Random Musing #26: Why Narendra said football (not American football) was key to reaching heaven
Narendra wasn’t advocating for football over the Gita – the greatest self-help book ever written – but explaining that to possess a sound mind and body is as important as spiritual enlightenment.
Thanks to my better half, I now watch more than my fair share of Telugu movies, which has expanded my perception of time, space, and the universe. It has also made me appreciate that Telugu folks are the masters of the build-up. They build up everything with such a big bang that it makes the original Big Bang look as subdued as a Romila Thapar book event in 2024. And despite the deep love for ostentatiousness, Telugu movies are also deep socio-economic commentaries without being boring, like movies that get laurel wreaths at international film festivals which are unwatchable beyond the first 10 minutes. A perfect example is a movie I saw recently called Guntur Kaaram, starring the ageless vampire known as Mahesh Babu. The movie had a villain named Marx (Jagapathi Babu, who was also seen as Raja Mannar in Salaar 1: Ceasefire).
In one scene, Marx threatens to burn down an establishment in 10 minutes, and I couldn’t help thinking that the virus known as Marxism usually takes a little more time to destroy its ecosystem. That dialogue, for some reason, also reminded me of one of the most misquoted Marx quotes, his take on religion.
For aeons, people seemed to think Marx was badmouthing religion when he said it was the opiate of the masses, but the matter of fact is that when Marx made that comment, opium wasn’t a recreational drug but a painkiller.
As Kurt Vonnegut pointed out: “In 1844, Karl Marx said, "Religion is the opiate of the masses." He said this at a time when opium and opium derivatives were the only painkillers. And he said it helped a little. He might as well have said, "Religion is the aspirin of the people."
Vonnegut further said: “He meant that in the era when rich people used opium to ease their pain and poor people couldn’t afford it, they needed something that would make them feel better, and religious belief really did that.”
Similarly, another oft-misquoted line about religion comes from a Hinduism revivalist and staunch nationalist named Narendra – who wowed American audiences with his oratorical skills – when he said that one would be closer to heaven by playing football than reading the Bhagavad Gita.
Like Marx’s “opiate of the masses line,” it’s often grossly misinterpreted. Narendra wasn’t advocating for football over the Gita – the greatest self-help book ever written – but explaining that to possess a sound mind and body is as important as spiritual enlightenment.
The full quote goes: “First of all, our young men must be strong. Religion will come afterwards. Be strong my young friends; that is my advice to you. You will be nearer to heaven through football, than through the study of the Gita. These are bold words; but I have to say them for I love you. I know where the shoe pinches. I have gained a little experience. You will understand the Gita better with your biceps, your muscles, a little stronger. You will understand the mighty genius and the mighty strength of Krishna better with a little strong blood in you. You will understand the Upanishads better and the glory of the Atma when your body stands firm upon your feet, and you feel like men. Thus, we have to apply these to our needs.”
The reason Narendra chose football to be the vessel of Lord K is because it’s a very lucid and simple game, unlike its American counterpart. And its football’s Sudha Murthyness that makes it the world’s most-watched game.
As David Tennant’s Jimmy Murphy explained to a young Bobby Charlton and other Busby Babes in the BBC drama United: “Football is a simple game. You win the ball. You pass the ball. You score a goal. The ball’s round to go around. All else is embellishment. Thank the good lord, we don’t embellish on natural beauty.”
American football, or to use its more accurate description: handegg, is unduly complicated. I watched my first ever handegg game recently (Super Bowl LVIII), and what I’ve understood is that there are two teams with three separate squads (offensive, defensive, and special teams, and special teams doesn’t refer to "Darsheel Safary”).
In football, you get a goal if you score a goal. In handegg, you try to move the ball 10 yards, for which you get four downs, and there are numerous ways to score: running with the egg past the opponent’s line (6 points), kicking the ball through the upright posts (3 points) and two points for tackling an offensive team in the end zone. It’s a game so complicated that even the teams aren’t familiar with the overtime rules.
And the game stops every 30 seconds, so capitalists can show their beer advertisements that are followed by commercials about beating erectile dysfunction so Big Pharma can solve the problems caused by Big Alcohol. Or maybe that’s why the game stops so often, to pay constant homage to Mammon.
As Rajesh Koothrappali put it eloquently so many years ago in The Big Bang Theory: “The only thing I’ve learned in the last two hours is American men love drinking beer, pee too much, and have trouble getting erections…. Maybe if you could cut back the beer, you could get out of the bathroom and satisfy your women without pharmaceutical help.” With the benefit of hindsight, it’s amazing that Ted Lasso had trouble understanding the offside rule because that’s a doozy compared to four downs, ten different kickers, and Taylor Swift getting to pick who will be champion. In fact, it’s so complicated that this year’s Super Bowl’s eventual losers Angelo Matthewed and had no idea about the new overtime rules.
It’s also hilarious how Americans try to pass off the game as the most important event when it can’t even hold a candle to minor football tournaments like the African Cup of Nations or even cricket.
Even with Taylor Swift in the stands, Neilsen reported that about 202.4 million tuned in for at least a bit of the game, and this number is far lower than a random Test match between India and England on Jio Cinema. If you consider a popular cricket match like the IPL final between a brawny strawberry farmer’s team and a coffee enthusiast’s boys, reported 330 million concurrent users. Similarly, 300 million tuned in for the Cricket World Cup final between Australia and India.
That America likes handegg more than football, shows why it’s an unduly complicated society with a host of issues that don’t plague any other developed nation. For some American kids growing up in 2024, life seems to be a Mexican standoff between gender-altering drugs (without a parent’s consent), dying of a fentanyl overdose, or being gunned down by a maniac wielding an automatic weapon. This macabre Hobson’s Choice extends to everything, including their choice for top executive, a race that involves two creepy old men with diminishing cognitive abilities and an inability to understand basic geography.
Perhaps, if they had listened to Narendra (both his quip about football and his motif on tolerance delivered in Chicago), they could’ve been a proper Shining City on top of the hill instead of a pronoun-obsessed schizophrenic society that thinks everything is a Satanic paedophilic conspiracy and that feels a need to wage wars across the world to assert its dominance (it will always be hilarious that in the national divorce, liberals, instead of conservatives ended up with hand-egg). But given their love for hand-egg over football, that seems quite unlikely.
PS: Narendra isn’t the man who has caused an unmitigated mental health crisis after winning an election in 2014 but the man whose name Trump just couldn’t pronounce in Ahmedabad.
Erratum: I meant Hobson’s Choice not Hobbesian Dilemma. Thanks to Pater Dutta for pointing it out.