In the absence of any effort on the part of the IHF and its president to attend the meeting of 14 January 1978, and given that the IHF had done little in the interim to address the concerns raised against its functioning, the IOA had no option but to suspend the functioning of the IHF. The concerns against the IHF arose out of the following issues:
1. The IHF had not paid its dues to the IOA, amounting to approximately Rs 45,000. Some of the amounts, it was observed, had been outstanding for years. It was noted by the IOA general council that its president had made personal efforts to get the IHF to clear its dues and had convened a host of meetings with the treasurer and secretary of the IHF. And even when the IHF conceded to having defaulted, no action was taken to repay the outstanding dues.
2. Non-implementation of the ruling announced by the IOA that each state or affiliated member should be represented by ‘one unit only’. This resolution had been adopted to prevent the mushrooming of dissident groups and had been implemented by all other national federations/associations. The IHF’s refusal to accede to the ruling was perceived as creating a dangerous precedent for other national federations.
3. Non-implementation of the assurance given by the president of the IHF, M.A.M. Ramaswamy, to give equitable representation to those associations/individuals absent when he was elected president.
4. The acceptance of interference from a member of the government in the selection of the Indian hockey team and in the management of the day-to-day affairs of the federation.41
Of these concerns, the fourth and final one had deep roots and went back to instances of interference by Union Minister for Works and Housing Sikandar Bakht. Only a week before the meeting of the IOA general assembly, Bakht had attended the probables camp at Patiala and made statements contesting the rights and jurisdiction of the IOA. First, he had unilaterally foiled attempts to reinstate the three dissident hockey stars, Surjit Singh, Virender Singh and Baldev Singh, declaring that ‘discipline in sports was essential and there must be respectful distance between players and selectors’.42 When asked if his stand amounted to interference in the affairs of the IOA, Bakht was abrasive in declaring that the ‘Government had every right to ensure that public funds were not misused by any sports body. In Socialist countries sports were totally run by the government and there was no objection to it’.43
Governmental interference, of course, was complete anathema to the IOC, for which amateurism was an article of faith. This had been emphasized most emphatically by the IOC president Lord Killanin on his visit to India in December 1977.44 Speaking to the media, Killanin had declared that if any instance of willing submission by a national federation to government or outside dictates was brought before an international federation recognized by the IOC, that national federation could be suspended by the international federation concerned. He reiterated that the IOC had the right to authorize a national Olympic committee to run the affairs of a national federation in which dispute existed and which was adversely affecting the interest of the sportsmen concerned.45
The IOA’s resentment towards Bakht becomes evident from a confidential letter written by Raja Bhalindra Singh to the president of the International Olympic Committee:
Unfortunately a minister of government who has no direct connection with sports has been using his official position to interfere in the affairs of the Indian Hockey Federation, and has gone so far as to influence the selection of the national team. This has been resented and has attracted a lot of adverse public criticism both in Parliament and outside. The official government stand, that of the Ministry of Education and Sports, is one of unhappiness. However, the minister continues to interfere and the President of the IHF, whose own position is not too secure, continues to flout all norms of behaviour by seeking help from this extra constitutional authority, and in a most authoritarian way flout both the autonomy of his Federation as well as the spirit of the constitution of the National Olympic Committee. He refused to listen to the National Olympic Committee and has not even cared to be present in the various meetings convened to set matters right.46
Despite having suspended the IHF at its meeting of 14 January, the president of the IOA once again invited the president of the IHF to a meeting to resolve differences in a letter dated 17 January 1978.47 The IHF responded by dragging the IOA to court and obtained an injunction contesting the disqualification.48 Why did Ramaswamy not take the opportunity to talk to the opposition? He explained his reasons for not attending the proposed meeting with the IOA in a personal letter to Rene Frank. While it is intriguing to wonder why reasons were cited to the FIH and not to the IOA, the reasons themselves seem no less dubious. The three reasons cited by Ramaswamy were as follows:
1. The 14th of January was Pongal Day—one of the most important feast days for us in South India and I had to respect my revered father’s wishes and participate in the religious ceremonies at home.
2. As Chairman and Senior Steward of the Madras Race Club, I had to be present at the Race Course to officiate the running of the South India derby.
3. The first circular and second circular convening the IOA meeting did not include any item on hockey affairs.49
He went on to state that sport in India was under the direct control of the union government and Prime Minister Morarji Desai had given Sikandar Bakht complete charge of hockey. He also assured the international federation president that in the battle against the IOA, the IHF was assured of Bakht’s support.
The letter ended with the assertion that the resolution suspending the IHF was illegal and the Madras High Court, on 18 January 1978, had already granted a temporary injunction against the suspension.50 He followed this letter with another long memo addressed to the president of the IOA on 31 January 1978 and declared that unless the IOA withdrew the order of suspension, any meeting between the two organizations would prove futile.51
In the corridors of international sporting officialdom, the conflict was couched in north–south terms. Certainly, this was how Rene Frank saw it when he joined hands with the IHF. Supporting his claims in a memo to the IOC president on 27 February 1978, Frank suggested that the opposition lobby, which had failed to check Ramaswamy’s ascendancy to the presidency of the IHF, was using the instance of action taken against three Punjabi players to resume the tussle. As he put it: ‘It must be noted that players involved are most probably all Punjabis, three of them belonging to a team of which Kumar is the chief ’. 52 He went on to argue that as far as the suspension of the IHF by the IOA was concerned, ‘we fully disapprove it. It must also be noted that all the people involved belong to the North’.53 He concluded with the assertion that Ramaswamy, who was a member of his council, was an eminent personality in south India, was the director of a number of companies and had helped his association financially since becoming president.54
When he learnt of Frank’s pro-Ramaswamy lobbying with the IOC, the IOA’s Air Chief Marshal Mehra went to great lengths to try and explain the reasons behind the IOA’s actions. He repeatedly argued that had it been the intention of the IOA to take over the functioning of the IHF, it would not have allowed Ramaswamy to go ahead with the planning of the India–Pakistan hockey series later in the year and would not have permitted the IHF to run a conditioning camp for the World Cup to be played in Argentina.55
Things came to a head when Frank’s confidential letters to the IOC president found their way into various Indian newspapers in June 1978.56 Nor surprisingly, Frank’s analysis of the infighting as a symptom of the north–south divide provoked a hostile reaction in the national media.57 A good example of the outrage it caused is the analysis of veteran sportswriter Bobby Talyarkhan. He argued that Frank had overstepped his limits in declaring ‘that the real trouble is between the north and the south of India’. Talyarkhan, who had earlier supported the IHF against the IOA and had been against the IOA takeover of the functioning of the IHF during the 1975 World Cup, now pointed out:
Frank has gone so far as to mention the Si
khs as an entity and I assert this is none of his business. By stating what he has done Rene Frank is merely adding fuel to fire…Frank has no business to go into any details calculated to turn India’s hockey control into a burning cauldron… India’s sport has enough internal squabbles for a foreigner to step in and add to the troubles.’58
Simultaneously, Frank’s allegations were also perceived as a serious slur on the reputation of the IOA. Upset at the press leaks, on 24 June 1978 Air Chief Marshal Mehra wrote a sharp rejoinder to Frank, specifically refuting the allegations of a north-India bias on the IOA’s part.
…the subject of North and South relations in India is a very sensitive one and if some of your friends in India have informed you that it provides a background to the present imbroglio in Indian Hockey, it is not true…. Raja Bhalindra Singh [Mehra’s predecessor as IOA President] is a widely respected sports administrator in the country and uptil today no one has ever blamed him for any parochial feeling. Then again Mr. Ashwini Kumar when he left the Indian Hockey Federation, had more than a majority in the House.59
Mehra insisted that ‘a paid employee’ of the IHF had leaked the Frank letters containing the north–south references to the press. This, he argued, was a sure sign that Indian hockey was ‘not in safe hands’ and that ‘a number of undesirable people’ had found their way into it.60
Mehra did not stop there. On 30 June, he complained to the IOC president. Again he argued that the issue of ‘north–south relations’ was a rather sensitive one and it was unethical on Frank’s part to comment on such matters. He reminded Killanin of a letter he had sent on 27 March, which mentioned that Frank had ‘hurt our national sentiments by giving a political slant to the dispute by referring to personal interests and North versus the rest of India as factor’.61 He also drew attention to Frank’s silence over a similar tussle in Pakistan, arguing that the Pakistani government’s takeover of the nation’s hockey affairs by disbanding the hockey federation had far more serious consequences for the international sporting fraternity. In the four-cornered fight over Indian hockey, Mehra was hoping that the IOC would exert pressure and rein in Frank so as to balance the scales in the infighting between the IOA and the IHF.62
Whether the north–south divide was genuine, or whether it was merely a convenient platform to mask simple old-fashioned lust for power is a moot point. While the administrators argued and jostled, the game continued to suffer. The immutable fact is that vicious infighting was true of almost all Indian sports, and was always seen as an example of India’s regional differences by international officials. Writing to Rene Frank in 1978, Lord Killanin noted:
Over my Olympic years, we have had considerable trouble between the North and the South and there was some opposition even to the election of Mr. Kumar, who is an excellent man, because both he and Bhalindra Singh come from the North….
Your federation is not the only one which has had trouble in India of a fairly similar nature…63
If Indian sport were to have an epitaph, this would be it.
‘CONFLICT HAS SO FAR DEFIED SOLUTION’:
THE INDIAN SPORTS LANDSCAPE
Instances of regional conflict were hardly new to Indian sport. In colonial conditions, for example, British recognition and support had proved pivotal in shaping the development of Indian soccer in the 1930s and 1940s. Just as in the case of hockey, Bengali dominance over soccer was unquestioned until the 1920s. However, this state of affairs underwent a transformation from the close of the decade. At the root of this transformation lay the changes in the status of the sport in the rest of the country, when other provinces averse to soccer gave up their earlier repugnance and emerged conscious patrons of the sport. This in turn marked the onset of a phase of crisis in Indian soccer that was to culminate the formation of the All India Football Federation in 1937. In this phase, Bengali soccer patrons led by the Maharaja of Santosh continually drew upon British support, considered key to retaining their supremacy over the control of soccer in India.64
About the time when the hockey scene in India imploded, a number of other sports were also in turmoil. Multiple organizations were claiming control of wrestling, shooting, athletics and volleyball, complicating the Indian sporting landscape like never before. Ashwini Kumar highlighted the complex situation in a letter to Lord Killanin on 6 August 1977.
Kumar reported that there were three parallel federations trying to gain control of wrestling affairs in India. Even more unfortunate was the fact that some members of the National Olympic Committee had thrown their weight behind one of the factions ‘and queered the pitch as far as sorting out the differences between the contending parties are concerned…The only solution lies in the majority of the wrestling organizers merging to form a body under an agreed President’.65
The situation in volleyball had been equally volatile between 1974 and 1977 but as Kumar argued, ‘all of the warring factions have showed keenness to come to an understanding and have promised that they will most probably join hands sometime in the beginning of September. If this happens, it will be a great day for Indian volleyball, a game in which India has a lot of talent, but which has been moribund for the last three years’.66
Two parallel bodies had also sprung up in athletics, both claiming to control the fate of Indian track and field. Again it fell upon Raja Bhalindra Singh to arbitrate the dispute and impress upon members that strong measures needed to be taken to stop this increasing tendency on the part of recalcitrant members to form parallel bodies. Finally, in August 1977, Bhalindra Singh was successful in bringing peace amongst the athletic fraternity, with the factions agreeing to come together under the tutelage of a common president.
The fourth dispute referred to by Kumar in his letter to Lord Killanin centred on the National Rifle Association of India:
The national body which looks after this sport unfortunately consists of a large number of individual members who do not represent any sporting fraternity, club or state association. This is against the rules and regulations of the Olympic charter. Most of these individual members are local businessmen from Delhi who have ‘bought’ a seat on the national body. They refuse to resign and have not allowed any shooting activity in this country for the last couple of years. Recently, all the genuine workers and enthusiasts of the game got together and passed a resolution of no-confidence in the parent body and have informed the NOC that they will no longer be a part of the National Rifle Association of India. This conflict has so far defied a solution.67
Kumar was writing about shooting but he could have been outlining the status of virtually any sports body in India.
To solve these disputes the IOA proposed the following addition to its constitution in August 1977:
In order to avoid a situation where due to conflicts/divergence of views in National federations, individuals/institutions take recourse to a court of law for an arbitration judgment, it has been decided that some kind of machinery should be established within the Indian Olympic Association, the NOC of India and its affiliated units, which would give the former organization (Indian Olympic Association) some kind of authority to solve the conflicts and disputes in the National Federations. In pursuance of this, it has been agreed that a rule be incorporated in the constitution of the Indian Olympic Association stating that all National Federations and their affiliated units will submit disputes/conflicts within their organization to the Indian Olympic Association for settlement. The IOA will take note of all the details submitted and give a decision in the matter expeditiously within a stipulated time frame. The National Federations will not submit their disputes and conflicts to a court of law. A similar provision will be incorporated by the National Federations in their respective constitutions stating that, ‘no National Federation or its affiliated unit will take their disputes/conflicts to a court of law. All disputes/conflicts will be submitted to the IOA for settlement. The IOA, after examining all the details, will give their final decision in the matter which will be binding on
all concerned.’68
More than 30 years later, Indian sport continues to remain hostage to the politicking of its administrators. The reasons may be debatable—competitive regionalism or power politics—but infighting is now a permanent feature of all Indian sports, much more than the promotion of the various games themselves. This has had a disastrous impact on the development of competitive sport in the country. Coming back to hockey, the last word on this belongs to the mercurial Dhanraj Pillay. If anyone has carried the flickering flame of Indian hockey in recent years, it is he; if anyone has symbolized the tragedy of Indian hockey in recent years, it is he. It is, therefore, instructive to hear him speak on Indian officialdom:
What I am saying is that the IHF just does not care. For them, the post and the aura of being IHF president are more important than anything else. Their ego is on a high such as you can never imagine. But we also have our egos. Don’t you feel players like us have done something for the nation to take notice?69
Pillay, of course, has had numerous public run-ins with hockey officials but his anguish is genuine and deep-seated and in it lies the real tragedy of Indian sport, not just of Indian hockey. And it can be surmised that the sacking of K.P.S. Gill by the IOA after IHF Secretary Jyothikumaran was caught on tape accepting a bribe is certainly not the last tragedy that we have seen in Indian hockey after its failure to qualify for the Beijing Olympiad.
THE SPORTS–POLITICS VORTEX
Olympics-The India Story Page 18
