Indians and swimming

Spot-on my friend ...seems you have been spending lots of time in rural India these days...glad to know atleast someone is there who knows rural India from such a close quarters...cheers! have a nice day

I learnt to swim in pool that too in my early 20s as we did not have a pool nearby our home before that (live in Delhi) But my mom learnt to swim when she was around 10 as they lived in Bombay and my grandfather was in the navy and hence access to pool! And all my friends (male & female) from the coastal areas can swim. So i guess really its a question of resources weather natural - river ocean pond etc or man made - pools. But these days pretty much all the newly built schools have a pool and even the parents are keen that their children learn to swim.

Post deleted...may repost, based on other responses

In this part of rural India, I know a lot of rural young adults. Not one of the girls has known how to swim, and I've known hundreds. Of the boys it seems about 1 in 10 actually know how to swim and another 3 or 4 out of 10 say they do, but when they are actually in water over their heads it turns out they don't really know how to swim.

In summer you can see lots of little boys splashing around in ponds, but rarely actually swimming.

But that's here. Maybe in other places the boys are not just splashing and wading and flopping around but actually swimming.

But then again, I haven't been to the beach in India much but I did go to Goa again last year after 20 years, and again, men were actually swimming but I only saw women wading in full clothing. I was with a large (Indian) family and the women hugely enjoyed being able to go all the way in with leggings and a t-shirt, and by the end of the week they were almost swimming though not really quite. The young girl was swimming like a fish by the end though.

Ladakh is just not "water country"

In parts of India which are greener with lots of waterbodies(e.g. Bengal) swimming is an essential life skill in the rural areas - both for men and women. After all you need to bathe more than once a day in this kind of hot, humid climate and very few people in the rural areas have piped water at home.

Its very difficult to generalize anything about India - specially if your experience is only based on a place like Ladakh which has a pretty unique geography

I lived in Delhi for three years and since i enjoy swimming was looking forward to being able to do so there but i was really disappointed. There are pools in expensive hotels but only for guests. there are pools in certain elite schools and they do have some public hrs BUT the pools in Delhi are open only from may to Sept (the hottest months) and they are all out door which means u might be in a pool during the hottest part of the day, and water would be hot too (so no thanks). I could not find any indoor pools that are open all year around which is amazing in a capital city of 16 million people - and that would be open to the public. There was one hotel in central Delhi that had an outdoor pool that admitted paying guests but the pool itself was so dirty with green algae growing in it ... The outdoor pools connected to Sports Complexes need membership and these are based on a quota. after you submit your membership application a decion might be made in a couple of months and then the schedule for opening the pool is the same May-Sept. All the above does not encourage kids in Delhi to learn to swim.

It is a combination of resources and also the inclination to learn swimming. There are swimming pools in just about every apt complex and most houses here in the Western US and yet I know people who can't swim and don't want to learn either.

Swimming is a very vital survival skill to have that can come in very handy. The planet we live in is 71% water and you are more than likely to have a chance encounter where you wished you knew how to swim. It could be just about anything. They probably ought to teach swimming as a mandatory skill in Indian schools which have access to a swimming pool...atleast the ones that charge like an arm and a leg as tuition fees that rival the private universities in America.

Accessibility to swimming pools is still a problem in Indian urban areas though offlate I've seen swimming pools in all the new apartment complexes that are geared towards NRIs and rich Indians. Back when I learnt swimming, I could count the number of pools I could access in Madras with one hand and still have unused fingers left and I used to go swimming in a private hotel pool mostly which wasn't exactly cheap by those days standards. Compared to that, there are way more pools now in Madras people could access and swim.

People in rural India learn it like every other physical skill they need for day to day survival. They still don't have bathrooms with showers or bathtubs in the rural houses in India and lot of them bathe in ponds and rivers still today.

I learnt to swim in a river when I was a kid and there were a whole lot of other kids which included girls (cousins) who learnt swimming with me.

So yes Indians can swim. Now I also look at if can this be generalized about indians. What is India? The snow clad mountains with cold water bodies in which even few fish swim or coasts of the huge peninsula , or is it the desserts?

Can Indians ski? well not many as there isnt snow in most of India? Can Indians swim maybe yes and maybe no it depends on where they are , where it is necessaity or if a leisure sport?

I think most of the people men or women would be swimmers if they stay are near a huge water body (sea or a river or maybe a lake) As kids it is not about undressing and wearing the right swimwear. It is about swimming in shorts, salwars, chaddis, frocks etc

Rural - Yes a lot of kids learn to swim early in the mornings or evenings in summer vacations and come back to watch the MTV

Urban - Every parent wants their kids to be an all rounder these days and it is not limited to swimming. Kids are skating, playing tennis, cycling and of course swimming backstrokes or butterfly storkes.

Can everybody in India swim? No I do not think so but that does not mean Indians dont swim.

Indians prefer to wade in a dignified manner.


Agni Teertha - the Ocean as Sacred Crossing by Abracax Photo, on Flickr

My post is written and published. I did my best.
Thank you so much for your help!
If you want to take a look: http://amessagetoindia.com/

Just 2 comments
1. Akshay kumar is not Kajol's husband. He is Twinkle's husband. Kajol's husband is Ajay Devgan.
2. I never knew that "beach" was a pejorative word in any Indian language.

The rest is your opinion which you are completely entitled to - so no comments on any of it.

Ah, I confused with another actor! I was too lazy to check! I'm going to correct this mistake.
About the word "beach", it is what my teacher said. I know it is not a general rule but I thought it was a good illustration to show that some women were very timid.
While I was writing this article I realised it was impossible to write a text about India and make everybody satisfied. Myself, I no longer knew what to think at the end of the day! Beside, I think of writing a new post about the diversity of India! But I have to read a little about this before because many India specialists have written about it. As I'm not living in India, books, articles and people's accounts are important.
Thank you for reading this text Nayan!

Just a couple notes about your published article. Your stats of the number and frequency of deaths seems to come from the first google search result but when reading numerous other independent sources your data seems to be highly inaccurate. From numerous other independent studies it appears that Africa and the Western Pacific have the highest deaths. To date Brazil has the highest amount of drowning deaths. Using that statistics from the first google result without looking at other sources to verify may not have been a good idea. Additionally using stats from an organization that asks for money for their cause doesn't seem like a wise idea either. When one asks for money one 'may' be tempted to embellish the facts to help their cause. I'm not saying that this is the case but all the other sources contradict your source. Maybe more research would have proven useful. Additionally your source is based in the United States and takes donations but they are not based in India. Your source's web site hasn't been updated since January 2011 which is when your source scaled back operations, thus the data you quoted is 18 months old, I would think it's important to note if your data on drowning deaths is current or not. According to here your source is a very small organization, I'm of the opinion that the other sources of drowning stats in the world, much bigger organizations, may have more accurate data.

As far as your article goes I agree that we all are entitled to an opinion however I found your article to closely resemble the information found here, because your article so closely matches their writing I would have thought it appropriate to note in your article where the info came from. I think it's important to clearly state where you got your information so that people don't necessarily question you but if in doubt they can question your sources.

And again, only my opinion, but your article seems a bit degrading and generalized. And honestly, I'm not sure I see the point in your article.

I'm really sorry, I honestly don't mean to be rude as we are all entitled to an opinion, and this is mine. Others may find your article informative.

Marilay - just a suggestion-

Since you donot know India well and your main source of first hand info(your hindi teacher) has very "original" facts, it may be best to write about your impressions of India than going into statistics, misquoting people and trying to pass dubious info as facts. I dont think you did it deliberately but an article(even if its just a private blog entry) needs to have better fact checking than cursory googling and some sprinkling of quotes.

Why dont you write instead about your opinions

Hello! Thanks for reading my text!
I agree with you about the figures, I should note where they are from because it is true that Internet is full of mistakes. It was my first article with research, so I'll try to avoid that kind of mistakes in the future.
I found this association a bit strange too but I was not influenced by their site at all except about drowning cases.
I think my article is not degrading, maybe you think it is because you may be Indian so, you feel touched but if you read the article till the end, you saw that it was illustated with different opinions and all of them were from Indian people. For me, this subject was uncommon but not degrading at all.