After reading his response, we figured that this was perhaps a wrong question to ask. Let’s read Dr Bhaskar Das’s response to our question in the March 28 edition of Das ka Dum. Read on…

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Q. Would you say that other than Diwali, the Indian Premier League (IPL) is the biggest ‘festival’, pan-India?

A. I understand the razzmatazz of IPL has led to this conclusion by you. It certainly engenders an impression of an extravaganza akin to a festival. But I have a different take on the subject: I feel there is an intrinsic difference. While a festival like Diwali or Ganesh festival or Navratri is vertically integrated in the religious and cultural ethos of a community, they also horizontally infect others’ participation through osmosis (you may consider it herd mentality or a ploy to escapism to get out of the humdrum of life). You would notice the same trend in case of Christmas. The latter has been adopted as a national festival and not confined to any community only. Now, in case of IPL, it’s more horizontal audience participation without any vertical jingoism for a team. Consequently, while there are genuine fans for some teams, it hasn’t yet taken the shape of support akin to Brazil or Argentina where soccer is like a religion and fans get obsessed with their team. In EPL also, you may notice audience fanaticism. I think it is still missing on a large scale in the case of IPL. One can notice a tad bit in case of the CSK or MI teams.