Once it was Mahatma and Mandela. Now, it’s cricket. We are talking ties that bind India and South Africa. The Union Ministry of Culture, usually in the news for organising jamborees across the globe to showcase our incredible country, is organising a unique festival in South Africa centred around cricket this June.
The weeklong festival is likely to be held in Cape Town, Johannesburg or Durban. What will be unique would be the over 2,000 exhibits showcasing cricketing ties between the two-countries, including painter Satish Gujral’s series on the game.
Sources said BCCI vice-president and minister of state for parliamentary affairs Rajiv Shukla has offered to loan his personal collection of bats signed by all 16 teams that participated in the 2002-03 World Cup in South Africa.
To provide that element of novelty, the government is likely to rope in Sachin Tendulkar to inaugurate the festival, while historian Ram Chandra Guha will be approached to curate it and provide a social, historical and cultural context to ties between the two countries. BCCI will foot his fees, sources said.
“To make sure that festival has the usual Indian razzmatazz, dance and food festivals will be simultaneously held. Dance troupes and chefs from five-star hotel will be flown in. A range of souvenirs like t-shirts and mugs are being designed to appeal to the youth,” said a source.
Curiously, the festival-cum-exhibition will take place with active support of the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI). This at a time the cricketing body is in talks with the South African government to hold the latest season of Indian Premier League (IPL) there after the Indian government refused to provide security for matches here on account of the general elections at that time.
The June exhibition will coincide with the IPL carnival that will be held between April and June, though venues are yet to be officially announced.
At present, India is hosting a number of festivals abroad to use its soft power to engage with emerging economies and regional powers. The cricket festival is also a step in that direction. The most recent festivals were in Laos, Cambodia, Peru and Cuba.
India has always been keen to develop ties with the dominant African power as the ties have been rooted in history starting from 1860 when the first wave of farm workers from India went to the African nation. The ties deepened after Gandhi’s association.