12/10/2022
Why Kapil Dev’s comments on mental health make him sound off-key and out-of-touch
The challenges of being a public figure, much less a cricketer for Team India, are miles away from the days when Dev was playing the sport
Written by Siddharth Chowdhury
Kapil Dev is an Indian hero.
The moments of mastery and pride he has awarded the nation are innumerable – the four sixes he hit to avoid the follow-on at Lords; the iconic 175, not out, against Zimbabwe during the 1983 Cricket World Cup; the catch whilst running backwards to dismiss Viv Richards in the 1983 final – the list goes on.
His recent comments, sadly, feel like a break from the fantasy; a fall from grace.
His statement at “Champions of Aakash” by Byju’s smacked of the incorrigible insolence of a neighbourhood uncle whose solution to every problem is, “Wake up at 4 AM, all will be fine”.
But I digress. Speaking at the event in question, Dev said people should not play if they feel “pressured”. A cursory Google search today would reveal how out-of-touch the veteran cricketer’s remarks are. Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, M S Dhoni, Virat Kohli, have all had their effigies burnt in broad daylight.
The challenges of being a public figure, much less a cricketer for Team India are miles apart from the days when Dev was playing the sport.
When one googles the words “Kapil Dev” and “attack”, search results from his heart attack in 2020 show up. Replace that name with any player from this decade, and a separate story of multiple attacks will turn up for each person. The claims of Arshdeep Singh being a “Khalistani” for merely having a bad day are still fresh in everyone’s memory. The death and r**e threats that Virat Kohli and M S Dhoni have been subject to are also a product of the power that social media today wields. That is a unique experience.
Every move by sportspersons today is scrutinised by spectators, arm-chair experts, commentators and bitter ex-sportspersons turned commentators. Every action on the field is analysed in super slow motion and every Tinu, Debasis and Hemang has the permission to dissect them, their mental states and their fortitude or lack of it. A bad performance is met with feral threats against family and friends.
“I can’t understand these American words like pressure and depression”, claim as Dev might with alarming nonchalance – our sportspersons do feel stress; they have to brave through the hate directed at them when they lose. Anxiety and depression are natural reactions to this reality.
The argument that generally follows is, “but bouquets and brickbats go hand-in-hand”. However, the responses in the media and Indian public while handling praise and criticism are not balanced. Death threats and allegations of being a traitor hardly qualify as “criticism”.
Regarding his comments on students and their complaints “while sitting in air-conditioned classrooms”, I would like to provide some context. Students in 10th,11th and 12th grades face immense pressure owing to the competition in India. Approximately 13.5 lakh students give the medical entrance exam every year for a total of 6,4000 seats. A similar number sits for the JEE for about 10,000 seats across 23 IITs .
Furthermore, according to an article ‘Student su***des in India at a five-year high, most from Maharashtra: NCRB Data’(Indian Express, September 1), death by su***de in students are at a five-year high with 832 students dying by su***de due to failure in examinations.The single largest reason was “family problems”.
I would suggest Dev come sit with me or my hard-working colleagues in our chambers. He’d be surprised at how many of these “family problems” are actually pure desi pressure on children to perform better than the neighbour’s kid.
As a child, I was burnt with a spatula and hit with pieces of wood lying around for “being stupid”. This was a consequence of what I now understand as the “American” diagnosis of “dyslexia”. I was asked to leave home and go beg on the streets if I considered a career other than medicine because my “fee-paying parents” said so. And yes, incidentally, I sat in AC classrooms.
Everything aside, depression, anxiety, and pressure are not American words that people just throw around today. Consider health as defined by WHO: “A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity”. A healthy mind is as important as a healthy body.
Then pray tell, why is the opening up of sportspersons about “pressure” something to be made a mockery of with a grand tale of what happened in the good old days?
As noted by my esteemed teacher Professor Dr. Rajesh Sagar in his paper National Mental Health Programme–Optimism and Caution: A Narrative Review (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6241184/),“India was one of the major World Health Organisation (WHO) member countries to launch its National Mental Health Programme (NMHP) in 1982 in accordance with WHO’s recommendations to deliver mental health services …”.The American words “depression”, “pressure” and “mental health” were acknowledged a lot before Dev’s heroics in 1983.
