Sport in Contemporary India: Society, Culture and Governance

This book examines the development and significance of sport in contemporary India, one of the fastest growing sports markets worldwide.

Featuring multi-disciplinary work from leading Indian scholars in sociology, economics, politics, law and business, the book demonstrates how sports help us to better understand the sociocultural and economic forces that have shaped modern India and are shaping its global, post-colonial future. The book explores many of the key themes in contemporary sports studies, including women in sports and advertisements, doping, commercialisation, nationalism, sports in education and the growth of fantasy sports, and shows how law and society intersect in sports governance. Examining the historical roots of sport in India and, of course, featuring work on India’s greatest game - cricket - the book shines new light on the development of this South Asian superpower and on how sport both reflects and shapes wider society.

This book will be fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in Indian or Asian history, culture or society, or in sport business, sport development, sports law, or the sociology and culture of sport.

Surajit C Mukhopadhyay is Professor and Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Sister Nivedita University, Kolkata, India. He specialises in writing and research in the field of political sociology, qualitative research methods, postcolonial policing and sociological theory. He was a Commonwealth Staff Scholar at Leicester University, UK and a Visiting Fellow at Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, France, and has lectured in several countries around the world.

Lovely Dasgupta is Associate Professor of Law at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, India. She has been one of the leading figures in the establishment of sports law as a taught subject in India and has published on sports law and competition law. She is the only Indian amongst the current members of the International Network of Doping Research, Department of Public Health, Aarhus University, Denmark.