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<div class="gmail-postComplete__post-header-wrapper"><div><h1 class="gmail-title"><span>How Jasdev Singh Elevated Hindi Sports Commentary</span></h1><p class="gmail-shortDesc">Singh
carved a niche for himself through his simple but refined and fluent
Hindi commentary. He described enthralling and sensational sporting
moments with great ease and simplicity.</p></div></div><div class="gmail-postComplete__post-image-wrapper"><div class="gmail-featured-image gmail-valign-wrapper gmail-wp-caption gmail-aligncenter"><img src="https://cdn.thewire.in/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/06143651/jasdev-singh.jpg" alt="How Jasdev Singh Elevated Hindi Sports Commentary" class="gmail-img-responsive"><p class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Jasdev
Singh's demise, in many ways, is loss of an institution which shaped
sporting imagination for decades. Credit: YouTube screengrab.</p></div></div><div class="gmail-postComplete__post-content-wrapper"><div class="gmail-col gmail-s12 gmail-m3"><div><div class="gmail-author"><div class="gmail-author__name"><a target="_blank" title="All Stories by Abhinava Srivastava" href="https://thewire.in/author/abhinava-srivastava">Abhinava Srivastava</a></div></div></div><div class="gmail-share-container gmail-col gmail-s12 gmail-m3 gmail-l3 gmail-xl12 gmail-share-container-mobile" id="gmail-share-298358" style="display:block"><div style="display:inline-block"><div class="gmail-social_count" id="gmail-social_count_box"><div id="gmail-total">22</div><span class="gmail-sharetext">interactions</span></div></div></div></div><div class="gmail-col gmail-s12 gmail-m9 gmail-l9"><div class="gmail-col gmail-s12 gmail-m12"><div class="gmail-top-space gmail-post__content-meta gmail-valign-wrapper"><span class="gmail-data-tag"><a title="Media" target="_blank" href="https://thewire.in/category/media/all"><div class="gmail-tag">Media</div></a><a title="Sport" target="_blank" href="https://thewire.in/category/sport/all"><div class="gmail-tag">Sport</div></a></span><span class="gmail-posted-on">06/Oct/2018</span></div></div><div class="gmail-col gmail-s12 gmail-m10 gmail-postComplete__description"><p>In
the parlance of market-led TV media industry, the Doordarshan age is
generally recalled as one of state monopoly with little or no scope for
‘creativity’ and ‘autonomy’ in programming and presentation. The voice
of Hindi sports commentator Jasdev Singh, who passed away on September
25 after prolonged illness, defied this notion throughout his career.</p>
<p>His mesmerising voice, relaxed tone and unique style of narration
helped Hindi acquire a distinct status in an English-dominated sporting
world, helping it become a genre of its own. His demise, in many ways,
is loss of an institution which shaped sporting imagination for decades.</p>
<p>The active career and life-trajectory of Singh coincided with one of
most transformative phases of Indian media. He joined All India radio
(AIR) at a time when there was huge uncertainty over the state
broadcaster’s language policy. Two different approaches shaped this
debate. The first approach was largely developed during the tenure of
AIR’s first director-general Sir Syed Ahmed Shah Bokhari. Bokhari
established the authority of ‘spoken’ words over ‘written’ ones, but
remained sceptical of providing it a literary orientation.</p>
<p><ins>Also Read: <a target="_blank" href="https://thewire.in/sport/ajit-wadekar-obituary">Remembering Ajit Wadekar, Who Will Always Be My Captain</a></ins></p>
<p>After the first general election in 1952, the third Information and
Broadcast (IB) minister B.V. Keskar proposed another approach. He
appointed senior Hindi litterateurs in key positions and minimised the
role of bureaucracy in programme operations. His proposal of
Sanskritising AIR’s language was met with strong criticism. However, in
1962, Keskar’s language policy was adopted with minor tweaks. Throughout
this period, the style and functioning of state broadcasting were,
therefore, characterised by bureaucratic control and political
restrictions. This was unfortunate as it shrank the space for vernacular
aspirations to flourish through public broadcasting. The dominance and
grip of English press further marginalised the growth of vernacular
domain.</p>
<p>During this period, Singh, however, carved a niche for himself
through his simple but refined and fluent Hindi commentary. He described
enthralling and sensational sporting moments with great ease and
simplicity. Singh maintained a fine balance between colloquial and
standardised Hindi and gave it a form that was capable of transcending
the limitations of both approaches.</p>
<p><strong>Ability to invent new vocabulary for Hindi commentary</strong></p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_298383" style="max-width:352px" class="gmail-wp-caption gmail-alignleft"><img class="gmail-wp-image-298383" src="https://cdn.thewire.in/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/06143648/jasdev-singh-small-300x242.jpg" alt="" width="342" height="276"><p class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Jasdev Singh. Credit: Facebook</p></div>
<p>His ability to blend metaphors and minute details of an event made
his commentary a living phenomenon in the 1970s and 1980s. What made his
contribution valuable was his ability to invent new vocabulary for
Hindi commentary. He was also able to vernacularise technical terms in
sports such as hockey and cricket with precision and skill that many of
his contemporaries lacked. This helped Hindi commentary, at least in
radio, shed its image of being a ‘surrogate’ version of English
Commentary.</p>
<p>Moreover, many socio-political changes also fuelled the popularity of
Hindi as a written and spoken language during the 1970s and 1980s.
Although this change is largely attributed to the dramatic growth of
Indian language newspapers, the contribution of Hindi commentary was no
less. The live broadcast of sporting events with English and Hindi
commentary helped the latter achieve a wider reach across diverse
sections of Indian society.</p>
<p>While Singh personified the increased influence of Hindi during this
period, unlike the Hindi press, he did not provide a ‘Hindu’ touch to
the language. With the increasing participation of Hindu nationalists in
Indian politics, the tendency to narrate failure or success of sporting
events through the lens of Hindu nationalist fervour was gaining
prominence. It was during this period that the Hindi press started
giving India-Pakistan matches a Hindu nationalist orientation. Singh,
however, refused to be guided by such impulses during his commentary.</p>
<p><strong>Singh’s columns elucidated complexities</strong></p>
<p>Although most of us remember him as a charismatic Hindi commentator
and broadcaster, in the early 1980s, he also earned popularity through
his famous sports column ‘Bari Jasdev Singh Ki’ in prestigious Hindi
weekly <em>Dharamyug</em>. The magazine featured his in-depth
understanding of a variety of sporting issues. Like his Hindi
commentary, Singh’s columns also created a vibrant Hindi sports
readership. Here again, his ability to elucidate complex sports
terminologies of hockey, cricket and football in simple, colloquial
terms provided his column an unparalleled popularity. One can recall the
discussions he initiated on the limitations of AstroTurfs, an
artificial grass surface which was introduced for the first time in the
1976 Montreal Olympics.</p>
<dl>With the increasing participation of Hindu nationalists in Indian
politics, the tendency to narrate failure or success of sporting events
through the lens of Hindu nationalist fervour was gaining prominence.</dl>
<p>His columns became an encyclopedia on Olympics for Hindi readers.
Singh also attempted to infuse a true cosmopolitan sense in his readers
through his commentary on Olympic Games. Through his columns, he
regularly shared his memories with overseas sports icons. Singh never
interviewed them rigidly. He, instead, adopted a unique style of
narrating their sporting achievements with interesting biographical
details. His columns, very often, contained an analysis of sporting
aspects that were rarely covered. For example, in one of his columns on
May 30, 1976, he expressed his concerns for the players who either
injured themselves on the ground or lost their lives while playing. In
the same column, he stressed upon the need to insure players.</p>
<p>With the expansion of satellite TV industry in the 1990s, radio and
Hindi sports commentary soon lost its charm. Subsequently, many eminent
personalities of the Doordarshan era, including Singh, disappeared from
broadcasting operations. The introduction of sophisticated audio-visual
techniques further transformed the business. The authority of spoken
words declined steeply and it was no longer possible for Hindi
commentators to enjoy the same degree of popularity they did in the
1960s or 1970s.</p>
<p><ins>Also Read: <a target="_blank" href="https://thewire.in/gender/ipl-2017-sexism-misogyny-sports-journalism">Like the IPL, Indian Sports Journalism Is a Boys’ Club With a Sexism Problem</a></ins></p>
<p><strong>Growth of cricket as a sporting commodity</strong></p>
<p>The post-liberalisation period also saw an exponential growth of
cricket as a sporting commodity. This resulted in the proliferation of
private sports broadcasters dedicated to exclusive live coverage of
cricketing events. The upsurge of these broadcasters was once again
characterised by the dominance of English. The Hindi commentary survived
only in poorly planned live broadcasts of Doordarshan and AIR.</p>
<p>Recently, this has changed and several leading sports broadcasters,
realising the potential of vernacular markets, now have Hindi channels.
These markets have expanded in the post-liberalisation era, but are not a
product of same period. In fact, the growing commercial success of
Hindi in the broadcasting business should be seen in the context of huge
popularity that it gained during the era of state monopoly. Marketers,
thus, owe a lot to Singh for taking the genre of Hindi commentary to a
new level.</p>
<p><em>Abhinava Srivastava is an independent media researcher and consultant at Centre for Policy Research (CPR), New Delhi.</em></p></div></div></div>
<br>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div></div>