India, despite Commonwealth Games debacle, is the rising power of the former British empire

Amid games chaos, India is still a rising power

NEW DELHI — The British empire’s athletes first gathered 80 years ago, facing one another in friendly competitions as a way to bind together the king’s vast dominions.

It was 1930, a time when India was the jewel in the colonial crown, when the subcontinent was ruled by a small corps of English bureaucrats. The competition was known as the Empire Games, though even then, the empire had begun to fade.

Today, with India on the eve of opening what is now called the Commonwealth Games, that world is barely a memory. There are times when the former colonial subject speaks of its one-time master with barely hidden condescension.

“Look, Britain has a very old heritage,” said Zafar Iqbal, once one of India’s greatest field hockey players and now a powerful figure in the country’s sports community. “But the British empire is gone. … Now there is just the games.”

India’s preparations for the New Delhi games have become an international embarrassment, with filthy athletes’ housing, a collapsed pedestrian bridge, security worries, corruption accusations and an outbreak of dengue fever. Even if the games pass uneventfully after Sunday’s opening ceremonies, the chaos of India’s last-minute efforts will have deeply scarred this country’s reputation.

But it won’t change the modern political equation — that India is increasingly becoming a power to be reckoned with and Britain is slowly moving further into the background.

The comparison is particularly glaring when it comes to money.

India has one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, roaring along at nearly 9 percent, while Britain is only slowly emerging from a brutal recession. An Indian conglomerate — Tata — is one of Britain’s largest manufacturers and owns some of the country’s most cherished brands, including Jaguar and Land Rover.

Five years ago, Britain was the 5th largest exporter to India. Today, it is the 18th. Exports to India dropped from $6.4 billion in 2008 to $4.5 billion in 2009.

When British Prime Minister David Cameron flew to India this summer with a huge entourage, seeking increased trade to help boost the economy, Britain’s Daily Telegraph heralded his trip by noting it “confirms the uncomfortable truth that we now need our former colony more than it needs us.”

So does much of the rest of the Commonwealth, the group of 54 nations that evolved from the British empire.

Brian Stoddart, an Australia-based authority on international development and sports, noted that much of the loudest criticism of India’s games preparations died down after just a few days — something he sees as a reflection of how countries knew they could not afford to anger India.

Commonwealth countries such as Canada and New Zealand “need India in the broader economic and development front,” he said. “Everybody needs India over the next 20, 40, 50 years.”

Certainly the days are gone when the countries of the old empire looked toward London for all guidance.

“We have a neighbor like China, which has organized the Olympics, … which to my mind is far more relevant,” said Pavan Varma, a writer and the Indian ambassador to the Himalayan nation of Bhutan. “The Commonwealth was a somewhat harmless and partially benevolent consequence of the empire. But it has had its time.”

India’s dreams for the games had more to do with Beijing than London.

China and India are the world’s two most populous countries, the two emerging economic giants and among Asia’s dominant political powers. They are also intense rivals, with India anxious to match China’s immense economic and political clout.

Beijing’s success with the 2008 Olympics, made India even more anxious. A successful Commonwealth Games, New Delhi knew, could pave the way for a successful Olympic application.

“It’s all about the rivalry with China,” said Ramachandra Guha, a well-known Indian historian. India asked itself: “Can we put on a spectacular show the way the Chinese did? Are we capable of passing the test? That’s the question.”

By most measures, India appears to have failed. Olympic organizers detest scandals, and the New Delhi Commonwealth Games have been awash in trouble.

But on Thursday, Suresh Kalmadi, who as head of the local organizing committee has come under intense criticism for the problems, said his sights were still set on the Olympics.

“The biggest legacy (of the Commonwealth Games) is the Olympics,” he told the Hindustan Times. “This is our opportunity.”

It is a long way from the days of empire, when sports were first seen as a way for British colonials to escape, even for a moment, the pressures of their work and the Indians all around them.

Eventually, the rulers developed a theory that sports could be used to tie Indians to Britain. They used the most British of games as the informal syllabus, calling it “The Empire of Cricket.”

A century or so later, more Indians play cricket than the entire population of Britain, and India has launched a new international cricket league that is making enormous profits.

As a result, many observers believe the center of the cricketing world may soon move. To India.