Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the godman guru who founded Art of Living, has had a bittersweet two weeks.
His massive World Cultural Festival turned out to be mostly successful, including a visit from the Prime Minister, but his organisation was also levied a large fine for causing environmental damage to the Yamuna floodplains where it was held. Similarly, Shankar seemed happy that the Indian men's cricket team beat Pakistan in the World T20 tournament. But he would have been disappointed that at how triumphal a lot of the responses to the match have been.
A few hours after the match, he tweeted.
It's a little difficult to parse that tweet. We have no idea what was discussed with team captain MS Dhoni on Thursday. Shankar and the cricketer may well have been discussing how great Fawad Khan is in his latest movie (after all, that concerns #TeamIndia too) or whether Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya would get bail (they did, and some of #TeamIndia rejoiced).
But if it was indeed cricket they were talking about, then Shankar might have been somewhat disappointed with remarks from many of his followers. That's because – presuming he is consistent with his stand – the godman has a rather unique approach to sports.
Speaking to Sri Lankan legend Kumar Sangakarra during a Google Hangout in 2013, Shankar put down his thoughts on the matter.
"Sports is something in which the entire time needs to be enjoyed, from the beginning to the end. In the end whether you win or lose is not important, how you play the game is important," Shankar said.
"Either you win, or you make others win. There is no losing at all. You have to see sports in this direction. Either I win or I make others win. Making others win should also be considered a great thing. Today war has become a game and game has become a war. This is not nice at all."
— Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Despite having made his opinion on the matter clear in the video, Twitter still felt the need to try and weigh in on his mysterious tweet.
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