Why a Somali pirate wearing an RCB jersey is a true triumph of decolonization and IPL
True decolonization. Put in even simpler terms it’s this: having a better relationship with Mammon than your former colonisers.
On October 7, we saw the true face of liberal America – at least among those who are too young to understand Biden’s trademark mumbling – when a Somalian-American Teen Vogue writer asked after Hamas slaughtered and raped over a thousand people: “What did y’all think decolonization meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers.”
Now I don’t want to get into America’s complicated relationship with the Israel-Hamas conflict, but true decolonization isn’t any of those things. True decolonization is having so much money that your former colonisers – who ruined your nation so they could sell opium – are now willing to chant Jai Shree Ram or dance to Telugu reels because you control the purse strings. And for that we’ve to thank the IPL.
The Indian Premier League – the brainchild of the man who brought FTV to India and convinced everyone (albeit for just an attosecond) that he was dating Emergency-Preamble enthusiast Sushmita Sen – has completely flipped the dynamic. It hasn’t just changed how cricket is played – batsmen can barely last for two days on pitches that pay obeisance to Galileo – but this particular Nehruvian dystopic nightmare is now one of the world’s top sporting leagues, as evidenced by the sheer monies involved.
When the league started, Forbes said the average franchise was valued at $67 million. In the next 13 years, thanks in no part to a brawny strawberry farmer from Ranchi, a vada pav enthusiast from Mumbai, and gluten-free bearded man who sacrificed chole kulche from Delhi, the average team is now valued at $1.04 billion. The total IPL ecosystem is now believed to be worth $10.90 billion, no thanks to the influx of private equity money from the likes of RedBird Capital and CVC Capital. That valuation is only set to increase after Prince Salman and Saudi Arabia made gooey eyes and started talking about moving the IPL into a holding company valued at as much as $30 billion. The value could rise even more with T20 Cricket set to be part of the 2028 Olympics.
Now I realise that the alacrity with which Mammon can make people embrace a zeitgeist is truly astonishing and makes one realise that perhaps America dictating morality to the world through the Hollywood-military industrial complex is simply because they have more money than anyone else, but for me the true triumph of the IPL was evidenced by the fact that a Somalian pirate, captured by the Indian Navy, was pictured wearing an RCB jersey. Sure, seeing white people dance to Pushpa reels is nice, but true decolonization is a Somali Captain Jack Sparrow, drunk on rum worrying about the fortunes of Royal Challengers Bangalore. That, in my opinion, was true globalization and decolonization, a Somalian pirate sharing Virat Kohli’s (and every RCB fan’s) pain.
For many years, crazy people across the world like me have been mocked, called deracinated, for letting the fortunes of a team halfway around the world dictate my mental health. But I could never explain the pain I felt seeing Manchester United stumble or why the inadequacies of a poor man’s Johhny Sins ought to bother me so much. And yet it became a part of our culture, where the very mention of seagulls or sardines would remind us of Eric Cantona. And today, when I saw the young Somalian pirate wearing an RCB jersey, I wondered if he too was a fellow sufferer, who had given up on the team – like I’ve in the post-Fergie era – and I felt a kinship that I couldn’t believe existed.
But nostalgia about a bygone era aside, true decolonization isn’t vibes, papers, or essays. Also, it’s not paragliders, rape or pillage.
True decolonization is having true power. It’s seeing a person who looks like you as the premier of the nation (and who happens to also chant Jai Shree Ram) that used to rule over you married to a woman whose father is one of the richest men in your country who employ over half a million people and wants them to work 70 hours a week. It’s seeing people lose their shit over a guy who looks like you, refuses to change his name or disavow his religion, who MAGAs harder than Trump and helps him reach new frontiers. It’s creating a sports league that is so popular that a Somalian pirate on the other side of the planet wears a t-shirt of a team that never managed to win the tournament in the first place. And that my friends, is true decolonization. Put in even simpler terms it’s this: having a better relationship with Mammon than your former colonisers. All else is embellishment. And thank the good lord, we don’t embellish on natural beauty.
P.S.: I am aware the jersey could just be a hand down, but as my wise pater says: “Khayali pulav mein ghee ka kami kyun?”