe reality independently. The first one will be labeled as "an Indian source material" only because it is found in limited geographical area called "Indian Subcontinent". But the second will help us to qualify it as "INDIAN" not solely limiting it to its geography but because of the cultural, philosophical and spiritual dimensions it has which are not visible in the first. To make it more simple I will quote Stanislav Grof [1]

     One of the most important achievements of Western philosophy ot Science is the recognition that scientific theories are nothing but conceptual models organizing the data about reality available at the time. They are only useful approximations of reality and should not be mistaken for a correct description of reality itself. The relationship between theory and the reality which it describes is that of map and territory in KORZYBSKI's Sense (1933); to confuse the two represents a violation of scientific thinking - a serious error in what is called logical typing. Gregory Bateson, the famous American anthropologist and generalist, used to say that person committing logical error of this kind may one day eat the menu instead of the meal. Since it is always possible to formulate more than one theory accounting for the available data, the problem in question is to find a theory that would be broad enough to incorporate some important aspects of perennial philosophy and yet preserve the pragmatic Powers of mechanistic science.

    There is no dearth of scholars of the first variety who are popularly known as Historians but there is a great paucity of Historians who do not commit the mistake of treating a map as a territory or menu as food. If we really want to find out the " Indianness" from the deliberations of this seminar on " Physical education and sports " we will have to address the key problem of scientific methodology and also appreciate the revolutionary changes seen in the perception of philosophy of science. I would also like to say a few words of caution when I say 'Indian or 'Indianness', I mean an unbroken tradition of culture, philosophy, arts, language, a way of life and not a nationalism or patriotism as it is perceived today. This tradition has its uniqueness which is native and intrinsic to it. This uniqueness is also reflected in all source material, cultural, social, educational and spiritual aspects of human activity. Physical education and sports also forms a part of it.

    We are all products of Macauley[2] and all our present tools are designed to study a culture, a way of life which is different from the ancient Indian ways of life which we are trying to study and analyze. Surprisingly the western scholars have appreciated this inadequacy earlier than their Indian counterparts. Western scholars also have realized the inadequacies of the traditional scientific methodology popularly known as "classical physics", and which cannot take them to the truth. Theory of relativity and quantum theory shattered all the principal concepts of the Cartesian world-view and Newtonian mechanics, the comer stones of classical physics. This was a painful transition for them. This shook the foundations of their world-view and forced them to think in entirely new ways. What are these new ways? [3] Are the Indian Scholars of History, philosophy, sociology and education aware of this shift in paradigm? Can we see some reflections of this new thinking in modern history writing of "sports and games?" The Encyclopedia Britanica says [4]

      The history of sports and games is a part of the history of man as a social animals his interrelations with other individuals and groups, his civilization and culture and especially his play.

        This is a very important departure from the classical, mechanistic, deterministic, mathematical approach so characteristic of western thinking in the past. It is high time that Indian researchers appreciate this change. Usually there is a tendency to advocate evaluation of things in a scientific way. This notion ot being "scientific," springs from the classical belief in "certainty" of scientific knowledge and also from the dogma of classical science which rejects all knowledge which is probable and accepts only those things which are perfectly known and about which there can be no doubt. I am afraid whether modern science with a new "insight" approves of this dogma ? Eminent physicist Fritjof Capra states [5]

     Twentieth century physics has shown us very forcefully that there is no absolute truth in Science, that all our concepts' and theories are limited and approximate.
The Cartesian belief in scientific truth is still widespread today and is reflected in the scienticism that has become typical of our Western culture.. ... Descartes' method of thought and his view of nature have influenced all branches of modern science and can still be very useful today. But they will be useful only if their limitations are recognized. The acceptance of the Cartesian view as absolute truth and of Descartes method as the only valid way to knowledge has played an important role in bringing about our current cultural imbalance.

    Capra' s statements should open our eyes. Fossil of a bird is inadequate to reach the truths and reality of the complete knowledge of the bird. It is only an approximation to reality.

     The dominance and the achievements of science and technology in the Western civilizations is commonly seen as a symbol of progress and enlightenment with a tendency to glorify progress and evolution and to look down upon the period of past as a time of "infancy" and "immaturity". Progress is taken as a linear concept considering its beginning as "primitive" and the end as "progress." This is a suicidal approach to Indian way of Life. This automatically dubs all activities and civilization of the past as primitive, tribal, immature, incomplete, lacking in perfection and accidental. Physical education and sports is no exception to this belief. Thanks to the description of the "history of sports and games" given by Encyclopedia Britanica, which does not talk of progress, modernity, science but speaks of history of sports as a part of history of a man considering him a social animal, and his interrelation with other individual and groups, and its civilization and culture.

      This compels us to take a note of one more revolutionary shift in the perception and interpretation ot philosophy of science. It is very recently that scientists have started thinking that science should be viewed not as logical systems but as "Forms ot Life". This means that science is something people do. it is not, as such, a logical structure, but a human pursuit, a complex, intrinsically organized as well as extrinsically authorized network of activities. It was traditionally thought that any science is like any other science and that "physics" could be accepted as the paradigm of science. Scientists no more believe in this... Renowned Physicist Francis Crick, protagonist of the old theory wrote " The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry." [6]  Eminent Zoologist Ernst Mayr of Horward University considers this to be a grevous error in understanding biology. He writes :-

   The classical philoshers of science tended to agree with the physicists that every thing in the world of living organisms obeys the same laws as those that apply to inert matters and that there are no other laws. As a result there was as almost total neglect of specific biological phenomena and processes in the literature ot the philosophy of science, a situation that lasted until about twenty five years ago.

     Ernst Mayr feels that thinking of classical mechanics formed the original foundation of the philosophy of science which was dominated by essentialism, determinism, and reductionism and he called this dogma as "Physicalism." However, he also feels that this extreme "Physicalism" no longer fits into the conceptual framework of modern physics.

  The premise that the Western, Classical scientific world-view possesses universal applicability is being questioned by more advanced among the western philosophers of science. Realization of this had immediate repercussions on physical and biological sciences and through them they are inevitably percolating into humanities like sociology and anthropology. The concepts and paradigms of these disciplines are brought to bear on the study of "history of sports and physical education." It is to be noted here that what constitutes a shift in the "mind-set" and processes of thinking for the Westerners who had to free, themselves from the shackles of Cartesian Newtonian modes of thinking is really a "rediscovery" for us, Indians. It is a pleasant surprise that this was perceived clearly by an eminent Western scholar, M.Marriot who says [8]

   It is an anomalous fact that the social sciences used in India today have developed from thought about Western rather than Indian cultural realities. As a result, although they pretend to be of universal applicability, the Western Sciences often do not recognize and therefore, cannot deal with the questions to which many Indian institutions are answers. In the interest of dealing with Indian questions and answers this volume explores social science ideas that can be developed from the realities known to Indian people.

What are these realities which were known to Indians in the matter of sports and physical education? That sport and physical activities are not to be viewed or pursued in "isolation" but are the part of a "holistic" unity called human personality, was unknown to Indians. It is described by Ayurveda as an integration of body, senses, mind and soul and not merely a mathematical, mechanical addition of these disjointed and separable parts. Sports and games that form part of many a Vrata and Utsava throughout the annual Rtuchakra bear witness to it. It is to be noted that women are not only not excluded from sport-activity but in some of these they are the exclusive participants. Sport is nothing if not spontaneous. The very creation of the universe is a sport for the Highest being .  This Lila if it is to be enjoyable to the one who plays and the one who views should retain as much of its original spontaneity as possible. Otherwise, it becomes a cutthroat, mercenary activity, full of tension to the players and to the spectators. That is why games in which none losses, none wins but all enjoy is recognized now as a therapy in many a psychological disorders. Even at the mytho-cosmological level,lndra is (a dancer). As a result of this dance of Indra, the world is created, Heaven and Earth are held apart and divine light is obtained. In this cosmic activity of Indra, Maruts, are his playmates. Yes, the Rgveda describes them as they play in a sportive manner.

If any philosophy of sports is to be developed which would be conceptually "Indian" having universal application, it becomes imperative to go to the original sources of knowledge. This makes study of Sanskrit essential to all those who are studing the History of physical education and sports in ancient India.

The present state of sports activity no doubt exhibits highest human efforts and excellence but it is frigheningly encroached upon by technology. As a result very few can really participate in this activity. It is also getting increasingly dependent upon money power. Very few and privileged countries in the world can hold Olympic Games today. This inability to hold Olympic games it purely economical for most countries of the world. Competition is very essential for the game but this must be for improving individual and team excellence and not as an end goal. It we connive at this aspect of competition, unnatural and dangerous tendencies creep in. The use of drugs is one such tendency. It not only distorts spirit of sports but also destructs the sportsman. Such tendencies should be condemned without any economy of words.

I started my address with a question "What are we aiming at?". Is our aim is to unearth "guiding principle" in the history of physical education and sports and to find out what prevented us from being self destructive, uneconomical and complex?. Then we have to understand "Indian world-view" ot self and its surroundings, that is "nature", and what was his ultimate aim to achieve in life. To grasp this "Indianness" we will have to avoid making mistakes of equating "fossil of bird" with the "bird" itself. History will have to be interpreted with its cultural, philosophical and spiritual dimensions. We will have to purge ourselves of all Western and ideological biasses. The Western methodology should be used with the knowledge of its limitations when applied to our culture and we should also fully recognize shift in its philosophy of science. This will minimize of our exhaustion of chasing a mirage of progress and modernity. Inspection of history of physical education & sports with this view in our mind will help us rediscover methods of physical education and sports which are simple and not complex, economical and not expensive, meant for all and not for exclusive few and accommodative of all ages & both sexes suitable to all climates and geographical variation.

I hope and wish that this Seminar is a step towards that aim of rediscovering "guiding spirit" of "Indianness" related to physical education and sports in India.

 

Reference
  1. Stanislav Grof. 1983. East and West : Ancient wisdom and modern  science. The Journal of Transpersonal Phychology 15: 15
     Originally this paper was presented as an introductory lecture at the  Seventh International Transpersonal Conference in Bombay, India,  February, 1982.
  2. Those who are interested in this subject for details can read the book British Policies and Indian Culture by Dr. V.V. Bedekar, Published by Itihas Patrica Prakashan, Shiv-Shakti, M. Karve Road, Naupada, Thane 400 602. in the year 1992.
  3. Those who are interested can read Mr. Pandharinath Prabhu's ' marathi book Bharatatil
    Sashtrancha Udham Va Vikas Manas-samajik Muldhar Va Aaj Ghayche Dhade. Published by Prabodhan Research Associates, Bombay in the year 1983.
  4. Encyclopaedia Britanica, l5th edition 1986 vo1.28, p. 175.
  5. Capra Fritjof. 1982 The Turning Point Science, society, and the rising culture, New York : Bantam Books p.57
  6. Crick, F., 1966. Of Molecules and Men Seattle : University of washington Press. p.10.
  7. Mayr, F., 1985 How Biology Differs from the physical sciences, Evolution at Crossroads The new Biology and the New Philosophy of Science, David J. Depew and Bruce H. Weber, eds. A Dradford Book, The MIT Press, P.45.
  8. Marriott, Mckim, 1989, Constructing an Indian Ethnosociology, Contributions to Indian Sociology (special issue : Towords an Ethnosociology of India) SAGE publications, New Delhi 23:1.
"Shivshakti" Dr Bedekar's Hospital, Naupada, Thane 400 602. 
info@orientalthane.com

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