Centenary of Nelson Mandela
On this historic day, the birth centenary of
Nelson Mandela (born on 18th July 1918), while paying tribute to the Nobel
Laureate Mandela, I am reminded of the Cricket Connects: India South Africa
exhibition that the we at the Nehru Science Centre had the honour to co curate
with Suresh Menon and Prashant Kidambi. This exhibition - a part of the
India-South Africa Festival of India, was organised at the Wanderer stadium in
Johannesburg and at the Kingsmead Durban in the
year 2014. The fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa had led to the establishment
of a non-racial democratic government, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela.
It also marked the end of cricket isolation that the South African team was
subjected to leading to the redemption of the international cricketing ties for
South Africa.
Within four months of re-joining the ICC, a South
African team under Clive Rice toured India, in 1991, for a three match ODI
series. The South African team landed in Kolkata and a bus journey that should
have taken half an hour to reach their hotel, took over four hours as thousands
lined the streets of Kolkata to welcome the team. Throughout their stay in
Kolkata, the team were greeted by banners proclaiming love, anticipation,
welcome, hospitality. Allan Donald, then a promising fast bowler wrote about
the crowd of six or seven thousand gathered outside the team hotel. “Long live
India-South Africa Friendship” seemed the most popular banner wherever the team
travelled in India.
India’s inaugural tour of South Africa the
following year (1992)– the first official tour by a non-White team to that
country – was labelled the “Friendship Tour”. It all began with another moving
scene – with fans lining the streets of Durban and giving the motorcade with
the Indian players a memorable welcome.
During the course of our research for the
exhibition we had collected a number of archival images including that of
Nelson Mandela’s visit to India, from several sources. As a mark of our respect
and remembrance, I am honoured to share some of the images of Nelson Mandela that
we collected and used in our Cricket exhibition with my FB friends.
Incidentally this was the first of the Cricket Connects exhibition, which was
followed by an exhibition to Australia in 2016 and to England in 2017, that I
had the honour to curate.
Long live Madiba.
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