The Bread-Circus Tragedy

The bug of ancient empires appears to be a feature in modern democracies where we tend to elect leaders who understand the brilliant carrot-stick treatment to keep the populace disinterested.

The Indian Premier League has always been the perfect example of Juvenal’s panem et circenses (bread-circus duality) given that it’s the circus that generates enough bread and makes us forget our daily woes as we watch young men who have forsaken carbs play something resembling cricket and dancing to Telugu reels.

For those of you who weren’t burdened by a bourgeois education, Juvenal was a Roman satirist and poet around for 1–2 Century AD who coined the phrase in Satire X, lamenting that Roman citizens surrender their civic responsibilities and political rights in exchange for superficial bread-circus pleasure. It was built on the notion that when Roman emperors gave the urban poor bread (free grain) and entertainment like gladiatorial games or chariot races, they would distract most of the populace, leading to corruption, economic inequality, even political disinterest. But at least it inspired some banger movies like The Gladiator.

The bug of ancient empires appears to be a feature in modern democracies where we tend to elect leaders who understand the brilliant carrot-stick treatment to keep the populace disinterested and in control.

And nowhere was this better epitomised than the M Chinnaswamy Stadium where the celebrations for Virat Kohli finally breaking his duck continued in full flow as corpses were strewn outside. Who cares about law and order, and the fact that our sprawling megapolises are one step away from becoming a sequel to Mad Max as long as you can shout: “Ee Cup Nammadu”?

But what was even more jarring was that the celebrations continued in full flow inside the stadium as corpses lay strewn outside. The incident was a reminder that for all our pretences of being a civilised nation, most things that other developed countries take for granted like logistics, crowd control, basic crisis prevention is almost non-existent.

Let’s not pretend this is new, and has always been a problem in a country like India with a huge uncontrollable population where we vacillate between life and death on a tiny thread. One rumour, one wrong thing can lead to one shuffling one’s mortal coil, like being on a bridge in a crowded Mumbai station.

I know that bridge because it’s the one I took every day to office, and the day the incident took place just happened to be an off day. And how did the authorities solve that problem: they simply renamed the station.

Yet something about this tragedy feels different. This was our bread-circus moment. A moment where mass distraction reached its final form: celebration as a bloodsport.

Eleven people are dead. Not in a war, not in a riot, but while trying to celebrate their team breaking a duck. If this happened in a civilised country, heads would roll and teams would be penalised. English teams were banned from European competitions for five years after the Heysel disaster in 1985. The Hillsborough Tragedy in 1989 saw all stadiums become seaters – which might have been bad for the atmosphere – but certainly made stadiums safer for football fans

Not in India where some very inconsequential people will be fired or held responsible. Soon, another video will go viral—of Kohli doing a jig, Patidar speaking in Kannada, or a drone-shot of crowds cheering. And in that moment, Juvenal will nod from his grave. The circus continues. And the bread? Well, that’s for the families of the dead to figure out. And for the rest of us, we will continue with the detritus we call modern life, living under the illusion that we are safe.

Or to quote Maximus: Are you not entertained?