Sporting with gender: Examining sport and belonging at home and in the diaspora throughPatiala House&Chak De! India

My essay explores how globalization has reconfigured the links between sport, nationalism, and gender in the production and dissemination of identity and belonging at home and in the Indian diaspora. I suggest that, sports, especially cricket and hockey have become critically cosmopolitan in being rooted to local histories and their global echoes. Gender, in this matrix of sport and culture, interestingly reconfigures sports, as it helps reinforce institutionalized and hegemonic discourses instead of displacing them. In this essay, cricket and hockey unfold as performative spaces within cultures where gender acts as a catalyst undermining the cosmic solidarity that the forces of globalization may promise. I study two contemporary Bollywood films, Patiala House (2011) which explores the conflicts in sporting allegiances due to ethnic belonging, and Chak De! India Chak De! India. Dir. Shimit Amin. Prod: Yashraj Films. 2007 [Google Scholar] (2007) which centers on a dwindling women's field-hockey team that later wins the national championships. While both films force us to question how sport, religion, and nationalism are interconnected and become relevant in local and national circuits, they highlight the relevance and visibility of the gender question in these circumstances; it brings into focus the shifts linking cultural (re)definitions of Indian womanhood and how they ultimately represent internal and external tensions linking the nation to a wider arena of cultural, institutional, and hegemonic politics in the context of sports.