On Nationality

Emma Raducanu’s stupendous and scarcely believable run to becoming US Open Champion triggered off an interesting chain of thoughts. A citizen of UK, born in Canada to parents who are originally from Romania and China respectively. Obviously, every one of these countries immediately staked their claim on her success! Even us Indians, who are far removed from the action managed to find our own little claim – her biggest tournament win before this was the Pune ITF Challenger in 2019! 

With increased movement across borders, nationalities are becoming fluid. Take the case of the Labuschagne brothers – born in South Africa, Marnus is a leading Australian batter, while Frank leads the Japanese rugby side! Sporting world is replete with such examples. The globalization of cricket is currently running on the shoulders of the expatriate South Asian populace. Then the oil rich Middle Eastern countries are importing global talent to boost themselves in the medal tables! 

Then we have the case of India. Having punched below our potential weight over the last century in the global arena, we have found innovative ways of inflating our collective success. No better example here than this list of Indian Nobel Prize winners on Wikipedia. The list contains 12 names of whom only 5 are citizens of India! It also includes people who gave up Indian citizenship, Britishers born in India during the Raj and even the Dalai Lama. And just to round things off has a link to VS Naipaul’s wiki page at the bottom! Basically, providing a perfect analogy to the phrase, success has many fathers! 

But coming back to the question, who should claim an individual’s success? The country of birth, or of citizenship (and what of multiple passport holders), or of ethnicity (mixed inheritances?), or where the actual work was done? IMO seems an irrelevant question. Let the individual decide, what they identify with? Could be single or multiple. Meanwhile, let others bask in the reflected glory of others. And cases like Raducanu can be a bridge across cultures!