Sociology of the fan

‘Nationalism’ has become a significant factor in a game once known for sportsmanship

Is the team you support in a cricket match a measure of your loyalty as a citizen? This was a familiar debate in Britain 15 years ago and on the streets of Mumbai where the Shiv Sena whipped up passions with its innuendoes about Muslims favouring Pakistan. The debate appeared to have died a quiet death till its reappearance thanks to the English cricket captain Nasser Hussain who recently criticised young local Asians for backing India and Pakistan instead of England during matches. Though Hussain was criticised for being out of touch with the difficulties of ordinary Asians in Britain — their problems with self-identification, racism, and lack of opportunity — his statement once again raises the complex notion of belonging.

It also comes at a time when fervent ‘nationalism’ has become an increasingly significant factor in a game once known for its spirit of gentlemanly sportsmanship. And spectator behaviour, particularly in matches involving the Asian diaspora, has tended to reflect it. A promin- ent cricket commentator in a Delhi-based television show in fact claimed recently that he would be in favour of India avoiding certain venues abroad altogether due to heightened passions among fans.

Oddly, though reams and reams are written about the game of cricket, relatively little attention has been focused on the community of spectators. Football fans meanwhile have been the subject of intense research. One study Race, Nation and identity in Football by Les Back, Tim Crabbe and John Solomos conducted at Goldsmiths College, London, in 1998 touches on issues that appear to be extremely relevant to the complex team support vis a vis the loyalty debate. Two phenomena in the study make an interesting juxtaposition. The first is the connection the authors found between English nationalism, Ulster unionism and popular racism. “During the seventies and eighties” they write, “England fans would regularly sing ‘There ain’t no black in the union jack!’ This was also combined with unionism and opposition to Irish republicanism where England fans would sing ‘no surrender to the I.R.A.’ with equal venom. During Euro 1996, the authors note, there was a concerted attempt to whip up jingoism by the tabloid press and an attempt in general to assert a kind of ‘benign patriotism’ — one outcome being the incredible spectacle of thousands of English fans with their faces painted with the red cross of St George (To many black fans this would have symbolised an alienating England versus an embracing multicultural Britain).

Against this background of exclusion, the authors describe the debut of the Jamaican national team at the World cup finals in France 1998. The event and those preceding it attracted people of Jamaican origin from all over the world. It provided, according to the authors, “a means for people within the diaspora to identify with Jamaica but also it offered black football fans a possibility to participate in football on their own terms.... As the mass of black fans looked out onto Ninian Park and the Jamaican team, on this cold wet night they saw themselves.” A reveller corroborated the feeling. “It’s beyond football — in this country we live four and a half thousand miles from home and have been suffering for 40 years. Now Jamaica have qualified all Jamaicans will be uplifted.” The description of the pre tournament matches played around London by the Jamaican team that drew thousands of blacks including generations of Jamaicans with reggae music and Jamaican patties echoes the carnival-like atmosphere of a cricket match (drums, whistles, banners) involving the Asian diaspora.

Feelings of ‘nationalism’ are further buttressed by the fact that “sporting spectacles like the World Cup offer one of the last vestiges in which nationalism can be expressed ritually and celebrated. The sportswear companies, media corporations and the merchandising moguls set out their wares too, all vying for a piece of this festival of corporate multi-culturalism.”

Then there is the question of multicultural teams. Two years prior to France’s victory at the last World Cup the chauvinist National Front leader, Jean Marie Le Pen had protested against multi-ethnic presences claiming: “It is unnecessary to bring players in from abroad and baptise them as the French team.” After the win, Le Pen changed his position, maintaining that the national team could be “composed of different races and religions” so long as they were French first and foremost.

“What makes football interesting is that it provides one of the few spheres in which ideas about identity, ethnicity and race can be expressed, embodied and performed.” The outcome, the authors maintain could either be the representation of nationhood as ‘a grotesque pageant of fixed archetypes’ or as a ‘carnival’ in which old divisions are breached. Cricket clearly offers similar possibilities. It is time then to study fan behaviour from the sociological perspective rather than treat it as a facile test of loyalty.

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