The Deccan Flame

The Brits, inheritors of the Olympic flame or baton from the Chinese at the end of 2008 Games in Beijing, are all aflutter. Mayor of London Boris Johnson says in Beijing, "We are blown away by the Chinese Games" and then adds, somewhat belatedly, "But we are not intimidated."

The world acknowledges that the Chinese fielded an unprecedentedly spectacular display. They spent millions of dollars (Is a yen more or less? And by what proportion? Can’t be bothered to check!) and several years preparing the display. The thousands of dancers, the acrobats, the child singers of operatic arias, the stunts, the welcome with flags and flames by light and darkness, the tattoos to end all military display were not opening feints to some games. They were an announcement of the arrival of China as a force in the world. No doubt it was presented to its own people as a display of China being the dominant or pre-eminent force in the world. That is the only justification the state can give its people for such extravagance.

London, which inherits the Games in 2012, has no such national resources behind it. It doesn’t even have 1,700 dancers willing to turn up to rehearsals. It can’t get 30 primary school-aged children to sit still and say "C is for Cat", leave aside getting them in their thousands into formation to sing a Welsh version of the Internationale. Yes, Britain can produce the King’s College Cambridge Choir or the choristers of Westminster singing Jerusalem or I vow to thee my Country, all earthly things above to the tune of one of Holst’s Planets, but it isn’t quite the same, is it?

Britain frets about 2012 after seeing the Chinese display. Another Brit spokesman, Sebastian Coe, has already begun to apologise for the scaled-down enterprise that 2012 will be. There is now talk of India applying for and winning the right to stage the 2020 Olympics. Will India try and muster the numbers and resources to demonstrate its own emergence into the broad world as a leader rather than a colonised or Third World follower?

India, if it wins of course, has time to prepare, to get an ageing Shah Rukh to do an imitation of Michael Jackson? Will anyone know who either is in 2020? So what shall India prepare?

A country like China, with a Central government that rules all and perpetuates itself, which can order a population off the land it needs for developing games facilities without any section of the state contradicting the diktat, knows what display it is putting on and why. Will India by 2020 have any idea of what face it wants to show the world? China had the option, not to choose the best of what it was used to doing, but of manufacturing a display of mass discipline and of a society obediently moving to a common, non-religious goal. Will India be able to come to any such common agreement about which of its faces to show the world? Will the Shiv Sena choir sing a Marathi song or the Bajrang Dal perform a Hanuman puja without the "secular forces" objecting? As a child I used to go with my Army officer father to military tattoos. They were splendidly organised and usually featured Dogra dancers with handkerchiefs on their wrists, dancing with flames, as I faintly remember. Then there were bands and marchpasts. Perhaps, our Olympic display will feature folk dances with 2,000 dancers in traditional costumes, perfectly choreographed and rehearsed. If Bollywood can do it with hundreds, surely the Indian State can do something more stylish with thousands?

India is not what worries me — it’s my other home, London in 2012. Already, at the handing over of the torch from the Chinese to the Brits, there is some confusion as to how to face the inevitable comedown. Boris will, of course, be there as the mascot, but the papers are now saying London will have Elton John singing Candle in the Wind (Goodbye Mao Tse Tung, I never knew you at all… etc) and David Beckham kicking a ball from the top of a double-decker bus.

This from the country that fielded the regiments which defeated Napoleon and hosted Lord Curzon’s Durbar for the Princes of India with gun salutes and elephant parades thrown in. In the 19th century Britain saw itself as the centre of civilisation and sponsored world trade and invention of fairs and exhibitions. How the mighty have to come to terms with Elton and Bekcham and double-decker buses. Even so, Britain has the good humour to know what it doesn’t stand for any longer, but that’s not the same as knowing what to make of itself.

So what will Britain display? The days of imperial glory are gone. What they left behind is achievements in history — inventions and a substantial part of the foundations of a science that gave modern civilisation a base. To take just a few, Newton, Darwin, Thomson, Rutherford, Lister, Maxwell, Watson and Crick and the man who invented the Web will do for starters. That the light bulb, the locomotive, television and computers can also be thrown into the equation leaves Britain with legitimate ownership of Shakespeare, the invention of the novel and of course the spread of the nation’s language to America and to parts of the world such as India which have made good use of it.

How does one put all that on display in an Olympic stadium? A pageant of inventors would be the most boring 20-minutes in history. The audience for the Olympic Games is not one I would stage Antony and Cleopatra or Hamlet for.

The Olympic spectacle is much suited to be a vehicle for China’s boastful display of a disciplined, robotic workforce that dances with perfection and studied elegance to a single tune. That says China can deliver. Its stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, may not owe its design to China, but they certainly built it — China can deliver and doesn’t need to invent. It has inherited a world which has done a lot of inventing for it.

So is Britain stuck with Sir Paul McCartney or Elton John singing songs, David Beckham kicking a football and the double-decker bus running round the stadium with the Queen waving from the windows. It could be worse.

And why doesn’t India in 2020 base the Olympic ring logo and its display around the idea that we invented the zero