Revisionism, From Silly Point

Rodrigues seeks to place Ranji8217;s capitulation to Empire in a broader theoretical construct. He argues that 8220;the role of sport and team games like cricket must be viewed in the context of a radical change of imperial tactics to hold on to the Empire after the cataclysmic upheavals of the Mutiny of 18578221;. British tactics, Rodrigues writes, changed from brute force to a more subliminal 8220;new imperialism8221;: 8220;Sport, with its moral values, was very much part of this civilising mission and an important part of the cultural armoury of imperialism.8221;

Cricket taught you to submit to the umpire, uphold arcane laws you didn8217;t write, much less understood. In short, it was a parable for the imperial order, much like, some have suggested, the Bhagvad Gita was a post-Buddha intervention to preserve the caste system and promote the virtues of fatalism over radical change. To Rodrigues, Ranji completely if unwittingly internalised cricket8217;s ideological message.

This is a fantastic hypothesis in the literal sense of that f word.

Not much is known about the post-cricket political career of Ranji. This is where Rodrigues scores. Ranji is no longer the charming Black Prince of Fenner8217;s and Hove. He is a minor despot, an incorrigible factionalist in the Chamber of Princes, a man who worried in the early 1930s that Indian constitutionalism would 8220;inevitably so work as to destroy, at least in its effective form, the very principle of Indian kingship8221;.

As meticulously researched and simply written popular history, this book is recommended. Its underlying message is not. The facile conclusion 8212; to be fair, Rodrigues never expressly makes it 8212; that Ranji was some sort of 8220;anti-national8221; figure, whatever that term may have meant in the inter-war years, is downright disturbing.

Ranji, to his detractors, was a clever social climber who used cricket as his ticket into British aristocracy. He did little for India, scoffed at 8220;their8221; cricket and didn8217;t deserve to have India8217;s national championship named after him.

These are, well, silly points. They bring into question the whole issue of who was an Indian and what was India three quarters of a century ago. Ranji was only true to his order 8212; class, if you prefer. In reacting with horror and suspicion to the Congress8217;s mass mobilisation, he was no different from so many

elements of the old, pre-Gandhi

Indian elite, from Poona Brahmins to Anglicised Bengalis to his

fellow princes.

We live, of course, in an age when it is fashionable to rediscover the past, marry it with current expressions of popular culture and political correctness and tell a sensational tale. Why stop at Ranji? Maybe someday we will also be told Douglas Jardine was an imperialist 8212; did he not, during the Bodyline series, urge Eddie Paynter off a hospital bed by evoking General Roberts8217; march to Kandahar? 8212; Len Hutton a misogynist, Hedley Verity a militarist, whatever.

In the great pavilion in the sky, the crusty Jamsaheb must allow himself a smirk.