Cricketing legend Kapil Dev is of the opinion that words such as “pressure” and “depression” are “American words”, all beyond his comprehension. “People say there is a lot of pressure when they are playing IPL (Indian Premier League). I can only tell them one thing, ‘don't play’. These ‘American words’ have come, be it pressure or depression. I don't understand this. If you are passionate, there shouldn't be any pressure,” Kapil is seen saying in a viral video clip, which was posted online on the night of October 8, Saturday, and has since divided social media on the discourse surrounding mental health.
Kapil’s words come close on the heels of prominent cricketers including former India captain Virat Kohli publicly recounting their struggles with mental health, in what was seen as giant forward strides in smashing the stigma associated with the subject in the field of sports. So, on October 10, World Mental Health Day, let’s acknowledge the one thing that the decorated all-rounder did get right in his speech — he doesn’t understand this. To clarify, we will break down his argument to four broad sections, all problematic in one way or the other.
Kapil’s speech peddles the dangerous idea that sportspersons who cite mental health as the reason to take a break from their careers are merely using this as an excuse, and that the real problem is a lack of passion for their game. The toxicity of this point of view has already been apparent in the way fans reacted to Virat Kohli’s decision to take a break from cricket and sit out the team’s two limited-over series in West Indies and Zimbabwe. Coupled with an unhealthy dose of misogyny, the cricketer was widely accused by trolls of being a “henpecked husband” who doesn’t care about the game.
Nailed it @therealkapildev pic.twitter.com/Wbs86nyEQh
— Aces Middle East (@Aces_sports) October 8, 2022
In an interview with the Indian Express later, Virat opened up about his struggle with mental health, stating that while sports can bring the best out of an individual, it can also affect one’s mental health negatively. “For an athlete, the sport can bring the best out of you as a player, but at the same time, the amount of pressure that you are constantly under can affect your mental health negatively,” Virat said in the interview. “It is definitely a serious issue, and as much as we try to be strong at all times, it can tear you apart,” he added. At one point, even former India cricket coach Ravi Shastri had advised an out-of-form Virat to take a break, even if it meant “pulling out of the IPL, for all you care” to prolong his international career.
Virat is far from the first sportsperson to publicly address the issue of mental health in sports, even though he was definitely setting a precedent in India. In cricket alone, he was preceded by England Test captain Ben Stokes, who had shared with the media his struggle with anxiety and panic attacks. Ben had stressed the importance of opening up about mental health, adding it was not human nature to pretend to be fine. Ultimately, he had decided to retire from ODI cricket, citing that playing in all three formats was no longer “sustainable" for him.
Then there was England star Moeen Ali, who took an indefinite break from Test cricket back in 2019 to focus on his mental health, before coming back into the fold during their five-match home series against India last year. Australia all-rounder Glenn Maxwell and New Zealand’s left-arm seamer Trent Boult are other examples of cricketers who have prioritised their mental health over their profession, all for their own good.
Last year, US gymnast Simone Biles’s disclosure of her mental health struggles during the Tokyo Olympics had once again pushed the conversation to the centre stage, at a global level. Serena Williams, arguably the world’s best tennis player, had revealed in 2011 that she had been battling depression since winning Wimbledon the previous year. “I cried all the time. I was miserable to be around,” she said in a 2011 interview with The Telegraph. What more, England football captain Harry Kane has chosen this World Mental Health Day to launch his Harry Kane Foundation (HKF), aimed at helping transform a generation's attitude towards mental health.
So the question is, what does Kapil think of all this? If concepts such as ‘pressure’ and ‘depression’ are just a fad imported from the US, do the experiences of these world-renowned sportspersons automatically become invalid?
The second broader problem with Kapil’s speech lies here: “I went to a school, where the students of 10th and 11th grades were telling me that they were under a lot of pressure. So I asked them, ‘oh, so you are also under pressure?’ You study in AC schools, your parents pay your fees, your teachers can’t lay their hands on you, and still you are under pressure,” he is seen saying in the video to thunderous applause, as badminton star Saina Nehwal nods along. “To understand pressure, you have to look back to our time. Our teachers used to slap us first and then ask questions. Today, can these students even be touched by their teachers? So how are they feeling the pressure,” he goes on to ask, in an argument that almost feels like a legitimisation of corporal punishment.
Corporal punishment, however, is far from a thing of past. It was just a few weeks ago that a 15-year-old Dalit student was allegedly beaten to death by a teacher in the Auraiya district of Uttar Pradesh, reportedly because he spelt a word incorrectly during a social science class test. The incident, among many others, has also shined light on how corporal punishment lies intertwined with social factors such as caste privilege, a ground reality that we often conveniently sweep under the rug.
Besides, let’s not forget, mental stress is very much an actuality even to the privileged kids studying in ‘air-conditioned’ schools. An intersectional analysis of mental health problems, however, would show that this is further muddled by economic, cultural, physiological, biological and social circumstances, ranging from caste and class factors to gender and sexual orientation. To put it simply, it’s complicated.
Third, in a seeming bid to indicate that the students’ ‘excuse’ of pressure is simply a manifestation of the kids’ ingratitude, the former India captain goes on to point out how their parents are working so hard to pay their fees. “And still the children are claiming they are under pressure,” he says. “So I tell them, change this to ‘pleasure’, change this to ‘fun’. You should not be under ‘pressure’. ‘Pressure’ is a very wrong word,” he adds.
It may be noted that Kapil’s statement comes at a time when the rate of student suicides in India stands at a five-year high. While it is hard to quantify the number of people struggling with issues such as depression and anxiety, primarily due to the taboo associated with mental health among other reasons, suicide rates are an unfortunate but prominent marker of where we stand as a society in this regard.
And as per the latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the number of deaths by suicide by students saw an increase of 4.5% last year, with cases of suicides having gone up drastically especially during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Since 2017, the death by suicide of students in the country has reportedly increased by 32.15%. The NCRB report does not cite the specific reasons behind the students’ death, even though ‘failure in examinations’ and ‘family problems’ as prominent causes. But it is hard to imagine that ‘pressure’, whether it be societal, economic or educational, does not figure as a reason behind a majority of these cases.
Meanwhile, it is also important to note the platform on which Kapil had made the controversial statements. He was speaking at a felicitation programme titled the 'Champions of Aakash 2022', organised by educational institute Aakash BYJU's, recently acquired by educational technology decacorn BYJU’s, at the Taj Palace in New Delhi. The programme was to felicitate its students who were among the top 500 rank holders in the NEET and JEE Advanced Examinations 2022.
It is one matter that BYJU’s themselves have frequently been accused of maintaining a high-pressure sales culture that emphasised aggressive targets, adversely impacting the mental health of the employees. But it also has to be emphasised that Kapil was making these statements at a platform that facilitates high achievers of NEET, a controversial centralised medical examination that has been accused of being partial towards students of the Central Board of Secondary Education. As recently as on September 15, another death by suicide related to NEET has been reported in Tamil Nadu — the third in just five days — as 17-year-old student Soundharya T took her own life allegedly over the fear of failing the test.
“I am a farmer. That is where I come from,” is the reason Kapil cites for not understanding ‘American concepts’ like ‘pressure’ and ‘depression’. This too, unfortunately, is symptomatic of a larger problem with our country, which tends to idealise the ‘farmer’s spirit’ as unshakable and firmly rooted. This tendency in turn is a convenient attempt to erase the nationwide crisis of death by suicides, this time of farmers.
According to the NCRB, an agricultural labourer died by suicide every two hours last year. As many as 5,563 farmers died by suicide in 2021, with the number of suicides increasing by 9% from 2020 and by around 29% from 2019, says the report. The reasons, again, will be hard to be neatly categorised under labels. It can be financial distress, depression or a plethora of other factors that may or may not overlap.
But the point is simply this: mental health problems are not just ‘another American fad’. They are as human as they can get, and can be as fatal as any tangible physical problem that one may face. Kapil Dev’s words, unfortunately, appear tone-deaf, and rather out of touch with reality. And coming from a man of his stature and influence, such statements with little thought put into it can do a world of harm to those suffering.
