Olympics-The India Story

by Boria Majumdar

  78. See Reference 70.

  79. Supreme Court Case 161 before Justices, P.B. Sawant, S Mohan and B.P Jeevan Reddy, Civil Appeals Nos. 1429–30 of 1995.

  80. Meenal Baghel, ‘Doordarshan Jams VSNL Plans to Uplink’, the Asian Age, 19 September 1994.

  81. B.P.J. Reddy concurring, Supreme Court Case 161 before Justices, P.B. Sawant, S Mohan and B.P. Jeevan Reddy, Civil Appeals Nos. 1429–30 of 1995.

  82. Ten Sports estimated its initial damages to be worth Rs 2.8 billion. ‘DD to get Ten Sports feed for all Matches’, the Hindu BusinessLine, 18 March 2004.

  83. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Policy Guidelines for Downlinking of Television Channels, 11 November 2005.

  84. ‘Supreme Court Restrains DD from Interfering with Rights of Ten Sports’, the Hindu, 10 May 2006.

  85. ‘Don’t Interfere with Ten Sports’ Rights: Court’, the Hindu, 5 August 2006.

  86. UNI, ‘SC allows ESPN-STAR to Approach it if coerced by the Centre’, 8 January 2007, http://www.indlawnews.com/2C829C337F2DBD858EAC77A54263988C, accessed 8 January 2007.

  87. PTI, ‘Telecast India-WI Series with Delay: HC’, 23 January 2007, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1403569.cms, accessed 23 January 2007.

  88. The government contended that about 9–10% of Doordarshan’s 25% share would pay for its expenditure in the broadcast while the remaining revenue would be ploughed back into national sports. Rajya Sabha, Synopsis of Debates (Proceedings other than Questions and Answers), Statutory Resolution Seeking Disapproval of the Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Ordinance, 2007 and the Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Bill, 2007 (9 March 2007), http://www.rajyasabha.nic.in/rsdebate/synopsis/210/09032007.htm, accessed 11 March 2007.

  89. Ibid.

  90. Ibid.

  91. The BCCI agreed to share half of the losses. PTI, ‘BCCI to Share Nimbus Losses’, 23 March 2007, http://www.indianexpress.com/story/26365.html, accessed 23 March 2007.

  92. In the Rajya Sabha, for instance, only two speakers dissented. http://www.rajyasabha.nic.in/rsdebate/synopsis/210/09032007.htm, accessed 11 March 2007.

  93. See Nalin Mehta, India on Television: How TV News Changed the Ways We Think and Act (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2008).

  94. Interview with Uday Shankar, CEO and editor, Star News, 2003–04, Shanghai, 22 August 2005.

  95. Emphasis is Shankar’s. Interview with Uday Shankar, ibid.

  96. C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary (London: Hutchinson, 1963).

  97. Appadurai, Modernity at Large, p. 101.

  98. Atul Phadnis, ‘New TAM-ADEX Analysis: Greater Opportunities for In-Program or On-Ground Promotions During Cricket than Soccer!’ (Mumbai: TAM ADEX, 24 January 2002, http://www.indiantelevision.com/tamadex/y2k3/tamadex.htmm, accessed 29 August 2006.

  99. ‘Cricket—Who is Riding it?: An exchange4media Analysis of 2001’, http://www.exchange4media.com/e4m/others/cricket_ad.asp, accessed 24 August 2006.

  100. Appadurai, Modernity at Large, p. 111.

  101. Interview with Uday Shankar, CEO and editor, Star News, 2003–07, Shanghai, 22 August 2005.

  102. Ibid.

  103. SET Max would revert to regular entertainment programming when cricket was not on.

  104. Kunal Dasgupta, CEO, Sony Entertainment Television, interview on http://www.indiantelevision.com/interviews/y2k2/executive/kunal.htm, 3 June 2002, accessed 1 August 2006.

  105. Sheela Reddy, ‘Hooked,’ Outlook, 24 March 2003, http://www.outlookindia.com/archivecontents.asp?fnt=20030324, accessed 1 August 2006.

  106. Atul Phadnis, ‘Adex World Cup Barometer: 2nd Week of Cricket World Cup Rakes in 36.5 Million Female Viewers,’ TAM India Report, 3 March 2003, http://www.indiantelevision.com/tamadex/y2k3/mar/cricbra5.htm, accessed 31 July 2006.

  107. Purnendu Bose, COO, SaharaOne, quoted in Latha Venkatraman, Ajita Shashidhar, ‘Taking Refuge in Cricket’, BusinessLine, 9 March 2006.

  108. When Kerry Packer’s Channel 9 failed to win the broadcast rights to Australian cricket, he set up World Series Cricket as an independent cricket attraction. Channel 9’s WSC signed up the world’s top international players and introduced day-night one-day games, coloured clothing and aggressive marketing tactics to re-invent cricket as a television game. For details see Gideon Haigh, The Cricket War: The Inside Story of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket (Melbourne: Text, 1993).

  109. See Shahid Amin, ‘Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921–2’ in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies III: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi, 1984), pp. 1–55.

  110. See Arjun Appadurai, ‘Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization’, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). The same article was reproduced in Carol A Breckenridge (ed.), Consuming Modernity: Public culture in a South Asian World, (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1995), pp. 23–48.

  111. Ashis Nandy, The Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of the Games (New York: Viking, 1989), p. 1.

  CHAPTER 10

  Much of the data used in this chapter is also the product of ethnography that was part of a growing up experience in Army cantonments across the country.

  1. Rathore won the silver medal in men’s double trap shooting at Athens 2004. The billboard bearing his photograph was first seen by the author in January 2005 and then in January 2008.

  2. India’s other Olympic medals have been gold in hockey, 1980; bronze in tennis (Leander Paes), 1996; bronze in women’s weightlifting (Karnam Malleswari), 2000.

  3. The Indian Army’s officer shortage went up from 17.31% in 1986 to 30.11% in 1999. In 2000 the Army said it was short of 12,883 officers, 28.18% of the sanctioned strength because young men did not see it as a lucrative career any more. In a clear reflection of the Army’s social base, 60% of the officers commissioned in 2001–04 came from families with an income of less than Rs 10,000 a month. The figures are from Indian Military Academy, Dehradun. News reports compiled by the author for New Delhi Television. Broadcast on 17/12/200 and 14/6/2004 respectively.

  4. Sanjay Sharma, ‘President APJ Abdul Kalam Looks to Indian Army & Govt Support to Produce Indian Olympic Medallists’, 15 September 2004. www.indianolympic.com/story/2004/9/15/205540/587, accessed 15 August 2005.

  5. http://mod.nic.in/rec&training/body.htm, accessed 15 August, 2005. Also see Ministry of Defence Annual Report, 2001–2002, p. 32.

  6. Gopal Sharma, ‘Army Out to Salvage Pride in Olympics’, the Tribune, 14 August 2004.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Krishna Bobji, 3 February 2005. http://mboard.rediff.com/board/board.php?action=m&boardid=sports2003sep04spec&messageid=1598131597#1598131597

  9. Anthony De Mello, Portrait of Indian Sport (London: P.R. Macmillan, 1959), pp. 3, 8.

  10. The entire collection of this magazine is available in the Rare Section of the Regenstein Library, University of Chicago.

  11. Sporting Intelligence magazine, March 1845, p. 450.

  12. Boria Majumdar, ‘When the Sepoys Batted: 1830–1850 on the Playing Field’, in Sharmistha Gooptu and Boria Majumdar (eds.), Revisiting 1857: Myth, Memory, History, (New Delhi: Roli Books, 2007), p. 77.

  13. Chris Moore, ‘A History of Hockey’, 6th FIH World Hockey Cup for Men: National Hockey Centre, London, England, 4th -19th October, 1986, Official Souvenir Programme (London: World Hockey Cup), pp. 33–34.

  14. Dhyan Chand, Goal, published in Sport and Pastime, 1952. http://www.bharatiyahockey.org/granthalaya/goal/, accessed 29 September 2007.

  15. Chris Moore, ‘A History of Hockey’, 6th FIH World Hockey Cup for Men: National Hockey Centre, London, England, 4 th-19th October, 1986, Official Souvenir Programme (London: World Hockey Cup), p. 34.

  16. See for instance, Jeffrey Greenhut, ‘Sahib and Sepoy: An Inquiry into the Relationship Between the British Officers and Native Soldiers of the British Indian Army’, Military Affairs, Vol. 48, No. 1, Jan. 1984.


  17. Dhyan Chand, Goal, published in Sport and Pastime, 1952. http://www.bharatiyahockey.org/granthalaya/goal/, accessed 29 September 2007.

  18. ‘Olympians Dot Sansarpur Plains’, the Tribune, 8 November 2003

  19. Steve Ruskin, ‘Reign on the Wane’, Sports Illustrated, 85 (4), 22 July 1996, p. 172.

  20. Boria Majumdar and Kausik Bandyopadhyay, Striving to Score: A Social History of Indian Football, (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 124.

  21. The Calcutta Football Club (1872) devoted to playing rugby football initially, predated the Dalhousie Club by over a decade and is technically the oldest Indian football club. Boria Majumdar and Kausik Bandyopadhyay, Striving to Score: A Social History of Indian Football, p. 124.

  22. ‘Services Lead the Way’, Indian Olympic News, July 1962, Vol. 1, No. 4, p. 5.

  23. Indian Olympic Association. http://nocindia.nic.in/history.html, accessed 15 August 2005.

  24. For a detailed analysis of cricket and the politics surrounding it see Ramachandra Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport and Boria Majumdar, 22 Yards to Freedom: A Social History of Indian Cricket.

  25. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 20 September (1936). This entire episode in Indian football history is narrated in great detail in Boria Majumdar, Kausik Bandopadhyay, ‘Contesting Neighbours: The Years of Turmoil’, in Striving to Score: A Social History of Indian Football, pp.171–84.

  26. Joya Chatterjee, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition 1932–1947, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 16

  27. Pankaj Gupta, A Brief History of the Association in Cricket Association of Bengal Silver Jubilee Souvenir, (Calcutta: 1954–55), pp. 37–45; In a meeting held on 3 February 1928, presided over by the president of the Calcutta Cricket Club, it was agreed by the clubs present that the Cricket Association of Bengal and Assam should be formed with the president and secretary of the Calcutta Cricket Club serving as the president and secretary of the association. The working committee, it was agreed, would consist of 9 members, of which 3 were to be Europeans, 2 Hindus, with a member each from among the Parsis, Mohammedans, Anglo-Indians and Assam. As the president and secretary of the CCC were president and secretary of the CAB, the Europeans had two additional seats on the working committee, giving them a numerical superiority in matters of dispute and those which called for voting. This framework continued till the beginning of the 1940s.

  28. For a good analysis of sports in military life see Steven W. Pope, ‘An Army of Athletes: Playing Fields, Battlefields, and the American Military Sporting Experience, 1890–1920’, Journal of Military History, Vol. 59, No. 3.

  29. The Orient Illustrated Weekly, 11 October 1936.

  30. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 15 September 1935.

  31. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 22 September 1935.

  32. Forward, 22 September 1935.

  33. Emphasis is ours. Ibid.

  34. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 22 September 1935.

  35. Advance, 28 September 1935.

  36. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 14 March 1936.

  37. Ibid.

  38. Ibid.

  39. The Statesman, 13 April 1936.

  40. Ibid.

  41. Ibid.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 10 September 1936.

  44. Ibid.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Ibid.

  48. The Statesman, 12 September 1936.

  49. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 14 September 1936.

  50. Ibid.

  51. The Statesman, 15 September 1936.

  52. Ibid.

  53. Despite the efforts of the IFA to go ahead with the proposed conference at Calcutta in December the hostile reaction of the other provinces eventually resulted in the abandonment of the plan. The IFA, infuriated at such actions, had become determined not to accede to any demand advanced by the AIFA.

  54. Private papers of the maharaja of Santosh, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi.

  55. Ibid.

  56. Ibid.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Ibid.

  59. Ibid.

  60. See for instance, Stephen Cohen, The Indian Army: Its Contribution to the Development of a Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).

  61. Raju G.C. Thomas, ‘The Armed Forces and the Indian Defence Budget’, Asian Survey, Vol. XX, No. 3, March 1980, pp. 280–81.

  62. Ibid, pp. 281–82.

  63. ‘Services Lead the Way’, Indian Olympic News, July 1962, Vol. 1, No. 4, p. 5.

  64. Ibid, p. 6.

  65. Ibid; ‘Punjabis Pioneers in Organised Gymnastics’, Indian Olympic News, Aug 1963, Vol 2, No. 5, p. 6–7.

  66. Capt. G.C. Sethi won the golf championship twice in three years. ‘Services Lead the Way’, Indian Olympic News, July 1962, Vol. 1, No. 4, p. 6

  67. Services won volleyball twice, including in 1959–60. Ibid.

  68. Services first won football in the 1960–61 season, Ibid.

  69. Services won the cycling championship in 1962, Ibid.

  70. ‘Sportsmen Come Forward’, editorial in Indian Olympic News, Nov. 1962, Vol. 1, No, 8, p. 3.

  71. ‘To the National Defence Fund’, Indian Olympic News, Dec. 1962, Vol. 1, No. 9, p. 37.

  72. Others who donated were Behala Athletics Sports Association, Rs 151 (as a first installment); Obaid Al, retired cricketer of Mohammedan Sporting Club, one gold ring; Fani Mitra, one time well known footballer and boxer, three gold medals and a gold souvenir; Bimal Mukherjee, for his father the late Moni Mukherjee, member of the 1911 Mohun Bagan team, one gold medal. Ibid, pp. 37–38.

  73. The volumes of Indian Olympic News for late 1962 carry lovely pictures of film stars holding cricket bats as they gather for the game.

  74. ‘Sportsmen Come Forward’, editorial in Indian Olympic News, November 1962, Vol. 1, No, 8, p. 3.

  75. Quoted in ‘To the National Defence Fund’, Indian Olympic News, December 1962, Vol. 1, No. 9, p. 37.

  76. See Stephen Cohen, The Indian Army: Its Contribution to the Development of a Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).

  77. Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (New Delhi: Picador, 2007).

  78. ‘Services Lead the Way’, Indian Olympic News, July 1962, Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 6–7.

  79. Interview with Brig (retd.) Rakesh Mehta, former commander, Territorial Army, Western Command; former DDG Training and Logistics, National Cadet Corps, 25 January 2008.

  80. Ibid. The unit in question is 144 Air Defence Regiment.

  81. ‘Services Lead the Way’, Indian Olympic News, July 1962, Vol. 1, No. 4, p. 7.

  82. Major General A.A. Rudra in the foreword of Dhyan Chand’s biography, Goal, published in Sport and Pastime, 1952. The book has been digitized and is available in http://www.bharatiyahockey.org/granthalaya/goal/, accessed 29 September 2007.

  83. See Jeffrey Greenhut, ‘Sahib and Sepoy: An Inquiry into the Relationship Between the British Officers and Native Soldiers of the British Indian Army’, Military Affairs, Vol. 48, No. 1, Jan. 1984.

  84. See Reference No. 79.

  85. Steven W Pope, ‘An Army of Athletes: Playing Fields, Battlefields, and the American Military Sporting Experience, 1890–1920’, Journal of Military History, Vol. 59, No. 3., July 1995, p. 435.

  86. Ibid, p. 436.

  87. Ibid.

  88. Ibid.

  89. Dan Allen Willey, ‘The Spirit of Sport in the Army’, Harper’s Weekly, 50, 1906, pp. 1,100–01.

  90. See Ref. No. 79.

  91. Maj. Gen. (Retd) D. Bannerjee, ‘Manpower Reduction in the Army’, Article No.53, Jan 27, 1998, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. http://www.ipcs.org/printArticle.jsp? kValue = 53, accessed 30 January 2008.

  92. ‘Rashtriya Rifles’, www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/india/rashtriya-rifles.htm, accessed 30 January 2008.

  93. The exact figures of troops deployments are not available for security rea
sons. But this is a reasonable estimate agreed upon by most specialists. I am grateful to Srinjoy Chowdhary, senior editor, Times Now, who has covered the defence ministry for over a decade, for providing these estimates.

  94. Maj. Gen. (retd) D. Bannerjee, ‘Manpower Reduction in the Army’, Article No.53, 27 January 1998, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. http://www.ipcs.org/printArticle.jsp?kValue=53, accessed 30 January 2008.

  95. Ibid. In this context also see Lt Gen. Vijay Oberoi, Army 2020 (New Delhi: Knowledge World, 2005).

  96. In a clear reflection of the Army’s social base, 60% of the officers commissioned from 2001–2 004 came from families with an income of less than Rs 10,000 a month. The figures are from Indian Military Academy, Dehradun. News reports compiled by the author for New Delhi Television. Broadcast on 17/12/200 and 14/6/2004 respectively.

  97. See for instance, P.E. Razzell, ‘Social Origins of Officers in the Indian and British Home Army: 1758–1962’, The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 14, No. 3 (September 1963), pp. 248–60.

  98. Just 86 officer recruits turned up for NDA’s January 2008 course, out of total vacancies for 250. AFP, ‘Indian Army Faces Dire Shortage of Officers’, 16 January 2008.

  99. The information on 31 Armoured Division is gleaned from a senior officer who was serving in the division at the time but does not want to be named for obvious reasons.

  100. The conclusions in this paragraph are based on conversations with several senior serving Army officers who do not want to be named.

  101. AFP, ‘Olympic history for India, UAE’, 18 August 2004, http://www.abc.net.au/sport/content/200408/s1178859.htm

  102. He was the cadet sergeant major of the Echo squadron at the NDA. Vibhay Sharma, ‘A Sure Shot’, the Tribune, 21 August 2004, http://www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20040821/saturday/main1.htm

  103. AFP, ‘Olympic history for India, UAE’, 18 August 2004, http://www.abc.net.au/sport/content/200408/s1178859.htm

  104. ‘A Sure Shot’, the Tribune, 21 August 2004, http://www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20040821/saturday/main1.htm