Similarly, modern observers attribute the early spread of hockey to the British Army. While hockey, loosely defined, has historic antecedents going back to the stick games played by the ancient Greeks, it was invented in its modern form on the playing fields of imperial England. In his short account of the history of hockey, Chris Moore emphasizes that it was adopted in the empire:
. . .Mainly, it must be said because of the British Army which, in those imperial days, traveled widely in order to keep a watchful eye on all those red bits on the map. Wherever the army went they tended to take the British way of life with them. Including hockey. And that is how the game invented on the English cricket field came to be played the world over. . . At that time the British Army was everywhere, looking after the far flung domains of the Widow of Windsor. Notably, of course, in India.13
It is no accident that the great Dhyan Chand learnt all his hockey skills on regimental hockey fields. Both Chand and his brother Roop Singh, who also served India with distinction, were soldiers. Dhyan Chand’s father, Subedar Sameshwar Dutt Singh, also played hockey in the Army and had grown up in a martial ambience where physical activity was valued. Dhyan Chand joined the First Brahmin Regiment in 1922, later transferring to the Punjab Regiment, and his real training began only after he put on the uniform. As he put it, ‘I do not remember whether I played any hockey worth mentioning before I joined the Army.’ His description of how he learnt the craft of the game illustrates the role of the Army in developing Indian sport:
I shall tell you when I first started playing hockey. It was just an accident how it came about. When I joined the First Brahmin Regiment, we had a Subedar-Major by the name of Bale Tiwari who was a keen hockey enthusiast and a very fine player. He took a fancy to me.
My regiment was well-known in hockey circles, and hockey was the only outdoor game to which the regiment devoted most of its sporting attention. Bale Tiwari initiated me into this game and gave me my first lessons. He was my guru. We had no fixed times at the Cantonment to play hockey. We indulged in it at all hours of the day.14
The indulgence in sport stemmed from two reasons. At one level, it was simply a consequence of British troops carrying their own culture with them. It is equally true, though, that the British Indian Army purposely adopted sport as a means of inculcating esprit de corps among its troops, native and European. In the case of hockey, one observer has noted tongue-in-cheek that doubtless part of its appeal was ‘the wondrous chance it gave to privates and lance corporals to hit the colonel indiscriminately while pretending to aim the ball’.15 Whether the colonels were hit or not, there is no doubt that team sports were seen by them as essential tools to develop bonds among men who were expected to fight shoulder to shoulder, besides serving the purpose of keeping them usefully occupied in peace time.
In a colonial force where notions of kinship and izzat (honour) were the key to inter-personal bonding,16 sport was, in modern parlance, a useful management tool. In that sense, sport fulfilled a deeper social purpose specific to the martial traditions of the Army and we will return to this theme of the Army’s special need for sporting activity later in the chapter. For now, it is enough to note that so pervasive was the Army’s influence on hockey that the Army Sports Control Board virtually controlled Indian hockey affairs until at least 1928. As Dhyan Chand was to record:
. . .the IHF in those days was largely conducted by Army men; in fact the president of the IHF was Major Burn-Murdoch.
There is a feeling in some ill-informed quarters that Englishmen did not do much for hockey in India. This is not quite true. For my hockey I am gratefully indebted to British Army Officers who not only took great interest in this game, but also played with us on all occasions forgetting their official rank and status.17
Dhyan Chand was not an exception as a successful soldier-sportsman in colonial India. It is no coincidence that Sansarpur, a tiny village on the outskirts of Jalandhar cantonment, produced as many great hockey players as it did. When the British Indian Army took over the entire agricultural land of the village for building the new Jalandhar cantonment, it was thought prudent to not only introduce hockey as a means of keeping village youth occupied but also to provide a source for fresh, physically fit recruits. Sansarpur emerged not only as a major breeding ground for the Army but also produced 14 Olympians and perhaps ‘the world’s highest per capita of Olympic medals’.18 As late as 1996, when a Sports Illustrated reporter visited the village, he noted that the Army’s legacy had deep roots. As a local told the magazine reporter, ‘British Army brought hockey here at the turn of the century. . .The village’s first Olympian was Colonel Singh in 1932’.19 In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the early rise of Punjab as the cradle of Indian hockey and the centrality of Punjabis in the Indian Army’s recruitment after the 1857 Mutiny are not entirely unconnected. While the pre-eminence of hockey in colonial Punjab is also linked to the patronage of the house of Patiala and the complex interplay of princely politics, in a state where virtually every village boasted of serving or retired soldiers, social conditions enabled the game’s players to acquire a pedigree and a skill set that was passed on from generation to generation in the early years.
The story of Indian football is also similar, with the Army leaving a deep imprint in the early years. While it is impossible to ascertain when the game was first played in India, it is reasonably clear that it came with the East India Company. Football’s early pioneers were ‘officers and men of Trading Farms and Regimental Battalions’, besides naval officers who used to play at ports of call like Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and Karachi.20 This is not to suggest that sport remained a preserve only of soldiers and men-in-arms. It is true though that the institutional foundation of football in India was laid by the defence services-led Dalhousie Club in 1878—acknowledged as the oldest football club in India.21 There were no organized tournaments until the Dalhousie Club showed the way in 1889. The club raised subscriptions from commercial houses and started the Trades Cup in that year. For four years the tournament was the biggest event in the football calendar until the IFA Shield became the most prestigious tournament from 1893 onwards. A little later the Calcutta-based Indian Football Association (IFA) was affiliated to the English F.A. and it was only then that Indian football found another home.22 Yet, a deeper analysis of the politics of Indian football until independence reveals that while the IFA was now the nodal body, the British-controlled Army Sports Control Board continued to hold the balance of power in the management of the sport.
Hamlet’s Prince of Denmark:
The Army and Football Politics in Colonial India
The Maharaja of Patiala and G.D. Sondhi succeeded Dorabji Tata and A.G. Noehren as president and secretary of the IOA in the late 1920s. These successions, it seems, marked the emergence of Indian Olympism as a new battleground for regional supremacy.23 Evidence from elsewhere makes it clear that Indian sport in this period was racked by regional and princely tussles for hegemony. With Bombay taking the lead in cricket and Bengal doing the same in soccer, it was imperative for north India to take the lead in matters of Olympic sport.24 Given this backdrop, the formation of the All India Football Federation (AIFA) in 1935 is a prime example of the ensuing turf wars, triggering off a bitter struggle for supremacy between Indian states—Bengal on the one hand and western and northern Indian states on the other, for assertion of supremacy over the control of the game.25 As the Calcutta IFA—the country’s oldest soccer association—and the AIFF locked horns over who really represented ‘India’ in football, the Bengali IFA repeatedly looked to the British Football Association as a source of legitimacy.
Joya Chatterji, among others, has argued that Muslim political ascendancy in 1930s Bengal led the Hindu bhadralok, patrons of sport, to look favourably upon British rule. Muslim political ascendancy led to the Bengali bhadralok reappraising their past and looking upon the British as liberators who had freed the Hindus of Bengal from Muslim rule.26 Therefore, when faced
with challenges from other Indian states over the control of soccer, they fell back on loyalist support of the British Football Association. This also explains why the bhadralok did not prevent the exclusively European Calcutta and Ballygunge Cricket Clubs from wielding power over Bengali cricket in the 1930s and 1940s. 27
In such a backdrop, the struggle for control over soccer brought out in sharp relief the centrality of the British Indian Army in Indian affairs. Sport has always been a central component of military life but in an imperial context the Army’s role became crucial.28 Through the 1930s, as the conflict raged between different states, the Army Sports Control Board (ASCB) served as a neutral arbiter—the hinge on which the outcome depended. The Bengal IFA lobby, led by the Maharaja of Santosh, continually looked to British support. 29 Much like the rival factions of Indian hockey would look to the IHF for legitimacy in the 1970s, in this early battle over Indian football a great deal depended on recognition by the British Football Association. In colonial India, this, in turn, depended on patronage from the British Indian Army and its powerful Sports Control Board. In an emerging nation grappling with the politics of provincial identity in the sporting arena, the powerful institution of the Army emerged as a match referee.
To understand the role of the Army, we first need to take a brief look at the magnitude of the problems confronting Indian football, which lacked a truly national representative body until well into the 1930s. When the Maharaja of Santosh convened a conference of the provincial soccer associations of the country at Darbhanga in September 1935,30 newspaper reports indicated that it would mark the formation of a new all-India governing body for the game. Things, however, did not go according to plan. Designated to chair the proceedings, the Maharaja found delegates from Delhi and Bombay unwilling to accept a Bengali chairperson.31 He was also told that these delegates, and those from other states, were keen to keep Bengal out of the body and had already drafted the constitution of the all-India body. This is when the Maharaja decided to abandon the conference and return to Calcutta.32 We must emphasize that it would be wrong to paint the non-Bengali delegates as the villains in this drama. The Maharaja and the Bengali lobby were perceived as overbearing by other states. The details of who was at fault are not as important as the fact that it ended with the Bengali delegation, thwarted in its bid for control, withdrawing. The Maharaja caught something of the real import of this failure, when he noted:
I am going away from Darbhanga sorely disappointed over the question of the formation of an All India Federation. I found the provinces of India hopelessly divided on this front. Internal suspicion and provincial jealousies retarded progress of the country in almost every department of public life. I find that even the field of sport is unable to rise above these elements.33
Despite the lack of a national consensus on the question of representation and despite Bengal’s non-cooperation, the All India Football Association was born at Darbhanga on 21 September 1935.34 But it could not function smoothly for long. With Bengal opposed to the body, it was difficult for AIFA to raise necessary funds for its maintenance. Further, with the Maharaja of Santosh leading the opposition against it, other princes, allies of the Maharaja, refrained from according patronage to the newly formed body:35 as the Amrita Bazar Patrika put it, an all-India body without Calcutta’s premier IFA36 was like ‘the staging of Hamlet without the prince of Denmark’. As India’s oldest football association, IFA’s trump card was the fact that it had recognition from the British Football Assocation:37
The Indian Football Federation was formed last year after the Darbhanga convention. But it has ever remained an isolated organization in which the IFA, the oldest and greatest corporate soccer body of India and the only Association which has been recognized by the FA of England, never joined. In fact the whole procedure can be compared to the staging of Hamlet without the prince of Denmark.38
If IFA was the prince of Denmark then the problem was that the prince of Denmark did not just want to be in Hamlet, he wanted to be Hamlet itself. Repeated efforts to find a compromise solution between AIFA and IFA failed over the Bengali insistence to retain total control. 39
For all of IFA’s jostling, the real prince of Denmark in the ensuing drama, it seems, was the Army Sports Control Board. The position of IFA vis-à-vis AIFA was strengthened when the Board decided to support IFA.40 Accordingly, all local military sides were enlisted to take part in the Calcutta Football League to be conducted by IFA in June-July 1936.41 It was also declared that the usual contingent of military teams would take part in the IFA shield competition.42 The continued support of the Board was viewed in many quarters as the last nail in the coffin of AIFA. This support, it was argued, signalled the disintegration of the sovereignty of AIFA:43
Though maintaining its legal position intact and unassailable, the AIFA had to admit de-facto defeat from Attock to Cape Comorin. The rout seemed almost to be complete, with the Army Sports Control Board holding the whip hand throughout.44
No other sports body had a national reach. The support of the Army Sports Control Board and its patronage encouraged IFA to once again issue a circular to the soccer associations of the country giving a fresh call to set up an all-India body under its banner.45 IFA emphasized that it was ready and willing to enlarge its constitution by giving adequate representation on its council to all the provincial soccer associations.46 It was also declared that the scheme had the sanction of the Football Association of England. To this end, IFA decided to organize a conference at Calcutta in December 1936 where this new body would finally come into existence.47 The catch was that, emboldened by Army support, IFA was proposing nothing less than a recognition of itself as the national body, with token representation for others.
Not surprisingly, representatives from Delhi and Bombay reacted with suspicion to the new scheme. They immediately denounced it as one that sought direct dominance of IFA and Calcutta over all the other associations of the country.48
However, the UP association supported Bengal, suggesting that it was time to end the long drawn quarrel. The association was of the opinion that there was no denying Bengal’s valuable service to the cause of football in India, whereby it was essential for Bengal to take the lead in forming the all-India body.49 It also felt that a joint meeting attended by representatives of IFA, AIFA and the Army Sports Control Board was crucial to solve the impasse.50 While representatives from Lucknow, Orissa, Jamshedpur, Ranchi, Patna, Jamalpur, Hazaribagh and UP had supported the Maharaja of Santosh and IFA, it was clearly the Army that was the real McCoy.51 This is why, when the Maharaja wrote to thank the delegates for support, he emphasized that his hopes lay in the continued guidance of the Football Association of England and the potential co-operation of the Army in India.52
The conflict between Bengal and the other provinces did not abate and things again came to a head in December 1936.53 The proposed conference at Calcutta proved a non-starter, and the fate of soccer in the country was left hanging by a thread. This was when the Army Sports Control Board put its foot down, solving the crisis that had plagued the fortunes of soccer in India for almost a decade. Its representative decided to strike a compromise between the two bodies by taking the initiative to form the new All India Football Federation, a body which would give considerable importance to IFA while not giving it the control it wanted.54 With this in view, the Board invited all of India’s soccer associations to usher in the new federation at a conference in Shimla in May 1937.55 Bengal had so far fought tooth and nail against such a solution but it was the best result under the circumstances. Further, Bengal was in no position to alienate the Army Board, whose support was key to the survival of IFA. Though the IFA tried its best to postpone the formation of AIFF to September, the Army Board held firm.56
In a personal letter sent to the Maharaja of Santosh, the representative of the Board declared his intention to go ahead with the formation of AIFF at Shimla in May 1937. The Maharaja did try to stonewall by appearing reluctant to attend
the conclave but now the Board used its clout, firmly putting him in his place:57
I am sorry to say that it is quite impossible to accede to your request that the meeting, to be held next month at Simla and at which we hope to bring into being the All India Football Federation, should be postponed till July. As you know, the original date has already been put back one month to suit the IFA with considerable inconvenience to the other parties concerned, and any further postponement would, I know, cause great offence to them and upset all their arrangements. I regret that the present date is not very convenient for the IFA but I hope you will find it possible to send a suitable representative to the meeting.
Your question regarding the number of representatives, which the IFA should send to the meeting is a little complicated. . .Until these rules have been approved, there can be no authority for the IFA to have more than one representative. I suggest therefore that the only possible solution is for the IFA to send one representative to the meeting; for the initial proceedings he will have only one vote; after the draft rules have been approved he will have two votes for all subsequent business.
I agree that there is much to be said for accepting Calcutta as the headquarters of the AIFF for the first few years. Obviously, however, the decision cannot rest with me as the question will have to be decided by the forthcoming meeting. I also regret very much that you consider that the IFA has not been well treated. Since I became connected with this affair I have tried to be quite impartial and incidentally to ensure that sufficient weight was given to the prestige and traditions of the IFA. The alternative suggestion that the IFA should to all intents and purposes absorb the AIFA was never of course a practical solution.58
The representative of the Board concluded the letter saying:
I must confess that I find the last few lines of your letter rather perturbing as they imply that even at this late stage in the proceedings you may find it impossible to accept the AIFF or to co-operate loyally with such a body. I have, however, decided that if the meeting at Simla next month is unsuccessful and does not result in the formation of the AIFF to be loyally supported by all concerned, I shall be forced to refrain from any further participation in this football controversy. In such a contingency, I will be forced to forward to the FA in England a report on the happenings of the last few months and on the reasons for the breakdown of negotiations and thereafter events in India would have to follow their normal course.59
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