Olympics-The India Story

by Boria Majumdar

  Citing the above refrain in the Olympic oath, he suggested that there was nothing unfair or offensive in his actions in trying to urge sports bodies to raise the bar before participating in the Games. He declared that while it wasn’t essential to win on all occasions, a person could win if he was well trained and capable of giving a worthy account of himself. ‘Mere taking part is not enough…you will admit that if success in the Olympic Games brings public renown, a consistent and continuous poor showing is likely to do the reverse.’29

  That Sondhi was firmly in the saddle was apparent from his confident reply to the IOC president on 17 June 1939 in which he thanked Count Baillet Latour for sending him Gupta’s letter and for his assessment that it was a vain attempt to malign Sondhi before the IOC. That he had an upper hand in the conflict was evident when he declared, ‘I do not mind even adding that, but for my hard endeavors for over ten years there would hardly have been an Indian Olympic Association.’30

  In the same letter, he challenged Gupta’s authority and claimed that Gupta had sent the complaint in his personal capacity and it did not have the support of the President of the Bengal Hockey Association (BHA). ‘Mr. P. Gupta had written to you in his capacity as Secretary of the Bengal Hockey Association. A reference to the President of the Bengal Hockey Association, however, has elicited the fact that Mr. Gupta was not at all asked by the Hockey Association to write to you on this subject. It was entirely on his own that he chose to make wrong use of his position as secretary of the BHA.’31

  He also tried to explain to the IOC president the circumstances which had provoked the vitriolic attack against him. Disappointed with India’s consistently poor showing at the Games since Antwerp in 1924, Sondhi had suggested that India shouldn’t waste money in sending teams which were incapable of winning laurels for the country. Just making up the numbers did not justify the huge expenditure involved, more so in a situation when there was not much money for sports in the country anyway. Instead, he suggested that India should make optimal use of the limited resources at hand and send a competitive team to Helsinki in 1944. The money saved from not sending a team to Tokyo could be utilized for performance enhancement by employing first-class coaches, an improvement that he hoped to showcase at multiple international forums prior to the Helsinki games in 1944.32 ‘I have never written against taking part in the Olympic Games, and as you very well know, I have tried very hard to get Hockey included in the Olympic programme, so that we could play a worthy part in the Games. A good deal of the agitation is due to people who think that their chances of going abroad as managers of the Indian Teams have been lessened by my advocating abstention from the athletics section of the Games.’33

  The concluding lines marked a direct attack against Gupta, who had already served as the manager of the Indian Olympic contingents in 1932 and 1936. This controversy did not continue for long as the Tokyo and Helsinki Games were cancelled with the outbreak of World War II. Even after the war, however, the IOA had little respite, with the focus shifting to the velodrome in the 1950s, when yet another sporting federation, the National Cyclists’ Federation of India, rose up in rebellion.

  WHEN THE SPOKES CAME OFF:

  FIGHTING OVER CYCLING

  Nothing epitomizes the early battles between Indian sport administrators better than the case of Indian cycling in the 1950s. Cycling was a sport at which Indians had shown much promise in the early years. The first Indian cyclist of distinction was Janki Das, who participated in the British Empire Games at Sydney (Australia) in 1938, with Swami Jagan Nath accompanying him as his manager.34 The Cycling Federation of India was formed a year later and in 1940 it was affiliated with the Union Cyclists Internationale (UCI).35 The inevitable then happened. A rival body came up when Sohrab H. Bhoot of Bombay formed the National Cyclists’ Federation of India (NCFI).36 Bhoot had been part of the original team of Dorab Tata that founded the Indian Olympic movement and in 1948 he managed to merge both organizations under the banner of the NCFI.37 The crisis, it appeared, had been resolved, and in the early years a relatively stable NCFI consistently sent Indian teams to international competitions. Indian cycling teams participated in the 1948 London Olympics and the World Cycling Championships at Amsterdam in 1946 and Brussels in 1949. 38

  It is not surprising, therefore, that cycling was one of the sports included in the first Asian Games held at the National Stadium in New Delhi in 1951.39 Bhoot used the opportunity to formally constitute the Asian Cycling Federation with himself as its founder president. It is pertinent to note, though, that a number of Indian cyclists performed with distinction at the first Asiad:

  1. R.K. Mehra : Silver Medal in 4000 m Team Pursuit

  2. Madan Mohan : Silver Medal in 4000 m Team Pursuit

  3. Lhanguard : Silver Medal in 4000 m Team Pursuit

  4. Gudev Singh : Silver Medal in 4000 m Team Pursuit

  5. N.C. Bysack : Bronze Medal in 1000 m Time Trial

  6. Sanwas Shah : 4th Position in 120 Miles Road Race

  The Asiad, however, did not prove to be the kick-off for Indian cycling that it could have been. Through the 1950s Indian cyclists continued to participate in various international championships and road races40 without much success. The real story of cycling unfolded off the tracks and it was a story that explained much about the failure of Indian sport.

  By the early 1950s, Bhoot was not only the president of NCFI, but astonishingly also its chairman, honorary secretary and honorary treasurer. No doubt he had many talents but none of them related to running a cycling federation. ‘The attraction of running a sport federation it seems lay in the chance to become the arbiter of foreign tours.’ Complaints flooded in about the ‘dubious methods’ being used by the talented Mr Bhoot in ‘collecting money from Cyclists and Cycling Associations for promised trips abroad’.41 In 1953, he led an Indian cycling team to Romania that failed miserably: one cyclist was scratched from the sprint event, another finished last in his heat and a third fell off his cycle while negotiating a bend. The Times of India had no doubts about who was to blame. In an acerbic analysis, its correspondent mused that the ‘enterprising and resourceful’ Bhoot (who was untraceable for a few days after the disaster) must have been busy writing a textbook for his ‘proprietary organization’. He then twisted the blade in, noting that Bhoot’s musings could only be titled: ‘How to Make Cycling Pay in Six Easy Lessons’.42

  The reports were not without substance. In 1955, Bhoot took another team of cyclists to participate in the World Festival of Youth in Warsaw and the World Cycling Championship at Rome and Milan. Poland’s High Committee of Culture issued first-class air tickets for the cyclists and also arranged for free board and lodging. Yet, they were ‘required’ to pay Rs 6,000 each to the enterprising Bhoot before their departure from Bombay. This was a huge sum in 1955. The ten ‘chosen’ cyclists finally arrived in London on 27 May. Strangely, half of them were sent back the very next day ‘as they had no more money’. The others were forced to find work to fund the rest of their trip. According to an IOA note to the IOC, the Indian cyclists did find work at the R. Woolfe Rubber Factory at Uxbridge in London. Adrift in a foreign land, the team members were forced to pay a further sum of £40 each to Bhoot. Only then they could travel onward for the races.43

  Worse was to come in Warsaw. By then, the cyclists were so angry at Bhoot’s ‘disgraceful behaviour’ that they refused to take part in the races.44 An unperturbed Bhoot simply exited Warsaw, leaving the team to its own devices. The Poles had already paid for first-class air tickets, which never reached the cyclists. Now the Polish Cyclists’ Federation stepped in to bale out the stranded Indians by paying for tickets to Vienna and back home.45

  The Warsaw incident was not an isolated case. In the same year, the chairman of the Warsaw–Berlin–Prague Road Race informed the IOA that all competitors taking part in the race had been given valuable gifts by the organizers. In the case of the Indian cyclists, however, the gifts had been ‘appropriated’ by Bhoot and all
protests ‘had been of no avail’.46 The IOA’s Bhalindra Singh was unambiguous in his judgment: ‘Mr Bhoot conducted himself in a similar manner regarding the small sums of money given to the competitors in the Road Race as pocket money.’ 47

  Not surprisingly, Indian cyclists were so angry that Bhoot was actually ‘beaten up’ during the Second Youth Sports Games of 1955. The aggrieved cyclists might have got their own back in that sordid incident but the cause of Indian cycling had been hurt immeasurably by now. As Raja Bhalindra Singh noted, the team, selected not on the basis of ‘cycling ability, but of their financial position’, was an extremely weak one and brought no credit to itself in the Peace Race, and did not even enter for the Second Youth Sports Games.48

  While on this trip, the Indian team also travelled to Italy, and once again a ‘regular fight’ broke out between the cyclists and Bhoot at a Milan hotel. Things got so bad that the police had to be called in and the headlines in the Italian press said it all. Sample some of these: ‘Strange story of Indian cycling team’; ‘Milan hotel proprietor calls in police’; ‘Indian cyclists stranded’; ‘Manager vanishes with money’; ‘Disgraceful scene in Milan’.49 It couldn’t have been worse for India. No wonder the cyclists had failed to realize the promise they had shown in the first Asiad.

  With Indian cycling turning into an international scandal, the IOA unanimously resolved to disaffiliate the NCFI. The problem was that the NCFI was still recognized by cycling’s international body, UCI. The IOC’s influence as an arbiter thus became crucial and the standoff led to a seven-year battle between the IOA and the NCFI to curry the Olympic body’s favour.

  Bhoot was not one to take the NCFI’s disaffiliation lying down. It was now his turn to complain to the IOC, and he mounted a vociferous defence arguing that the cycling federation had been victimized due to ‘frivolous and false complaints’ from some ‘rebel’ cyclists.50 Appealing to the IOC executive committee in September 1956, he wanted nothing less than the NCFI’s full reinstatement as the governing body for cycling in India:

  I was attempting till the last minute to settle the affairs with our National Olympic Committee who have acted unjustly and unconstitutionally to disaffiliate this federation from membership…The IOA should not have interfered into the day to day affairs of this federation. Instead it wrongly took up the cause of the rebels on the basis of frivolous complaints just to spite the representative of this federation on the IOA who has from time to time pointed out the irregularities of the IOA who manage their affairs in complete ignorance of the principles of the Olympic charter.’51

  The IOA by now was encouraging the ‘rebel’ cyclists—the ones who had risen up against Bhoot—to form a parallel body for cycling in India and promising to recognize it as the central governing body for the sport in the country.

  Bhoot now took his lobbying to a new level, meeting the IOC president, Avery Brundage, at London’s Dorchester Hotel in July 1955. His principal concern was to find out if the IOA could encourage the formation of a parallel body for cycling in India. He knew that parallel sport bodies were a complete anathema to the IOC, and the gambit seemed to work. As he noted, ‘Mr. Brundage kindly gave me his decision and followed it up with a letter from Chicago dated 27 July 1955 outlining the duties and powers of a National Olympic Committee. The president of the IOA willfully ignored the directions of Mr Brundage and continued to interfere in the affairs of this Federation on the plea that the IOA had a right to look into and guide the destiny of a national sports federation’.52

  Bhoot’s line of argument before the IOC is particularly instructive. It harked again to the familiar theme of regional rivalries that was by now a staple of warring Indian sporting factions. Bhoot’s target was Patiala himself and in a telling critique he outlined the nature of the prince’s complete control of Indian sport. As he put it to the IOC:

  You Gentlemen are well aware of the scandalous and unconstitutional affairs of the IOA…The present President who is an ex-Maharaja of a small Indian state is holding the position uninterrupted for the last 18 years, more for political reasons than sports. A very autocratic President, who never allows a member to discuss pros and cons of the items on the agenda, forces his views against the right thinking majority members including myself.53

  Bhoot was attempting to be the lone voice to oppose Patiala’s dominance in Indian sport. Himself under a thick cloud of corruption, he rounded off his tirade with a threat to expose the ‘corruption’ at the IOA if the IOC did not restore the authority of the NCF. He even raised the spectre of India failing to compete in the Melbourne Games of 1956 if Patiala’s stranglehold remained:

  The affairs of the IOA are at present in an awfully bad mess with hardly any funds at their disposal and always depending on the benevolence of the Government of India who have a great say in matters relating to sports in India…Over and above this the IOA has to give a satisfactory explanation to the IOC to their different queries, which they are now attempting to patch up in a highly perfunctory way, without any attempt to make any substantial change in the constitution…I request the President Mr. Brundage to direct the IOA to reinstate the NCF immediately into IOA fold and help us to send an Indian cycling team to Melbourne specially as this federation has some very good class of road riders. If the IOA refuses to reinstate this federation in spite of your directives a lot of scandal will come to light and may be the Indian Olympic team will not be accepted by the organizing committee of the Melbourne Games.54

  Bhoot’s own reputation was far from clean but his offensive, it seems, succeeded in safeguarding his control over the NCFI. This then was the story of Indian sport officialdom: each faction trying to claim the moral high ground, lobbying for international recognition, and hoping to keep its own hold intact, while the game continued to suffer.

  The dispute was finally settled six years later in 1962 when the IOA finally agreed to a truce with the selection of Abhijit Sen of Sen Raleigh Cycles as president of the National Cyclists Federation of India (NCFI).55 Subsequently, the federation with its newly elected office bearers was granted recognition by the government of India. Soon after the ice was broken, an Indian cycling team consisting of Lalbir Singh, Sucha Singh, Amar Singh, Amar Singh Sokhi and Chetan Singh Hari with R.K. Mehra as manager-cum-coach participated in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. The team, which had no experience of the 45-degree track used in the Tokyo Games, failed to put up a creditable performance. The failure at Tokyo had an adverse impact on the fortunes of the sport and no Indian team was allowed to participate in international contests till the Bangkok Asian Games of 1970. At Bangkok, a team of nine cyclists participated with reasonable success, and that performance cleared the way for subsequent Indian cycling teams to take part in international competitions. In 1966, the NCFI changed its nomenclature to the Cycling Federation of India (CFI), by which name it is still known today.56

  CONCLUSION

  As mentioned at the start of this chapter, the state of India’s Olympic affairs—in this case the relationship between the IOA and the federations at the helm of individual sports spread across the country—was hardly stable in the 1930s and 1940s. Accordingly, the history of India’s Olympic movement can only be analyzed if observed alongside the unpleasant political reality of regionalism dominating the Indian political and cultural scene, which dictated the evolving relationship between the sports associations located in the different provinces. Another constant factor that needs to be taken into account in studying the early years of turmoil is the role played by the IOC. In other words, when pressed by rival associations from across the country, the IOA led by Sondhi and later the Maharaja of Patiala unfailingly attempted to invoke IOC support to retain control.

  The object of this chapter has been to demonstrate the importance of studying the multiple day-to-day skirmishes across Olympic sports to understand the fractured nature of Olympism in India, which in turn explains India’s miserable performance at the Games. It also attempts to show that this history was alway
s full of nuances, the scopes of which went beyond the sports pitch. The story of Olympism in India makes sense when the narrative is read alongside the realities of domestic politics and also the equations governing the country’s other major sports, cricket and soccer.

  Interestingly, the growing conflict over the control of Olympic sports in the 1930s and 1940s did enough to create the impetus necessary for the growth of Olympism in India. The IOA, seeing a chance to profit from the financial frailty of the sports federations, did its best to consolidate its stranglehold over Indian Olympic affairs. That it was successful is evident from the non-participation of Indian cyclists in international competitions in the years of struggle between the IOA and the CFI.

  Using its financial potency, the IOA consolidated its relationship with the IOC. This was repeatedly borne out with the IOC refusing to be drawn into India’s ‘internal disputes’ and suggesting that decisions about India’s participation in the Olympic Games could only be taken by the IOA. Also, the continuing dominance of the House of Patiala at the IOA, which is partially true even today, draws attention to how these princely houses restructured their domains of influence after independence in 1947.

  While bitter regional conflict dominated the all-India scene, the consistent success of the Indian hockey team on the Olympic stage in 1928–56 proved that it was possible for a sport to rise above such rivalries. The monopoly over international hockey was the oxygen that sustained the Olympic movement in India in its early years, making India’s Olympic encounter far more vivacious and attractive. To these glory years we turn in the next chapter.