CAPABILITY, when it is allowed to speak, still humbles pedigree. In 1911, on a Calcutta maidan, a barefoot Mohun Bagan beat a booted English regiment for the IFA Shield, and a subject nation learned that the master could be met and beaten even on even ground. It was no flash in the pan. At Melbourne in 1956, India reached an Olympic football semifinal, the only Asian side till then to do so. The lesson has not aged. A couple of weeks ago in Glasgow, Asmita Dey, a bicycle mechanic’s daughter from Belonia in South Tripura, won India its first Commonwealth judo gold, taking the final from a Canadian in sudden death. Birth placed her beside a bicycle repair shop. Mastery carried her to Glasgow. That is Vivekananda’s argument in the language of sport, proven against the empire and proven again in freedom. The perfection is within, and it does not ask permission from scale or birth.