 Hello and let's talk about the instances of racism that were reported in the third test between the Indian and Australian cricket teams. So two Indian players, Mohamed Siraj and Jaspreet Bumrah said that racist lures had been thrown against them, they had been abused by spectators on the stands. The incident happened on both Saturday and Sunday and players stopped and both spectators were evicted, a complaint has been filed. But these incidents only throw a light at the larger problem of racism, especially when it comes to sport. There have been a lot of instances in previous tours by India as well and not only in cricket but in all other sports, it's an endemic problem. So we have news clicks, Leslie Xavier to talk more about these issues. He talks about the complicated relationship between structural racism and sport and instances of racism and such discrimination between sports persons inside the sporting fraternity itself. Here is what he has to say. Thank you Leslie for joining us. So yet another instance of racism and in this case of course, the team took a very prompt stand, a united stand and the authorities were of course also moving into take action by evicting some spectators. But we do see that this is a recurring problem. It has happened in Australia even in an earlier tour as well, I believe in 2018 and that point to a similar action had taken. So this is an issue that definitely the Australian cricket board really needs to deal with. I mean, I don't think it's just confined to Australian cricket board. It's a societal issue. So I guess everybody has to address this and I'm talking not just for Australia but I'm talking about all the countries across the world because this keeps on happening everywhere. England, English football, Italian leagues, Germany, US, I mean, we know what happens there. So it's all over the place. So what has happened now is it was a great contest as far as the test match is concerned. But then the test match, its context, its relevance, everything is I mean, overshadowed and rightfully overshadowed also because it's a serious issue of racism by the racist chants and slugs this happened on Saturday. So the match was stopped at that point and the players went to the umpire, captains of both the teams, they got together, they decided to address it and the match was stopped for a brief while and then the police came and removed the spectators who were involved in it. But it's not Australia cricket establishments or Australia teams problem as such. So when we address this and from our side, from India when we were criticising and condemning these acts, a lot of players and a lot of ex-players and generally, Twitterati and the social media commenters, they tend to target Australians in general, inherent racist country. They go back all the way to the history of them, I mean, Australia being a recent colony to start with. Isn't that racism? So what are we trying to prove with that? That's the question that we are bigger, bigger racist than they are because see a racist slur or a chant or targeted statements happening within that stadium came to life. But what about all those statements that's been happening in Australia ever since that happened on Twitter? So this feeds into that larger problem that the world is facing as such, which is racism in general. Be it casual racism, be it explicit racism, be it attacks physical, I mean, attacks which are meant to harm, which are meant to kill even. So it's when black lives matter, the moment was happening and when cricket restarted and Michael Holden spoke at large and which became a very viral and famous video about the racism he faced and what exactly is the problem. He was very clear that it's a societal issue. It's taken centuries to take it to where it is now. And centuries of education systematic racism ingrained into all walks of life, be it education, be it popular media, be it anything. So it takes years of undoing for this to clear out. And he was glad at that point that the moment has started, but then six months, eight months down the road, these things still happen. And crowd coming into the stadium and chanting, it shows how bad the situation is in that specific place. So this happens in Indian stadiums as well. It happens in, I mean, if you look at the crowd alone, they target opposition teams, they throw out abusive, expressive languages at them probably in India, so that's why they probably don't catch initially. But yeah, animosity towards the opposing team always happens from the stadium. And when it takes racist intonations, then yeah, it's a serious offense altogether. So recently, like a couple of weeks back, two English championship sides were penalized and then they decided to take action against, because when players were kneeling down before the start of the movement in solidarity, taking a knee is a sign of solidarity, expressing solidarity to black lives matter movement and generally against racism, stands against racism. So when they were doing that, there were cheers and booze from the crowd. So again, action was taken, police case was filed against this thing. Similar thing has happened. I'm very glad that Australia, cricket Australia, BCCI, as well as the authorities there, the police of New South Wales State, because this happened in Sydney. So they have decided to pursue it, investigate it. And I personally listened to that video. So it's very unclear what exactly was the statement made, but whatever it is, I mean, I'm sure since the police is involved, they would use forensics to determine what exactly the slurs used where and if it is found to be racist, then action would be taken against them. But the larger action is what needs to be taken within the society. And that brings us to another point which I want to mention in this episode specific. So we tend to talk about monkey gate issue that happened, abhijan Singh, and back in 2008, Andrew Simons. So it's not the same. Let's just be very clear about it. They had to play. I mean, we Indians, players were, I mean, allegedly racist back then because nothing was proven. And then he was, he was, he got off the hook. But what exactly the truth is it was a nasty incident on the playing field and that is much more serious. And then some random crowd who were, according to media reports were drunk as well, shouting, they were doing racist chants against the Indians. The other incident is serious. So let's not compare those two also. That comparison has been happening ever since the incident happened. And so as far as this particular incident is concerned, it's unfortunate that this happens, but it keeps on happening across stadiums, across the world. And it's, it's about time that we address, how do you cancel it off? Just like what Michael holding said at that point, it's, it's, it's a societal problem and it will only get canceled or it will only become less once systematically the change happens to the society across various layers of the society. Absolutely. And I guess an important point, like you said, is that it comes to media responses when it comes to responses by the commentaries, knee jerk reactions of what do you call it? Our racism or your racism are actually quite problematic and they kind of obscure the issue at stake because often what it does is it gives say some sections of people kind of morals, superiority by pretending that oh, they are the racist people and we are, you know, pretty clean and we have no such issues with that software is like you said, almost every single country has its own very horrible record of racism as well, and which manifests itself in sport as well. But in this case, I think an interesting question would be regarding, say, whether any kind of action is possible on behalf of authorities into basically avoid such kind of situations while action after it happens is of course necessary, but it does spoil the spirit of the game, it does spoil the moment, not only the momentum of the game, but the entire atmosphere because that is how the game gets remembered by and whether there are any kind of, of course, it's a difficult process because you can't really screen people for racism, so to speak. But nonetheless, in terms of awareness activities, have there been other instances of say, boards or establishments actually taking action on those issues? So in Europe, if at all, there are instances of crowd being very hostile and a ban happens, they play, I mean, see, now it doesn't matter that way because everybody is playing to almost empty stadiums and only a few numbers are allowed specifically in certain countries, etc. But when full crowd was there and when specific teams are there who are known to be inherently racist towards black players or players of different ethnicities who play for visiting sites, they take action. They would be given, I mean, crowd would be banned from the stadium, they will have to play in front of an empty stadium. And also the clubs are penalized for not ensuring that such instances, because repeat offenders, this tends to be repeat offenders. And so while it's difficult to screen fans getting into stadiums for their racism, because you can never understand where they come from, what they come from. But if a person is a repeat offender, it should be, I mean, there are clubs who do that, there are organizations, sports organizations who do that in football specifically, I'm talking about, where they're not allowed back into the stadium at all. Or they will be given so many, I mean, a seasoned ban or something like that, you can't come in. Whether that solves the problem at all, I mean, in general, it doesn't, because it's again plugging the whole kind of this thing. But it doesn't plug holes, that is very visible and glaring in the society. So in that context, we are also no better if you look at India as a country as such, Indian venues as such. And India's problem is multi, I mean, manifold that way, because ours is not just about skin color or certain, I mean, ours, because we are very ethnically diverse. And at the same time, we are also, there is a caste and caste system that divides us, and there is also an economic class divide as well. So India has like three pronged problem, problem in itself. So I can get into some specifics about that. But in general, when we take a moral stance, moral high ground, when such instances happens against the Indian cricket team when they're playing abroad, we, I mean, being brown-skinned and being able to receiving it at specific countries, white countries doesn't give you, I mean, doesn't absolve you from looking into yourself and what you as a country do to people in your, having your citizens that way. Because we have our different states, we have athletes and players coming from northeast, distinctly different in appearance. They get targeted all the time. So tinky is the common slug that is used, which is, I mean, derogatory to the code. So let's not forget that aspect as well. And let's not forget that when we protest on at Australia, we first should probably start course-correcting at home. Absolutely. Leslie, in this context also wanted to ask you about, see, we talked about this issue in the context of fans. We talked about how organizations deal with it. But what about within the sporting community itself? We slightly touched upon this earlier when we were talking about Harvardian singer Andrew Simmons. But like you said, this is a multi, it's an issue with many dimensions. This is an issue of various sports. And I would presume there are a lot of instances of such incidents happening within the athletes and the community itself. So could you maybe take us to some of those issues, especially in Indian sport, and if there's been any steps around that? When mentioning monkey gate, I reiterated also in a way that it's much more serious than this trans-jering incident. Why? Because it's within sports persons who you keep at a pedestal who you are expected to behave responsibly doing that. So that has a serious connotation to sport in general. And how sport stands against discrimination against a lot of societal issues. Sports is considered a level. And then these things happen when sports persons do it. It takes on added significance. So that's why I kept mentioning that earlier. And coming back to the point, it's a matter of, I mean, when you look at it, I'm just confused which sport to start. Because in every sport you find in India, and specifically talking about India, in every sport you find discrimination. And since we started off talking about cricket and the Sydney strain, let's stick to cricket first. And if you look at Indian cricket team history, right from the first, I mean, an official Indian team which was formed pre-independency right during the British rule. Palvankar Bharu was a deli cricketer. And this is pre-independence. And post that, if you consider Eknath Solkar and Vinod Kambli coming from backward communities, otherwise there are not in a deli cricketer ever to play for the Indian team. So that shows the skewed demography of the structuring cricket which doesn't facilitate the growth of players from backward communities as such. And we are talking about India where cricket is a religion. Everybody plays. It's not like backward community kids or kids from certain economic strata or certain religious group or certain states don't aspire to become cricketers. Everybody wants to become a cricketing strata. Everybody wants to become such an individual. But not everybody gets a chance. If you look at the history of cricket, it's very apparent in India that the upper class have a distinct advantage when it comes to traversing the various levels of cricket from age group to state level to Renji level to international level. So by the time the cream reaches the international stage or the elite level, the other people fall off because the spectrum is always biased. And that's cricket for you. And then when you look at other sport, if you take football or boxing or wrestling or everywhere, there is some form or the other of discrimination. When you take football and boxing, for instance, or some other martial arts as well like Judo, northeast athletes are pretty strong in this. So the elites who come across like, for instance, a Mary Kong or a Sunil Chetri or a Renedi Singh, I mean, they reach a certain level and of course they are identifiable. I mean, people know them and still they are not spared. So at the start of lockdown when Sunil Chetri and Virat Kohli was having an Instagram live session, someone in the comment section asked, who is this Nepali? So that's the general crowd we are talking about. But within the sport, many athletes from the northeast have come on record talking about how at the early stages or various stages of the career they have faced discrimination from simple small things like while traveling in the train, for instance, the guard or the ticket checker would look at you with suspicion and they are not outwardly racist, but they are rude to you. They will check your bag, use the latte and hit the bag saying, what are you carrying? What is this? Are you smuggling? Things like that. These are small circle questions, sclerotyping, all these things, many of them are faced. And then not to mention, I mean, they look distinctly different from the rest of the athletes coming from Indian states. So when they reach camps or at tournaments also, they are always discriminated that way because appearance-wise, they look distinctly different. So the famous, I mean, the slur word that we all know and it's commonly used, thrown about abused from, not just in sport, but generally in the cities, wherever people from northeast go to make a living, to study. Anyway, so that continues even in sport and hockey when you take believe turkey, I mean, really turkey represents a group of, I mean, is possibly the one of the most identifiable name in hockey of the 90s and 2000s. He was India captain. He is a former MP and multiple Olympian. He has come on record saying that the initial part of it, so Jharkhand and Orissa, a lot of tribal hockey players have come up from there. And so you are saying that initial part when they reached the national camp and of course they belong to a place, a community where they are not very strong education wise. So language articulation and all these things they pick up later once they come into the national team fold and travel and gain experience and all that. So the predominant language in use in camps is either India or Punjabi and they initially itself, because of the language barrier, they find themselves as aliens and then Siddiqui has said that there were many instances when fellow players had reminded him that he is an adi wasi. I mean, of course later he became a star and then this thing stopped he was India captain too. But that's how the system is set and when players come in, they face these odds and these, I mean if you are not truly a star or if you are not that mentally strong if you are not willing to fight and come through then you get lost. It's as simple as that. The same thing happens in wrestling and that too in a larger level because in wrestling if you look at it outwardly everybody looks the same that way because you are talking about various states in North India you're talking about Maharashtra wrestlers coming into the system but then the sport is dominated by the North Indian belt and out of which the largest community that dominates sport in wrestling is Jhats and of course there is a Brahmin group as well and so within the wrestling national elite group there is always a dominance by Jhats and they try to undermine wrestlers coming from other states and other communities. So if you ask me for a proof for this experience players face this, some players have come out and revealed this but like anything abusive for instance like comparable to domestic abuse also there is always it's always open to interpretation or the society has been set in such a way that it's always justified by saying that I didn't mean it, we didn't mean it I called you in a certain way Aaron Sammy the West Indian cricketer had said that his teammates and the teammate is Ishan Sharma of Sunrises Hyderabad used to call him Kalu later he realized that that's a derogatory word ethnicity is being questioned but then Ishan Sharma or many players justified it by saying that are Kalu Dosti friendship we were just calling you black out of friendship that's not how it should be right the same thing discrimination happens subtly sometimes not so subtly but then it's also glossed over by justifying it by saying that it was not meant or it was not it is not like that so this is what is happening in India and when we do this when the incident happens in Sydney and when we do that comparison and when we are critical about Australia and Australia has always been racist and all that we shouldn't forget that in India there is a larger problem the problem is within the system also within sport in Australia if racism happens at the stands by a fan in India it happens on an everyday basis many athletes face this so that's the systemic problem that we should address we should realize and we should start changing things from home rather than worry and be aggressive about portraying the faults of a country which is so far off and so we should be more concerned about what affects us on a day-to-day basis and that's right here in your face thank you so much Desi for talking to us that's all the time we are today we'll be back tomorrow with more news from around the country until then keep watching NewsClick