Sport often yields nationalism, but the Indian Olympic Association has gone one better. For a body with a despairing record of nurturing medal-winning squads for international competition, it has found itself another battle to fight on India’s behalf. It was a remarkable media briefing on Thursday, with IOA chief Suresh Kalmadi’s challenge to the Commonwealth Games Federation finding rousing accompaniment in V.K. Malhotra. So as Kalmadi demanded the dismissal of CGF CEO Mike Hooper, Malhotra struck a stirring tone of nationalism, connecting the issue to India’s sovereignty and adding, “These are Commonwealth Games and not Imperial Games.”

Kalmadi is picking the wrong fight. Every big sport event has its bureaucracy, and they do have the trappings of a globalised aristocracy. The arrogance and closed-ness of these bureaucracies was on display recently when the International Olympic Committee heard the world’s most powerful man and his wife plead the case for Chicago to get the 2016 Games, and then voted for another option. And so we saw recently that every effort was made in New Delhi this month to have as much of the traffic off the roads when the Commonwealth Games big fellas came to take stock. As hosts of the event next year, residents of the capital city know they must brave the disruptions to the city’s routines that will come. That’s the way multi-sport events are. Odd that the IOA, with the planeloads of delegates it carries to all parts of the globe to learn how the show is conducted, should actually think that it can carry popular or political support to fight what are nothing more than ego battles.

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