2015 Phd Students Research Grant Programme)

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Where the English Refused to Tread: India’s Role in Establishing Hockey as an Olympic Summer Sport

(Final report submitted to the IOC Olympic Studies Centre in the framework of the 2015 PhD Students Research Grant Programme)

Nikhilesh Bhattacharya

PhD Fellow, School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

Abstract: The evolution of field hockey as an Olympic Summer Sport in the inter-war years was marked by two contrasting developments. England, the home of modern hockey, made a solitary appearance in Antwerp in 1920 (where the matches were held in early September) and won gold but thereafter refused to play while the other constituent parts of Great Britain stayed away from Olympic hockey altogether. On the other hand, India, then a colony under British rule, aligned with countries on the Continent and joined the newly founded International hockey federation (FIH) to take part in the 1928 Amsterdam Games and, over the next decade, played a crucial role in keeping hockey within the Olympic fold. My project examines England’s reluctance, and India’s eagerness, in the light of developments that were taking place in the history of hockey, the Olympic Movement and the world at large. This is the first systematic study of the emergence of field hockey as a permanent Olympic Summer Sport (men’s field hockey has been a part of every Olympic Games since 1928) as it covers five archives in two countries, various online databases and a host of secondary sources including official reports, and newspaper and magazine articles. 1

Keywords: Field hockey, the Olympic Movement in the inter-war years, British India, history of sport

Executive summary of research results

• The reluctance of the hockey authorities in England to take part in the Olympics ran deep and appears to have been rooted in their experience at the 1920 Antwerp Games and continued till after the Second World War • The reluctance was directly linked to the English refusal to play a role in the formation of a world federation for hockey, but had little to do with India’s emergence as a hockey superpower, which was a later development • The attitude of the Hockey Association of England was in marked contrast to that of the British Olympic Association, which remained a staunch supporter of the Olympic Movement right through the inter-war years • India’s role in the evolution of field hockey as a Permanent Olympic Summer Sport in the 1920s and 1930s went beyond on-field exploits and included crucial behind-the- scenes work by Indian sports administrators • India’s membership to the Fédération Internationale de Hockey sur Gazon gave rise to controversies on more than one occasion in the 1930s and these had to be resolved to allow India to continue to take part in the Olympic Games

Table of contents

1. Research subject and objectives 4 2. Academic significance of the project and its impact on the Olympic Movement 5 3. Research methodology 9 4. Key information sources consulted 11 5. Results and conclusion 13 6. Appendix (excerpts of interviews) 33

Research subject and objectives

After two sporadic appearances, in 1908 and 1920, men’s field hockey has been a permanent Olympic Summer Sport since 1928 (women’s hockey became one in 1980). A crucial moment in the development of hockey as an Olympic Sport came on January 7, 1924 when, in response to hockey being dropped from the 1924 Games in Paris, the International hockey federation (FIH) was established with France, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Hungary, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia as the founding members. 2 With its headquarters in Paris, FIH had a distinctly Continental flavour to it and its birth was greeted with contrasting responses from the home of modern hockey, England (and other constituent parts of Great Britain, viz. Scotland and Wales, as well as Ireland), and India, then a colony under British rule. What prompted the Hockey Association of England to take a final decision, as early as October 29, 1926, to not send a team to Amsterdam in 1928 to defend its Olympic title? 3 England had won the gold medal on home soil when hockey was introduced as an Olympic sport in London in 1908 (where England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland were represented by separate teams) and again as the sole representative of Great Britain in Antwerp in 1920. Was the decision prompted by concerns about the amateur status of hockey once it became a permanent Olympic Sport? Or did England baulk at the thought of playing the game in summer, which was off-season for English hockey players? Or was it simply reluctance on the part of hockey authorities in England to cede control of international hockey to a world body comprising seven European countries and led by a Frenchman, Paul Léautey?

While the ‘Home Nations’ stayed away, FIH found an ally in India. The newly formed Indian Hockey Federation, founded on November 7, 1925,4 became provisionally affiliated to FIH on May 6, 1928 and sent a team to the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics.5 The All-India XI proved all-conquering at the Olympic Games and a popular touring side in England, where hockey was well established, and the Continent, where the game was emerging as a spectator sport. India’s next crucial contribution to hockey as an Olympic Sport came in 1932, when the Games were being held in Los Angeles. The prohibitive cost of sending a team across the Atlantic meant no European country took part in the hockey competition. India, however, did. It sent a team to Los Angeles on borrowed money, as described by Indian hockey legend Dhyan Chand.6 India thus ensured that hockey continued to be part of the Olympics. The pinnacle of India’s ascendancy in hockey came four years later, in the 1936 Berlin Olympics,

4 where the team beat the hosts Germany 8-1 in the final. What prompted Indian hockey administrators, a mix of Indians and British men settled in India, to rush in where the English feared to tread? How crucial was India’s support of Olympic hockey when the founding fathers of the game refused to play ball? And how important was the sweeping success of the Indian team in 1928-1936 in popularizing Olympic hockey and in establishing Olympism in India? The objective of my project was two-fold. One, to answer the questions posed above by trawling through the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Historical Archives at the Olympic Studies Centre (OSC), as well as the FIH Archives at the FIH headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, the British Olympic Association (BOA) Archive Collection housed in the University of East London, UK, the Hockey Association (HA) Archives held at The Hockey Museum, Woking, Surrey, UK, and the India Office Records and Private Papers section of the British Library, London, UK. Two, it tried to find out all that can be known about the principal actors of the piece, viz. the Indian players, officials and administrators, who helped hockey become an Olympic Sport and India its undisputed champions. By a quirk of fate, India is proud of its hockey legacy while simultaneously managing to forget most of its early hockey heroes (with the exception of players such as Dhyan Chand, his brother Roop Singh and India’s first captain Jaipal Singh and, perhaps, administrators such as G.D. Sondhi and Pankaj Gupta).

Academic significance of the project and its impact on the Olympic Movement

Hockey, for reasons not immediately apparent, has not generated the amount of literature, academic or otherwise, in English that some other team sports have, football and cricket to name two. As a result, there are certain blind spots in our knowledge of hockey’s history. My project intended to redress the problem.

The history of field hockey as an Olympic Sport in the inter-war years did not unfold in a vacuum. It was intimately linked to what was happening around the world. And what were these developments that shaped the future of hockey? The early guardians of the game were in retreat: Great Britain was keen to remain united in the face of threats at home (with the emergence of the Irish Free State) and abroad (a crumbling empire) 7 but, as in football, struggled to field a combined team in Olympic hockey. Meanwhile the Games had become,

5 as John J. MacAloon put it, “not something different from, but something much more than, what [Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of modern Olympics] had intended.”8 As more countries joined the Olympic movement, the IOC felt the need for a world body for each sport. Without such a body, hockey was in danger of falling by the wayside, as evinced by its exclusion from the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. However, at this hour of crisis, in stepped seven countries from the Continent, where hockey was emerging as a popular spectator sport. And all this while, waiting in the wings, was a colony under British rule whose people grew impatient for self-rule and longed for an opportunity to show what they could do given a bit of freedom. Soon, the people of India would find themselves centre stage, thanks to hockey.

This is not the first time these connections have been made. However, there has been as yet no substantial work based on a systematic study of archives at OSC and other places that examines the rise of hockey as an Olympic Sport in its proper global context. My project intended to plug this gap by looking for the details—who did what, when, why and how and what were the consequences of their actions—that are often lost in the broad sketch of historical developments. Starting from the time when the Olympics was reborn in the 1880s and 1890s, MacAloon wrote in the same passage quoted above, “the games had been transformed in four decades into a crucible of symbolic force into which the world poured its energies and a stage upon which, every four years, it played out its hopes and terrors.”9 British India played out its highest hopes in the hockey field and had its finest hour in Berlin in 1936, the last Olympics of the inter-war years before the terrors were unleashed again. On August 15, 1936, coincidentally eleven years to the day before the country would gain independence, the Indian hockey team thrashed hosts Germany 8-1 in the final of the Olympic hockey tournament to capture its third consecutive gold medal. A feature of the team that has escaped serious scholarly attention thus far is that the Indian XI on the field that day had four Anglo-Indians, a community of primarily mixed race heritage (the Government of India Act of 1935 defined an Anglo-Indian as someone who could trace European descent on the paternal line but was a native of India). Sport can be used to reinforce perceived superiorities, a bid that failed spectacularly when the black athlete, Jesse Owens, won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics hosted by a country that had Adolf Hitler at its helm. The Indian victory with Anglo-Indian players manning the defence

6 and midfield (Richard Allen in goal, Carlyle Tapsell at right back, Ernest John Goodsir-Cullen as centre-half and Joe Galibardy as left half) was no less momentous. However, the significance of the moment has not been examined in detail. Indeed very little is known about the early hockey heroes of India. To take random examples, we don’t know if Dhyan Chand scored 14 goals in the 1928 Olympics, or 15; there is doubt as to whether Richard James Allen, the first-choice goalkeeper in every pre-Independence All-India team, won three Olympic gold medals or two; it is not known if 1928 campaigner Gateley’s first name was Maurice, or Michael. This project sought to find these missing links in a fascinating story.

The story also sheds light on what the Olympic Movement came to mean in lands far away from Europe in the inter-war years. It is the story of a colonized state in search of respect on the world stage and a sport in danger of falling by the wayside coming to each other’s rescue at a moment that proved crucial to the future of both. India played a part in hockey’s reintroduction to the Olympics in 1928; then it almost single-handedly ensured that hockey remained an Olympic sport in 1932; in return hockey gave colonial India three consecutive gold medals and an identity. It gave the people of India a platform for independent decision- making and it united them through participation, whether direct (players, administrators, officials), or indirect (patrons, spectators and followers). The story is crucial to our understanding of why independent India continued to embrace the Olympic Movement when the Games returned after the Second World War.

The changes in the administration of international hockey that took place in the inter-war years also had far-reaching consequences for the game itself, and not just as an Olympic Sport. Today, field hockey is an important event, for both men and women, in the Summer Olympics. The game is played across the world (FIH currently lists 130 national federations as its members). And all this happened without the English, who invented modern hockey, playing any active role in the promotion of the game (after 1920, Great Britain rejoined Olympic hockey only in 1948). India’s pioneering role, in conjunction with European countries, in the survival and growth of hockey needs to be remembered. The tussle over the control of international hockey in the 1920s was in some ways similar to what happened with another, albeit more popular, spectator sport: association football, or soccer as it is known as in some countries. However, the course charted by hockey differed from that of

7 football in a fundamental way: hockey remained an amateur sport. Thus with hockey, unlike in the case of football, IOC never had to face the problem of trying to accommodate a primarily professional sport within the amateur ethos of the Olympics. And India played its part in this. From what we know of the players, the All-India hockey teams that won gold medals in 1928, 1932 and 1936 were, to a player, either students or working men who went to the Olympics on unpaid leave. This also holds true for players who represented India after independence.

There was, however, the whiff of a controversy in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where charges of ‘shamateurism’ were levelled against India. Dhyan Chand’s autobiography says it was G.D. Sondhi, an FIH vice-president and IOC member, who refuted the allegations and defused the situation. 10 It was interesting to trace the controversy in the official documents preserved in the OSC and FIH archives. The debate on amateurism and the controversy over ‘broken-time’ payments are fundamental issues in our understanding of the Olympic ethos.

Part of India’s continuing success in Olympic hockey from the inter-war years to the first few decades after the Second World War was down to the fact that India and Olympic hockey came together at an opportune moment for each other. By the 1920s, hockey in India had a thirty-year history. Going by numbers, India was already considered one of the biggest hockey playing countries in the world. Apart from clubs, the game was played in educational institutions and by office recreation teams. The British Army and the Indian Army were important patrons of the game and the Anglo-Indians were one of the communities that had already made hockey their chosen game. And in Dhyan Chand, India possessed the greatest striker ever to take up a hockey stick. But more important, as this project intends to show, was how India made use of these advantages to make a significant contribution to the game on the world stage. It happened because a lot of diverse people came together to pull in the same direction. They included army men and civilians; Indians, Anglo-Indians, and Europeans based in India; Hindus, Muslims and Christians; banks that loaned money, kings who made donations, and the paying public who contributed to gate receipts to help send the hockey team to the Olympics. India would rarely find a stronger proof for its claims of unity in diversity and the lessons learnt from events that took place eight decades ago can only help a country where sports bodies are racked with internal strife.

Research methodology

The major part of the project was carried out in archives in Switzerland and the UK. I went to the IOC Historical Archives at OSC having already identified the collections I wanted to look through, namely the ones holding the correspondence of the International Olympic Committee with the National Olympic Committees of Great Britain and India, and the FIH, and the personal correspondence of IOC President Pierre de Coubertin and his successor Henri de Baillet-Latour. However, once in Lausanne, I broadened my search to cover such diverse material as scrapbooks containing newspaper and magazine clippings on the 1928 and 1932 Olympic Games, the correspondence of IOC members for Great Britain and India, and the minutes of various IOC meetings (IOC Congress, IOC Session, etc.). In this regard I received extremely helpful suggestions from all the archivists and other staff at the OSC.

In Lausanne, I also visited the FIH headquarters where I made my ‘big discovery’: two bound volumes containing the minutes of all FIH meetings starting from the very first one on January 7, 1924 to May 3, 1953. No one at FIH was aware that the archive held these volumes. 11 These minutes provided a counterpoint to the narrative of events yielded by the IOC Historical Archives at OSC regarding the development of hockey as an Olympic Summer Sport in the inter-war years. It is important to compare the narratives, whether they corroborate or contradict each other, because of two reasons: a) official minutes, by their inherent nature, often conceal as much as they reveal; b) we know that the conditions in which these minutes were produced were not always ideal. For example, this is how the Report of the American Olympic Committee: Seventh Olympic Games, Antwerp, Belgium, 1920 , describes the preparation of IOC minutes at the time:

The International Olympic Committee while having a secretary and records, has no stenographer present at its meetings and it is generally understood that the minutes are made up by the president from his memory and notes. It thereby ofttimes happens that the recollection or record of just what took place is vague or misleading with consequent misunderstanding and opportunity for trouble. 12

The minutes of Council Meetings of the Hockey Association (HA), preserved at The Hockey Museum, and the British Olympic Association (BOA), which are kept on the Dockland Campus of the University of East London, needed similar careful handling; wherever

9 possible, the minutes were checked against other information sources to eliminate factual errors. All these organisations, without exception, were run by honorary members in the inter-war years and had minimal, if any, secretarial staff and consequently the minutes, though they must be considered as primary sources, are unlikely to have been error-free.

Documents found in the India Office and Private Papers section of the British Library in London provided the final key to understanding the various developments taking place in India while the colony sought self-rule in the inter-war years. Of particular interest was the “India Office: Public and Judicial Department Records” file dealing with India’s participation in the 1920 Antwerp Olympics. It was the first time India sent a contingent to the Games and, as the official documents revealed, it would be naive to see the start of India’s Olympic journey simply as a nationalist endeavour.

Apart from archival work, I interviewed the descendants of some of the players who represented India in the inter-war Olympics, as well as some hockey Olympians from independent India.

Details of relevant interviews (in chronological order)

1. Leslie Claudius: Personal interview on May 4, 2012 in Calcutta, India

Leslie Claudius holds the record, along with Udham Singh of India, of winning the highest number of medals in Olympic men’s hockey: three gold and one silver. Claudius played in the Olympic Games of London 1948, Helsinki 1952, Melbourne 1956 and Rome 1960. Although Claudius came a generation after the hockey heroes of colonial India, he shared very good rapport with 1932 Olympian Dickie Carr, who introduced Claudius to hockey, and 1936 Olympian Joe Galibardy, whom Claudius considered his mentor. He counted Dhyan Chand among his personal friends. Leslie Claudius died in Calcutta on December 20, 2012.

2. Keshav Datt: Personal interview on January 9, 2013 in Calcutta, India

Keshav Datt was Leslie Claudius’s teammate in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics. A man totally in love with hockey, Datt can remember tactics and formations used in games he played more than 60 years ago. (I have checked his versions against contemporary reports and have found him accurate.) Datt played centre half for the Calcutta team, Port Commissioner's XI,

10 around 1950-51 with Leslie Claudius on his right and Joe Galibardy on the left. “That was the Olympic half-line,” Datt said.

3. Neville Galibardy: Personal interview on June 3, 2013 in London, UK

Neville Galibardy is the fourth of 1936 Olympian Joe Galibardy’s seven children and came back to India from the UK with his father in 2007 when Joe Galibardy’s alma mater, Goethals Memorial School in the hill town of Kurseong in north Bengal, celebrated its 100 years. Neville Galibardy is a storehouse of stories about his famous father and the source of the anecdote about Joe Galibardy’s encounter with Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

4. Robert Allen: Emailed interview on November 2, 2014 and personal interview on July 13, 2015 in Brighton and Hove, UK

Robert Allen is the son of Richard Allen, India’s first-choice goalkeeper in all inter-war Olympics. There is some confusion regarding Richard Allen’s participation in the 1932 Games: India played only two matches in Los Angeles, against Japan and the USA, and there is no consensus in contemporary and later reports as to which of the two matches featured Richard Allen. However, Robert Allen refuted the claim. “Following (my father’s) death I had possession of all three of his gold medals and still have personal possession of that awarded in Los Angeles in 1932,” he wrote in an email on November 2, 2014.

Key information sources consulted i) Primary sources

• The IOC Historical Archives at Olympic Studies Centre (OSC) in Lausanne, Switzerland • The FIH Archives at the FIH headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland • The British Olympic Association (BOA) Archive Collection housed in the University of East London, UK • The Hockey Association (HA) Archives held at The Hockey Museum, Woking, Surrey, UK • The India Office Records and Private Papers section of the British Library, London, UK

11 ii) Online databases

• Ancestry.co.uk ( http://home.ancestry.co.uk/ ) • Olympic.org: Official Olympic Games Results ( http://www.olympic.org/olympic- results ) • Sports-reference.com: Olympic Sports ( http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/ ) iii) Personal interviews

• May 4, 2012 in Calcutta, India: Interview with Leslie Claudius, who won three gold medals and one silver in Olympic Hockey with the Indian team between 1948 and 1960. • January 9, 2013 in Calcutta, India: Interview with Keshav Datt, who won two gold medals in Olympic Hockey with the Indian team in 1948 and 1952. • June 3, 2013 in London, UK: Personal interview with Neville Galibardy, son of 1936 Hockey Olympian from British India Joe Galibardy • July 13, 2015 in Brighton and Hove, UK: Personal interview with Robert Allen, son of Richard Allen, India’s first-choice goalkeeper in three Olympics between 1928 and 1936 iv) Secondary sources

• The Unofficial Report of the 1920 Olympics by Bill Mallon • The Official Reports of the Olympic Games held in Amsterdam in 1928, Los Angeles in 1932 and Berlin in 1936 • Newspapers published from Calcutta and Bombay in the 1920s and 1930s • Issues of the magazine, Hockey World , published from London in the 1920s and 1930s

Results and conclusion

A fiasco in Antwerp

The story begins, though no one was quite aware of it at the time, at an unknown location in Antwerp in the first week of September 1920. The first Olympic Games after the First World War had devastated Europe was hastily awarded to the Belgian city recently liberated from German occupation and equally hastily organised. 13 The hockey tournament, as in 1908 in London when the sport was first included in the Olympics, took place after the main event was already over.14 The American Bill Mallon produced the most comprehensive compilation of the results of the 1920 Olympic Games in his unofficial report published more than seven decades after the event.15 The section on field hockey in the report begins with the words: “Very little is known about the 1920 Olympic field hockey tournament.” 16 The unknowns included the venue for the round-robin tournament held on September 1, 3- 5, 1920.

Four teams took part in the tournament: Belgium, Denmark, France and Great Britain, the last represented by England. The absence of any hockey team from Ireland, Scotland and Wales needs to be noted. At a BOA Council meeting on November 20, 1919, the Council had, at the prompting of the Football Association (of England), decided to delete all mention of football, and hockey, in a proposed letter addressed to the Belgian Olympic Committee so that the original suggestion of four teams from each country, put forward by the Belgians, would stand and England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales could each enter a separate team. 17 Eventually, however, Great Britain sent only one team each to the football and hockey tournaments in Antwerp. The hockey tournament was played according to the rules of the Hockey Association. 18 England beat Denmark 5-1 on September 1 and defeated Belgium 12- 1 on September 3. Their star centre forward Stanley Shoveller, though pushing 40, was far too good for the opposition, scoring eight times against Belgium alone. England needed to beat France in their last league match to ensure they defended their Olympic title won in 1908, when England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales fielded separate teams all representing Great Britain. However, the match against France, scheduled for September 4, 1920, never took place because the French did not show up. We may never know exactly why, but the story goes that the French were victims of their own ploy of taking the English players

13 around the town on the eve of the match with the intention of ‘drinking them under the table’. 19 The plan backfired and it was the French who forfeited the match. Great Britain were crowned champions and at that time few could have imagined this would be the last time in the inter-war years that any team from the British Isles would take part in Olympic hockey. However, the shambolic nature of the organisation of the tournament was an ominous sign.

A vote-out in Lausanne

As it turned out, hockey as an Olympic Sport was itself in crisis. Less than a year after the Olympic hockey tournament in Antwerp, at the VII IOC Congress in Lausanne in June 1921, the future of field hockey as an Olympic Sport was put to vote. This was the first time that the IOC Congress was being held in the adopted home of Pierre de Coubertin and the International Olympic Committee. Preceded by a meeting of international federations of different sports, the Congress aimed “to complete the work, started in Paris in 1914, on streamlining the expanding Olympic Games programme” and though it “failed to bring about a more concise programme,” 20 hockey missed out.

Hockey at the time did not have an international federation. The Hockey Association was the most influential organisation and Ireland, Scotland and Wales had their own hockey associations. Every year, the most important fixtures for England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales were the ‘internationals’ where the four ‘home nations’ played each other in a round robin tournament. The Hockey Association also sometimes granted matches, at home and abroad, to France and would later extend the same courtesy to other Continental countries such as Belgium, Germany and Holland. However, these matches often featured a Hockey Association XI instead of England, which meant the Hockey Association did not consider them full internationals. 21 Such insularity would not stand the Hockey Association in good stead in a quickly changing world where old relationships between countries, whether based on cooperation, collusion or coercion, were dissolving and new ones were being forged.

These were the circumstances under which the IOC Congress discussed the future of field hockey as an Olympic Sport in ‘neutral’ Lausanne on the afternoon of June 4, 1921. James G. Merrick, IOC delegate for Canada where ice hockey has been popular always, supported by several members, asked for field hockey’s suppression. J.L. Nathansen, IOC delegate for Denmark, along with the delegates for Great Britain, Reverend Robert S. de Courcy Laffan and Harry Barclay, argued that it should be maintained. Val Baker from England, representing the boxing federation, on principle, defended field hockey, arguing that financial considerations were not the only thing that mattered. The matter was put to vote and field hockey was rejected by 42 votes against 22. 22 The decision meant there would be no field hockey in the 1924 Paris Olympics. This was the second time field hockey had been excluded from the Olympic programme, having suffered the same fate before the First World War in the 1912 Stockholm Games.

Relief in English hockey circles

The British delegates’ defence of hockey was consistent with the decision taken at a meeting of the Finance and General Purposes Committee of the BOA held just before the IOC Congress in Lausanne. 23 However, they were fighting a losing battle as field hockey was a sport without an international federation, financial pull or popularity in a majority of the countries that had by then become a crucial part of the Olympic Movement. What was curious, though, was how the news of field hockey’s exclusion from the Olympic Games was received by the guardians of the game, the Hockey Association of England.

At the 92 nd Council meeting of the Hockey Association held on July 22, 1921, it was minuted, partially erroneously, that “the Council of the British Olympic Association having decided that hockey should no longer be played at the Olympic Games, it was decided (with relief) to cease representation on the British Olympic Council.”24 Laffan and Co. had evidently lost the battle at home as well.

Relations between the BOA and the Hockey Association in the inter-war years do not appear to have been smooth. The BOA’s list of Council Members included the name and address of Hockey Association vice-president E.H. Nash, who remained a member presumably till

1921.25 However, Nash appears to have attended only two BOA meetings—the Annual General Meeting held on January 31, 1919 and a Council meeting on November 20, 1919.26 The first meeting was to discuss the future of the Olympic Movement, but it was adjourned “until April (1919) to enable the representatives of the Governing Associations of Sport to consult their members as to the future work of the BOA”27 In March that year, despite great pressure from demobilisation work, Laffan, a chaplain with the British armed forces, 28 wrote an impassioned letter to all BOA Council members about the need for Great Britain to continue being part of the Olympic Movement. “It should be remembered that whatever our decision may be the Olympic Games will certainly go on and it is surely impossible to contemplate that the nation which has led the way in the development of Modern Sport should hold permanently aloof from other nations in this great field of human energy.” 29 Laffan, though a contemporary of Coubertin and a great friend of the founder of the modern Olympics, was probably more clear-sighted about the important role the Olympic Movement was going to play in world affairs.

Laffan’s plea worked in 1919. The second meeting that Nash attended followed another BOA Council meeting held on September 23, 1919 where the Hockey Association joined other governing bodies of Great Britain that said they would support British participation in the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp.30 The BOA Council formally carried the resolution for participation at the same meeting. 31 However, all that was to change soon. Even winning the Olympic hockey gold in Antwerp did not evidently offset the bitter experience the English had had at the ill-organised tournament and in 1921 the Hockey Association was happy to revert to its insular position and end its dalliance with the Olympic Movement.

That the BOA was disappointed with the Hockey Association’s decision is understandable. Back in September 23, 1919, at the BOA Council meeting, the Rugby Football Union had said it would not support British participation in the 1920 Olympic Games and “desired also to withdraw from the Council, as they could never play any match in connection with the Meetings and were merely superfluous Members.” It brought about a stern rebuke from the BOA Council.

The Chairman (Lord Downham) expressed the opinion that it was very undesirable that any Governing Body of Sport should wish to withdraw simply because their particular

sport was not included in the programme for Antwerp. The Governing Associations should look at it from a broader point of view—that of encouraging participation in all sports in this country. Personally he thought Rugby Football a Game which should be encouraged to the utmost. He suggested that the Hon. Secretary (Laffan) should write to the Rugby Football Union regretting the attitude they had taken up and expressing the hope that they would reconsider their decision as to withdrawing from the Council. This was agreed to, and the Hon. Secretary instructed accordingly. 32

However, despite Laffan’s entreaties, the Rugby Football Union refused to budge from their position. 33 And less than two years later, the Hockey Association was ready to tread the same path.

The Hockey Association’s refusal to engage

Before the BOA could entreat with the Hockey Association or rebuke it, the latter had to tackle a new development in the world of hockey. The minutes of the 95 th Council meeting of the Hockey Association held on July 14, 1922 included report of letters received from the French Association pressing for the formation of an International Federation. 34 If it seems surprising that the French, who had found it convenient to forfeit a match in the Olympic hockey tournament in 1920, were now eager to form a world body for the sport, the Hockey Association’s response was equally curious. Initially the Hockey Association stonewalled by refusing to take a decision in that meeting or the next. 35 In the 97 th meeting of the Council, “it was decided that the H.A. could not undertake so large a proposition.” 36 This was proposed by none other than Stanley Shoveller, who just over two years previously had led England to Olympic hockey gold in Antwerp. In the same meeting, “correspondence concerning the re-forming of the British Olympic Association” was discussed. The Hockey Association decided not to take part in the Games, though a proposal to send a contribution of twenty guineas to the fund was carried. The wheel had thus turned a full circle. The spoilsports of Antwerp had turned into the biggest supporters of Olympic Hockey, while the winners were now determined to stay aloof. Laffan’s fears had come true in one sport where the British were the leaders in their own estimation and in the eyes of the world.

The French were persistent and, led by Paul Léautey, managed to bring on board six other countries from the Continent— Austria, Belgium, Spain, Hungary, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia—to found the Fédération Internationale de Hockey sur Gazon in Paris on January 7, 1924 with the aim of reintegrating field hockey in the Olympic Games.37 By the second FIH meeting it was reported that Belgium, Spain and France were already working towards that end. FIH President Léautey outlined the procedure that had to be followed in order to reintegrate hockey. “It would be desirable that a definitive decision be taken after the 1924 games, without waiting for the IOC meeting which should take place in Prague. The president insists that since hockey was already in the Games before 1924, it should have better chances than if it were a new sport.”38 By November 24, 1924, FIH had been admitted to the Union of International Federations, bringing them one step closer to the Olympics. 39

Things went according to plan at the Technical Olympic Congress held in Prague on May 29- June 4, 1925, by which time the FIH had 14 countries affiliated to it. The ‘re-admission’ of field hockey to the Olympic Programme was put to vote where 40 members were in favour of it and 22 against. 40 The decision, in many ways, ensured field hockey would not go the way of rugby. Instead the sport was back, and as later developments would prove, for good.

Leaving it to the Continent

Before long, the BOA wrote to the Hockey Association to say that “as field hockey was to be in the programme of the Olympic Games 1928, would the HA appoint a representative to serve on the Council of the BOA.” The Hockey Association decided that this question could stand over for the present. 41 And it stood over for three further meetings and more than a year until, on October 29, 1926, the Hockey Association found the will to take a decision. The minute was brief but had a ring of finality to it: “Olympic Games 1928. It was decided not to enter a team.” 42 Later, the BOA wrote back to ask the Hockey Association to reconsider its decision. The request was declined. 43

The Hockey Association minutes do not offer any explanations for the decision. That responsibility was left to World Hockey , a weekly edited by E.A.C. Thomson which in the late 1920s periodically enjoyed the title of the “Official Organ of the Hockey Association, also the

Irish Union, the Scottish and Welsh Associations”. In the year following the Hockey Association’s decision not to send a team to the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, the magazine through its editorial and responses to letters to the editor supplied a number of different reasons. These included the difficulty of playing hockey in summer without adequate training 44 (field hockey has always been a winter sport in England, with the season running from November to March) and the need for a truly amateur sport like hockey to distance itself from the Olympic Games tarnished by allegations of ‘broken-time payments’ and ‘sham-amateurism’. 45 The variety of reasons given for one decision makes one suspect that this was smokescreen: the real reason was not being revealed.

In fact the explanation that appears to cut closest to the truth was the one given in Hockey World on November 12, 1926, i.e. two weeks after the Hockey Association had decided to stay away from Olympic hockey. In its “Weekly Reflections,” the magazine said:

The decision of the Council of the Hockey Association not to enter a team for the Olympic Games at Amsterdam in 1928 does not surprise us. Our friends on the Continent will naturally feel keenly disappointed, but each country must work out its own hockey programme and study its own personal convenience in these matters. The last entry of England for these Games was at Antwerp in 1920; since then England has taken no active part. In 1924 hockey was not one of the chosen sports, the fiat of the European Committee and not that of the British Olympic Committee. Presumably the action of England will influence the decisions of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and we may conclude, therefore, that none of the four British countries will be a competitor at Amsterdam, thus leaving the Continental nations with a free field. 46

Although the explanation contains a combination of half-truths (hockey’s omission from the 1924 Games was the fiat of the majority of the stakeholders of the Olympic Movement) and wilful omissions (the approaches made to the Hockey Association for forming a world body for the sport is not mentioned), its message rings clear: Olympic hockey was the Continent’s responsibility now and the British countries would have nothing to do with it. Less than six months later, in March 1927, the Hockey Association would reject another request from FIH to join the international federation in order to supply umpires at the 1928 Olympics. 47 The only concession made to Olympics hockey was that the International Hockey Board, made

19 up of four members from England and two each from Ireland, Scotland and Wales, remained the custodians of the rules of the game.

British India steps on to the stage

The Hockey Association’s decision did influence Ireland, Scotland and Wales (no teams from these countries took part in Olympic hockey in the inter-war years) but the absence of the ‘home nations’ did not leave the Continental teams with a ‘free field’. By the time the Games were held in Amsterdam a new force had emerged: the hockey team from India swept the board in their maiden appearance in the Olympics to claim what would be the first of three successive gold medals in eight years.

India first sent a contingent of athletes to the Olympics in Antwerp in 1920. A perusal of the “India Office: Public and Judicial Department Records” file 48 dealing with the event makes it clear that British India’s participation could not have been possible without the direct involvement of the British government (the India Office in London as well as various government officials posted in India) and the BOA and it would be naive to see it simply as a nationalist endeavour or the result of the personal initiative of Indian industrialist Dorabji Tata. 49 The Indian Olympic Association, the first version of which was formed in 1919, sent athletes to the 1924 Paris Olympics as well, but the performances were understandably modest. All that would change with the arrival of the hockey players.

Field hockey had been introduced in India in the late nineteenth century with army men, Irish Christian brothers and Anglo-Indians leading the way. As yet, no definite date has been found as to when the game was first played in India. Existing literature on Indian hockey points to 1885 as the year when the first hockey clubs were formed in Calcutta, but do not provide any corroborating evidence.50 References to hockey clubs in Indian newspapers such as Calcutta-based The Statesman and Bombay-based The Times of India in the last quarter of the nineteenth century are often misleading because these clubs either played the game on horseback or were more interested in other sports. 51 However, the start of the annual Beighton Cup hockey tournament in Calcutta in 1895 is recorded. So, by the mid-

1920s, field hockey had been played in India for at least thirty years. In 1927, India was already being described as “the largest hockey playing country in the world.” 52

The Bengal Hockey Association had been in existence since 1908. Other regional bodies such as the Punjab Hockey Association and Western Indian Hockey Association, Bombay had already been formed by the time the Indian Hockey Federation was founded on November 7, 1925. 53 However, for the first two years of its existence, the federation was not very active. Instead, it was the Indian Army which organised India’s first hockey tour, to New Zealand and Australia in 1926. 54 The squad of seventeen had “four British officers, one Indian officer and twelve Indian non-commissioned players.”55

The tour was an unparalleled success with one man, centre-forward Dhyan Chand, proving to be the biggest cynosure. Writing about the tour in Hockey World , the President of the Punjab Hockey Association, C.E. Newham, declared Dhyan Chand equal to the great Stanley Shoveller.

...I think it may safely be said that Dhian (sic) Chand was the outstanding player. His speed and cleverness at centre forward was simply uncanny, and he is the most unselfish and unspoilt of players. Shoveller is the best centre forward I have seen, and I saw him at his best, but he was no better than Dhian Chand in Lahore, and if this little man has since improved he must now be the best centre forward in India—and probably in England too. 56

Newham went on to suggest it would be ideal if the Indian Army team could represent the country in the 1928 Olympics. 57 As it turned out, civilians and army men would join hands at the Indian Hockey Federation to send a team to Amsterdam.

Beating the English in their own game

The India Hockey Federation went about its work in right earnest. In February 1928, the federation organised the first inter-provincial tournament in Calcutta to get the best players of the country together before the Olympic team was selected. Calcutta was the chosen venue because the city was where hockey first took root in India. Calcutta was also the most likely venue for large crowds at hockey matches. With gate receipts going towards expenses

21 of the Europe tour, this was an important factor. In the end, however, Bengal could raise only Rs 5,000, a third of what it had promised. 58

Five teams took part in the knockout tournament—Bengal, Central Provinces, Rajputana, Punjab and United Provinces. Three trial matches were also organised before the final squad of 13 for the Olympics was declared. The president of the Indian Hockey Federation, Major Ian Burn-Murdoch, a British army officer posted in India, told the press that the two reserves, Shaukat Ali and Rex Norris, would go only if the team’s budget of Rs 40,000 was met. At that time, the amount collected or promised was Rs 25,000. It was also understood that a few players who were in England then, including the eventual captain Jaipal Singh, would be asked to assist the team once it arrived in Europe. 59

The All-India XI stopped over in England on their way to Amsterdam and played a number of matches in the land of the rulers. It was in England, at the Folkestone Festival, that the All- India XI would face a Hockey Association XI on April 10, 1928 and beat them 4-0.

In Indian hockey circles, the victory gave birth to a rumour that England’s decision to stay away from the Olympic Games in the inter-war years was rooted in the fear of being humbled by those it ruled over. 60 As further evidence supporting the rumour, it is pointed out that the Hockey Association never granted another match to the All-India XI even though the players travelled through and stayed in England after the 1928, 1932 and 1936 Olympic Games. “I reiterate that this is mere hearsay,” Dhyan Chand says in his autobiography of the theory that England were scared of India, “Although we fondly hoped (in 1928) that at least in future Olympics we would have the honour of meeting Great Britain and showing them how good or how bad we were. It is my regret that this hope was never realised so long as I participated in Olympic events.” 61

Three things need to be remembered when dealing with the rumour, which has since been given greater credence even by academic writing on Indian hockey. 62 One, the Hockey Association’s decision to stay away from the Olympic Games predates the hammering its team received at the hands of the Indians and that the decision was consistent with the Association’s refusal to play a role in the formation of a world body for hockey. Two, the Hockey Association XI was not as strong as it is assumed to be: it is true, as Dhyan Chand says, that the Hockey Association had picked nine internationals in the XI that was supposed

22 to play the All-India XI at Folkestone in 1928, 63 but two of them, G.F. Greene and H.L. Price, had not played in the England national team since 1926 and 1924, respectively 64 and a third, F.C. Harrison was eventually replaced by another newcomer, N.F. Salew.65 Three, in 1930 the Hockey Association did consider a proposal from the Indian Hockey Federation for an International Match in 1932 as part of India’s Olympic tour, but the plan fell through when the President of the Indian Hockey Federation, Major Burn-Murdoch, demanded a guarantee of 1,000 pounds towards the team’s stay in England. 66 This was not the first time hockey administrators from India had been accused of asking for appearance money for the All-India XI and it would not be the last.

Conquering the world

After Folkestone, the All-India XI boldly rushed in where the English refused to tread. The team’s victory over the Hockey Association XI may have prompted FIH to make India the top-ranked team for the Olympic hockey tournament, which was supposed to feature ten teams. 67 Eventually Czechoslovakia dropped out, making it a nine-team affair. At a FIH Council meeting on May 6, 1928, the Indian Hockey Federation was granted provisional admission to FIH.68 (The membership was formalised on May 23, 1928, 69 when the Olympic hockey tournament was nearing its end.) By now, FIH, despite being rejected by England and the other ‘home nations’, was on much firmer grounds, having granted affiliation to Turkey and Denmark in 1925, Holland in 1926 and Germany in 1928. India became the first non-European country to become an FIH member and their scintillating performances in Amsterdam, scoring 29 goals in five matches and conceding none, showed how invaluable they would be in years to come.

The one blot on India’s triumph was captain Jaipal Singh’s withdrawal from the team before the crucial last league match and the final.

Jaipal Singh was an Oxonian (having studied in Balliol College) training to be an Indian Civil Servant and had made a name in English hockey circles playing for his university and Wimbledon Club. The decision to make Jaipal Singh captain was taken by two former high- ranking British officers in the Indian Army: Colonel Bruce Turnbull, the first president of the

Indian Hockey Federation, and Major E. W. C. Ricketts. 70 Unlike in the case of the West Indies cricket team that toured England for the first time in 1928, the British did not think the Indian hockey team needed a white man at the helm. An Oxford-educated tribal Christian training to be an administrative officer was considered good enough by the British.

The nine teams at the Amsterdam games were divided in two groups. Group A had five teams, including India; Group B had four. Teams in each group played each other in a round- robin format. The winner of each group played the final, while the second-placed teams faced off for bronze. There were no semi-finals.

According to the team line-ups published in the official report of the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics,71 Jaipal missed India’s first league match, against Austria on May 17, but played the next two, against Belgium on May 18 and Denmark on May 20. India’s last league match was against Switzerland on May 22 and they had to win to ensure they topped the group. That is probably why Dhyan Chand called it a semi-final in his autobiography and later writers have all made the same mistake. 72

Jaipal Singh did not play against Switzerland and neither did he feature in the final against the hosts Holland. In his absence, Broome Eric Pinniger, the designated vice-captain, led the side. Jaipal Singh’s departure was later seen as the fallout of racial tension in the team, with Pinniger leading an Anglo-Indian mutiny of sorts with the backing of the English manager A.B. Rosser.

Jaipal Singh never disclosed what had happened in his autobiography. The one man who was closest to the action and wrote about it was Dhyan Chand. There was a power struggle at the top, Dhyan Chand said, but it was between the army, which was backing Jaipal Singh, and the civilians.

I could quite see from the very start of our stay in England that there was a conflict at the top level. The first and foremost: although Rosser was our Manager, the two ex- Indian Army men who joined us more or less bossed Rosser. I did not take any interest...It was no affair of mine how high military officers like Major Ricketts and Major (sic) Turnbull conducted themselves. But I could sense that our Manager Rosser was not quite happy. Whether this conflict at top level had anything to do with Jaipal Singh’s

refusal to captain us later is a question for others to answer. Some said communal and racial issues were involved. 73

Ricketts and Turnbull, the same two men who decided Jaipal would captain India, were in Amsterdam as referees.

Tussle between civilians and army men, racial tension—there was enough conflict within the British Indian hockey contingent to tear it apart. However, the team held its nerves and won British India a maiden Olympic gold medal on May 26, 1928, beating hosts Holland 3-0 in the final.

Staying in the Olympic fold

A lot has been written about the role played by India in sending a hockey team to the 1932 Los Angeles Games on borrowed money to ensure field hockey remained in the Olympic fold. India’s desperation to keep the sport in the Olympics must be explained in its proper context. All this was happening in what historian Eric Hobsbawm identified as the era when sport emerged as a new means for the expression of national identification. It did so, Hobsbawm argues, by bridging the gap between private and public worlds. 74

Between the wars sport as a mass spectacle was transformed into the unending succession of gladiatorial contests between persons and teams symbolizing state- nations, which is today part of global life....International matches had actually been established with the object of integrating the national components of multinational states. They symbolized the unity of such states, as friendly rivalry among their nations reinforced the sense that all belonged together by the institutionalization of regular contests that provided a safety-valve for group tensions, which were to be harmlessly dissipated in symbolic pseudo-struggles….Between the wars, however, international sport became, as George Orwell soon recognized, an expression of national struggle, and sportsmen representing their nation or state, primary expressions of their imagined communities. 75

And for a colonial state such as India, sport was one of the few legitimate arenas for the expression of an imagined country free from foreign rule and the consequent, unjust

25 hierarchies. On the hockey field, British India had the wherewithal to undermine perceived superiorities of their opponents. Soon, administrators from India would get the opportunity to do the same off the field within the ambit of the Olympic Movement.

First, in the lead up to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, there was a consorted demand from the European members of FIH to the IOC for the hockey tournament to be held at a suitable time, i.e. not in summer but in spring. 76 In 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, the hockey tournament had been played at the same time as the main event, i.e. August—the first time this happened. Now the European hockey associations wanted the tournament to again split from the main Olympics. The debate was in danger of turning into a personal battle between IOC President Henri Baillet Latour and FIH General-Secretary Albert Demaurex and threatened the unity of the Olympic Movement, as Baillet Latour rightly pointed out to FIH President Bellin du Coteau in letter dated October 15, 1933.

We understand (the FIH demand), but it’s really impossible. We once tried a three-phase Olympic Games in Amsterdam (winter, spring, summer) and the result was awful. Our aim is to gather athletes from different countries and sports so that they get to know each other, and we want hockey teams to take part: they could have a good influence on the others. But we can’t demand to the audience and the officials to come several times to one place during the year. And it would be perfectly ridiculous to begin the Games before the official opening ceremony. This problem has been extensively discussed in Berlin in 1930 and the IOC has decided unanimously that at least the finals should take place during the official period. The same decision was taken in Vienna last year. 77

In this Baillet-Latour received staunch support from the IOC member for India and FIH vice- president Guru Dutt Sondhi, who went against both the FIH and the Indian Hockey Federation to insist that field hockey remain a part of Olympic Summer Games and be played at the same time as athletics and other sport. 78 Sondhi’s argument carried weight and the hockey tournament in 1936 was held in August, concurrent with the rest of the Summer Games. The incident showed how far Sondhi had come as an administrator since wresting the control of the Indian Olympic Association from the YMCA in 1928 as the Maharaja of Patiala’s man.

In 1931, Sondhi had the embarrassing distinction of suggesting his own name as IOC member for India, replacing the ailing Dorabji Tata. 79 Initially he received a curt reply from the IOC which said the matter could be proceeded with only after Tata wrote directly to the IOC. 80 However, soon the IOC Chairman was congratulating Sondhi on his election as member of the IOC. 81 It is a fair assessment to say Sondhi never looked back.

The next threat to India’s tryst with Olympic hockey came from the FIH itself and it had to do with money, always a touchy issue in an amateur sport. On their tour of New Zealand in 1926, the Indian Army team had proved to be big-ticket entertainers. After their 1928 Olympic triumph in Amsterdam, their popularity soared. Matches against various oppositions on the Continent bookended India’s Olympic trip but people wanted more. In 1929, plans for an All-India XI to tour Europe in the spring of 1930 raised concerns in FIH after it was found that a) the Indian organiser of the trip, A.B. Rosser, did not have the official mandate of the Indian Hockey Federation, and b) the financial demands were excessive. The man who pointed these out to FIH was none other than Rosser’s bête noir from 1928, Colonel Bruce Turnbull. 82

A bigger threat arose when Indian players reached Berlin for the 1936 Olympic Games and questions were asked about their amateur status. The argument against them was based on the fact that they had to be away from work for at least four months to take part in the Olympics and it was not clear to FIH if they were being compensated by the Indian Hockey Federation. 83 Once again, India had to depend on the diplomatic skills of G.D. Sondhi. Working in the Indian Educational Service, Sondhi would have known that many of the players were still students and the working men had to get leave from their employers for the honour of taking part in the Olympic Games. In most cases, the players had to make a sacrifice and the situation changed little even after independence. Keshav Dutta, who won gold with the Indian hockey team in 1948 London and 1952 Helsinki Games, recounted how he could not go to Melbourne in 1956 because the private firm where he worked would not grant him leave. 84 It was reminiscent of the fate that befell Dickie Carr and Broome Eric Pinniger in 1936, both of whom had to opt out of the Olympics because they could not get leave. Leslie Claudius, who holds the record with Udham Singh of India of winning the highest number of medals in Olympic men’s hockey—three gold and one silver—also spoke

27 about how he needed help from his co-workers to go without pay in order to represent India in the Olympics. 85

The legacy

Once the off-field distractions had been dealt with, India had another stirring campaign in Berlin in 1936, winning the gold by thrashing hosts Germany 8-1 in the final. It was rather fitting that the only two Indian survivors in its third consecutive Olympic success were Allen, the goalkeeper who was rarely beaten, and Dhyan Chand, the centre forward who was rarely denied a goal. They would not get another opportunity to add to their medals as the world lurched towards another world war.

When the Olympics returned in 1948 after a twelve-year gap, the reality had altered for India: independence from British rule and partition had given birth to two countries, India and Pakistan, where there was only one. However, colonial India’s golden run in Olympic hockey in the inter-war years left behind a rich legacy. Independent India built on it to win three consecutive gold medals when the Games resumed after the Second World War. In fact, no country outside the Indian Subcontinent won the Olympic field hockey gold till West Germany in 1972 (India were champions in 1948, 1952, 1956 and 1964, while Pakistan won in 1960 and 1968).

There was another curious legacy of the inter-war years: the English apathy for Olympic hockey. After the guns had fallen silent once more and preparations were begun for the 1948 Olympic Games in London, the secretary of the Hockey Association, D.O. Light, wrote a letter to his counterpart in the BOA, E.A. Hunter. The letter reads:

The Council of the Hockey Association has decided not to ask for the inclusion of hockey in the Olympic Games in 1948. No decision has been taken however on the question of participation in the Games if they include a Hockey Tournament. I understand Ireland and Scotland support this decision.

I shall be obliged, if you could give me any information about the possibility of hockey being included, and if so, where the tournament would be held, and at what time of the year. 86

Some attitudes clearly died hard. In reply, Hunter said he would inform the organising committee of the Hockey Association’s decision and sought to reassure Light.

Hockey is not one of the compulsory games on the Olympic programme; if the country organizing the Games does not desire to include it, it need not do so. Of course, pressure may be put on the country by the International Olympic Committee, but I feel that, if it is really the wish of your Association that hockey should not be included, then the Organizing Committee will not submit it as one of the games they are willing to place on the programme, and this will be accepted by the International Olympic Committee. 87

Things turned out differently of course. Hockey was included in the Olympics and Great Britain, for the first time, competed with a combined team and did well to reach the final. It was perhaps poetic justice that their run ended in a 0-4 defeat to India, recently liberated from British rule.

* Correction: The report was altered on May 30, 2016 to change the word “play” to “pay” (page 28, line 1) and to correct the fact that West Germany, and not New Zealand as erroneously mentioned earlier, was the first country outside the Indian subcontinent to win the Olympic field hockey gold after 1920 (page 28). West Germany won gold in Munich in 1972, followed by New Zealand in Montreal in 1976.

1 The project could not have been possible without the IOC Olympic Studies Centre’s PhD Students Research Grant, which allowed me to travel to Switzerland and look through the archives at OSC and FIH, and the Sylff Research Abroad (SRA) Grant, which covered my stay in the UK where I could consult material at The Hockey Museum, the British Library and the University of East London. For help received at OSC, I would personally like to thank Nuria Puig, Manager, External Relations and Academic Programmes; Laïla Savary-Gintzburger, Project officer, External Relations and Academic Programmes; Carla Argenzio Fortuna, Visits coordinator; and the archives team comprising Barbara Péclard, Carine Genevey Renaud, Laura Freeman, Marie-Hélène Roy and Sabine Christe. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Melanie Willmore at FIH; my project supervisor in the UK, Mike Smith, Curator, The Hockey Museum; Paul V. Dudman, Archivist, Library and Learning Centre, University of East London Dockland Campus; my PhD supervisor Supriya Chaudhuri, professor emerita, Jadavpur University; and Joyashree Roy, JU-Sylff Project Director. 2 FIH, Council minutes, January 7, 1924, Registre de Proces-Verbaux de la Fédération Internationale de Hockey, Committee Meetings, Box Nb 251-1, FIH Archives, FIH. The FIH minutes, like a large volume of documents in the IOC Historical Archives at OSC, are in French and I am indebted to Marine Bellégo, a PhD student at the EHESS, Paris, for translating them into English. 3 The Hockey Association, Council minutes, October 29, 1926, HA Archives, The Hockey Museum. 4 “Indian Hockey Federation,” The Times of India , November 10, 1925. 5 FIH, Council minutes, May 6, 1928, Registre de Proces-Verbaux de la Fédération Internationale de Hockey, Committee Meetings, Box Nb 251-1, FIH Archives, FIH. 6 Dhyan Chand, Goal! (Madras: Sport and Pastime, 1952), 35. 7 7 Mike Huggins and Jack Williams, Sport and the English, 1918-1939 (London, New York: Routledge, 2006), 75. Also see Matthew P. Llewellyn, “A ‘United’ Kingdom? Nationalism, Identity and the Modern Olympic Games,” in Rethinking Matters Olympic: Investigations into the Socio-Cultural Study of the Modern Olympic Movement , eds. Robert K. Barney, Janice Forsyth, and Michael K. Heine (London, Canada: University of Western Ontario, 2010), 94-105. 8 John J. MacAloon, This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games (New York, Routledge, 2008), xxiv 9 MacAloon, This Great Symbol , xxiv

10 Dhyan Chand, Goal! , 88. 11 The Executive Board of the FIH was called ‘Le Bureau de la Fédération Internationale de Hockey and the archivist wrongly put the Minutes Book in a box marked Committee Meetings. As Volumes (or Tomes) 1 & 2 of the Minutes Book were both used for meetings of the ‘Bureau’, the ‘Comite Feminin’, the ‘Comite Technique’ and the ‘Congres’, the confusion is understandable. 12 The American Olympic Committee, Report of the American Olympic Committee: Seventh Olympic Games, Antwerp, Belgium, 1920 (Greenwich, Connecticut: The Conde Nast Press, 1921), 422. 13 John E. Findling and Kimberly D. Pelle, eds, Historical Dictionary of the Modern Olympic Movement (Westport, Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press, 1996), 54. 14 Patrick Rowley, “The History of Olympic Hockey (1908-1960)” in The Book of Hockey: A Miscellany of Hockey Writings , ed. Patrick Rowley (London: Macdonald, 1964), 52. 15 Findling and Pelle, eds, Historical Dictionary of the Modern Olympic Movement , 54. 16 Bill Mallon, The Unofficial Report of the 1920 Olympics (Durham, North Carolina: Most Publications, 1992), 141. 17 The British Olympic Association, Council minutes, November 20, 1919, BOA/M/1/3, BOA Council 1919-1921, British Olympic Association Archive Collection, University of East London. 18 See the minutes of the first meeting of the FIH on January 7, 1924. One of the decisions taken at the meeting read: “The rules adopted by the FIH will be those of the 1920 games, which corresponded to the rules of the English Hockey Association, and to which some clarifications could be added.” FIH, Council minutes, January 7, 1924, Registre de Proces-Verbaux de la Fédération Internationale de Hockey, Committee Meetings, Box Nb 251-1, FIH Archives, FIH. 19 M.K. Howells, The Romance of Hockey’s History (Milton Keynes, UK: M.K. Howells, 1997), 54. Also see Rowley, “The History of Hockey” in The Book of Hockey , 52 20 “VII IOC Congress,” Olympic.org, http://www.olympic.org/lausanne-1921-olympic-congress , accessed December 31, 2015. 21 See the country-wise list of international matches in Fédération Internationale de Hockey sur Gazon Annuaire 1949 , FIH History, Box Nb. 201-1, FIH Archives, FIH. 22 VII IOC Congress 1921 minutes, IOC Congresses, 1894-1983, IOC Historical Archives, OSC. 23 The British Olympic Association, Finance and General Purposes Committee minutes, BOA/M/2/1, F & GP Committee, British Olympic Association Archive Collection, University of East London. 24 The Hockey Association, Council minutes, July 22, 1921, HA Archives, The Hockey Museum. 25 Members of Council, BOA/M/1/4, BOA Council 1921-1924, British Olympic Association Archive Collection, University of East London. 26 BOC Annual General Meeting, January 31, 1919 and British Olympic Council meeting, November 20, 1919, BOA/M/1/6, BOA Meeting Attendance Book, the British Olympic Association Archive Collection, University of East London. 27 The British Olympic Association, Annual General Meeting minutes, January 31, 1919, BOA/M/1/3, BOA Council 1919-1921, British Olympic Association Archive Collection, University of East London. 28 Matthew P. Llewellyn, “Olympic Games are an International Farce,” The International Journal of the History of Sport , 28, No. 5, 751, DOI: 10.1080/09523367.2011.554184, accessed May 7, 2015. 29 The British Olympic Association, Laffan to BOA Council members, March 6, 1919, BOA/M/1/3, BOA Council 1919-1921, British Olympic Association Archive Collection, University of East London. 30 The British Olympic Association, Council minutes, September 23, 1919, BOA/M/1/3, BOA Council 1919-1921, British Olympic Association Archive Collection, University of East London. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 The British Olympic Association, Council minutes, November 20, 1919, BOA/M/1/3, BOA Council 1919-1921, British Olympic Association Archive Collection, University of East London. Today, despite later efforts and innovations such as rugby sevens, rugby remains a peripheral presence in world sport. 34 The Hockey Association, Council minutes, July 7, 1922, HA Archives, The Hockey Museum. 35 The Hockey Association, Council minutes, October 10, 1922, HA Archives, The Hockey Museum. 36 The Hockey Association, Council minutes, March 2, 1923, HA Archives, The Hockey Museum. 37 See FIH, Council minutes, January 7, 1924, Registre de Proces-Verbaux de la Fédération Internationale de Hockey, Committee Meetings, Box Nb 251-1, FIH Archives, FIH. 38 FIH, Council minutes, June 11, 1924, Registre de Proces-Verbaux de la Fédération Internationale de Hockey, Committee Meetings, Box Nb 251-1, FIH Archives, FIH.

39 FIH, Council minutes, November 24, 1924, Registre de Proces-Verbaux de la Fédération Internationale de Hockey, Committee Meetings, Box Nb 251-1, FIH Archives, FIH. 40 Technical IOC Congress 1925 minutes, IOC Congresses, 1894-1983, IOC Historical Archives, OSC. 41 The Hockey Association, Council minutes, July 3, 1925, HA Archives, The Hockey Museum. 42 The Hockey Association, Council minutes, October 29, 1926, HA Archives, The Hockey Museum. The date of the meeting is mistakenly noted as October 29, 1927 in the Minutes Book, but looking at the meetings that preceded and followed it, one is certain that the meeting took place in 1926. 43 The Hockey Association, Council minutes, March 4, 1927, HA Archives, The Hockey Museum. 44 Editor’s reply to a letter signed ‘A French Hockey Player,’ Hockey World 5, No. 9 (November 19, 1926), 175 (the page numbers for Hockey World refer to bound volumes). 45 “Weekly Reflections,” Hockey World 6, No. 7 (November 11, 1927), 112. 46 “Weekly Reflections,” Hockey World 5, No. 8 (November 12, 1926), 150. 47 The Hockey Association, Council minutes, March 4, 1927, HA Archives, The Hockey Museum. 48 The Participation of India in the Olympic Games, Antwerp, 1920, IOR/L/PJ/6/1634, File 6783, Oct 1919-Jan 1922, India Office Records and Private Papers, the British Library. 49 See Boria Majumdar and Nalin Mehta, Olympics: The India Story (Noida: Harper Sport, 2012). In Chapter 1, “Games of Self-Respect: A Colony at the Olympics” Majumdar and Mehta depend too heavily on Dorabji Tata’s reminiscences as found in his letter to IOC President Henri de Baillet Latour, May 21, 1929, CIO-MBR-TATA- CORR, IOC Historical Archives, OSC. 50 See M. Kapoor, Romance of Hockey (Ambala Cantt: M.L. Kapur, 1968), 24; also Majumdar and Mehta, India: The Olympics Story , 53. 51 See for example “Cashmere” in The Times of India , Jul 6, 1865, The Times of India (1861-current), ProQuest Historical Newspapers, the British Library, for mention of “amusements such as hockey on horseback”; also see “The Calcutta Season,” Times of India, December 24, 1883, The Times of India (1861-current), ProQuest Historical Newspapers, the British Library, for reports on “the Terai Hockey Club’s two two-day cricket matches against Ballygunge and Calcutta Cricket Club”. 52 Bruce Turnbull, “Hockey in India” in Hockey World 5, No. 28 (April 8, 1927), 538. 53 “Indian Hockey Federation,” The Times of India , November 10, 1925, The Times of India (1861-current), ProQuest Historical Newspapers, the British Library. 54 Geoff Watson, “Affirming Indian Identities? An Analysis of Imperial Rhetoric and Orientalism in the Tours of Indian Hockey Teams to New Zealand in 1926, 1935 and 1938,” Sporting Traditions 21, No. 2, 120. 55 Ibid, 120. 56 C.E. Newham, “Indian Army’s Antipodes Tour,” Hockey World 5, No. 3, October 8, 1926, 47. 57 Ibid, 48. 58 The Bengalee , Sunday, 19 February 1928. 59 Ibid. 60 Dhyan Chand, Goal! , 26. 61 Ibid, 26. 62 See Majumdar and Mehta, Olympics: The India Story , 60. 63 Dhyan Chand, Goal! , 26 64 Hockey Association: Senior International Players’ lists, HA Archives, The Hockey Museum. 65 The Western Morning News , April 12, 1928, image © Local World Limited, image created courtesy of the British Library Board, British Newspaper Archive, accessed December 17, 2015. 66 The Hockey Association, Council minutes, February 28, 1930 and February 6, 1931, HA Archives, The Hockey Museum. 67 FIH, Council minutes, April 22, 1928, Registre de Proces-Verbaux de la Fédération Internationale de Hockey, Committee Meetings, Box Nb 251-1, FIH Archives, FIH. 68 FIH, Council minutes, May 6, 1928, Registre de Proces-Verbaux de la Fédération Internationale de Hockey, Committee Meetings, Box Nb 251-1, FIH Archives, FIH. 69 FIH, Council minutes, May 23, 1928, Registre de Proces-Verbaux de la Fédération Internationale de Hockey, Committee Meetings, Box Nb 251-1, FIH Archives, FIH. 70 Katyayan, Rashmi (ed.), Autobiography of Jaipal Singh, Lor bir sendra (Ranchi: Prabhat Khabar Publications, 2004), 35. 71 Harold M. Abrahams (ed.), The Official Report of the IXth Olympiad, Amsterdam, 1928 (London: The British Olympic Association, 1929), 680-691. 72 See Dhyan Chand, Goal! , 28, 31; also Majumdar and Mehta, India: The Olympics Story , 59.

73 Dhyan Chand, Goal! 28. 74 E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1870: Programme, Myth, Reality , 2 nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 141-142. 75 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism , 142-143. 76 See FIH, Council minutes, April 30, 1933, July 29-30, 1933, November 5, 1933, 25 March, 1934, Registre de Proces-Verbaux de la Fédération Internationale de Hockey, Committee Meetings, Box Nb 251-1, FIH Archives, FIH. Also see Correspondence between FIH and IOC, CIO FI-HOCKEY-FIH-CORR, IOC Historical Archives, OSC. 77 IOC President Henri Balliet Latour letter to FIH President Bellin du Coteau, October 15, 1933. CIO FI-HOCKEY- FIH-CORR, IOC Historical Archives, OSC. 78 G.D. Sondhi letter to IOC Secretary Lt. Col. A.G. Berdez, April 25, 1934, CIO FI-HOCKEY-FIH-CORR, IOC Historical Archives, OSC. 79 G.D. Sondhi to IOC President Henri de Baillet Latour, August 16, 1931, CIO-MBR-Sondhi-CORR, IOC Historical Archives, OSC. 80 IOC Chairman to Sondhi, Honorary Secretary of the Indian Olympic Association, July 25, 1931 (sic), CIO-MBR- Sondhi-CORR, IOC Historical Archives, OSC. 81 IOC Chairman to Sondhi, Honorary Secretary of the Indian Olympic Association, undated, CIO-MBR-Sondhi- CORR, IOC Historical Archives, OSC. 82 FIH, Council minutes, March 17, 1929 and July 28, 1929, Registre de Proces-Verbaux de la Fédération Internationale de Hockey, Committee Meetings, Box Nb 251-1, FIH Archives, FIH. 83 Dhyan Chand, Goal! 88 84 Interview with Keshav Dutt, January 9, 2013, Calcutta. 85 Interview with Leslie Claudius, May 4, 2012, Calcutta. 86 Hockey Association secretary D.O. Light to BOA secretary E.A. Hunter, June 22, 1946, BOA/ADM/2/4/B2, British Hockey Board, 1946-1974, BOA Archive Collection, University of East London. 87 BOA Secretary E.A. Hunter to Hockey Association Secretary D.O. Light, June 25, 1946, BOA/ADM/2/4/B2, British Hockey Board, 1946-1974, BOA Archive Collection, University of East London.

Appendix

1. Personal interview with Leslie Claudius, May 4, 2012 in Calcutta, India

Excepts

I read in an interview of yours that your mother was Irish and your father an Anglo-Indian from Burma (now Myanmar).

Hmm.

So when did the family settle down in Bilaspur (in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, now Chhattisgarh, where Claudius was born)? Do you remember?

Oh that I don’t remember. It was way back, way back.

Did your father work in the railways?

He worked in the railways.

What was your father’s first name?

Walter.

And your mother?

My mother’s name was Irene. She was an Irish girl.

You were one of nine children.

Very correct.

How long were you in Bilaspur?

I left Bilaspur in 1945 to come to Kharagpur, which was the headquarters of all sporting activities. I came there to play football. Fortunately, at that time there was a British Army force that worked with the home department and I got a job there.

The home department looked after the wellbeing of the station at Kharagpur... the whole of Kharagpur they looked after.

And at that time you were playing football.

Yes, in those pre-Partition (times) there were a lot of battalions in Bilaspur and football was a big craze. But there, unfortunately you were not allowed to mix with people until you were 18. So I could not play football until I was 18. So I used to play with the servants. I went to play when they got off. There used to be little bets so that you would get a little interest. And after that we went and fed ourselves.

What happened afterwards?

From the home department, I joined the railways (Bengal Nagpur Railway or BNR). Then in 1947, we won the railway championship. Then in 1947, it (the railways team) disbanded because of Independence. Fortunately for me, the Port Commissioner’s was forming a side in Calcutta and I was taken on by the Port Commissioner’s. I think it happened within a month of Independence. And the team entered to play the Aga Khan (tournament) in Bombay.

By this time you had your initiation in hockey, right? I have heard the story that you were just watching a practice match and there was one man short...

Yes. The captain, you see, was Dickie Carr, who was a 1936 Olympian in Berlin [in fact, Richard Carr played in the 1932 Los Angeles Games]. (In a practice hockey match) there was one man short and he threw me a stick told me, ‘Come and play.’ I said, ‘Sir, I don’t know much about the game.’ He turned around and told me, ‘See you are a good footballer, you never know you may turn out to be a good hockey player. The only thing is that the stick is bit too big for you, we have to cut it about two or three inches short.’ That of course they did later. They sent it to Calcutta and it came back.

This happened in Kharagpur?

Yes, in Kharagpur.

This was in 1946?

This was a little before 1946, because we played in the Beighton Cup in ’46 and lost in the final to Port Commissioner’s.

So when you went to the 1948 Olympics, you had been playing hockey for two, two-and-a-half years?

In 1947, the Port Commissioner’s played in the Aga Khan Cup and my performance there was exceptionally good. Because of that performance I got selected for the trials of the 1948 Olympic Games.

Can you recreate the scene of the 1948 Olympic Games’ opening ceremony?

It was a helluva thrill for me because it was 1948. The opening ceremony, you see, generally there is not a seat available, and 1 lakh 20 thousand sitting in Wembley. And being the (hockey) champions, we led the (Indian) contingent into the arena for the march past. And being the world champions, you get a tremendous ovation. We felt we were transported to the heavens.

Three straight Olympic gold medals, it must have been tough.

Sometimes you are gifted by God you know. Things that happened to me, it seemed that hockey came quite easily to me and it became better and better and better. The improvement was so vast that within a spell of six months I became one of the finest right halfs India has ever produced. I played right half and all the rest of them shifted to the right.

Is it true that your Olympic medals are lost?

Very true.

And they were probably stolen when your house was being painted?

Yes.

And you never complained to the police?

I complained but it was no use. It was of no value. An Olympic gold medal is not made of gold, it is made of alloy you see. So it was no good to the chaps who robbed me.

I have heard that you would miss a lot of office to play hockey and your colleagues would try to find ways to…

Well the co-workers did help me financially there is no doubt about that. It was a great help to the family. You felt at ease na, you were free in mind. It did not interfere with your play.

Yes, because hockey remained an amateur sport.

Yes amateur sport, but it was crazy in the whole of India.

Mr Charlie Crizzle (a decade younger that Claudius, he too played for Bengal) was telling me that hockey was something that came naturally to Anglo-Indian boys…

It was, it was, it was. The British came and they played soccer, they played cricket, but they couldn’t conquer hockey, na. So the Anglo-Indians took over. And they mastered hockey.

When you were growing up, you had Anglo-Indian role models in hockey. Did that help?

You see, we had one of the finest sides in India that represented the Anglo-Indian community from Kharagpur. I played for them for a year or two and it was a great help because there were some wonderful players over there – Dicky Carr, who played in ’36 (sic), Carl Tapsell who played ’36, Joe Galibardy ’36… these three were the best that came from Calcutta, na.

And since you had no coaches, you would have had to learn from the seniors.

One had to, one had to. Like I was very fortunate Joe Galibardy was a very good left half. I don’t know (why), but he took quite a great interest in me and he used to coach me every day. And having seen that hockey was so very popular, I used to practically sleep with my stick, practise all day. In the auxiliary force, we worked for two hours and got four hours off. That helped a lot.

Galibardy himself migrated to England? Did it ever occur to you to migrate to another country?

Not at all, not at all.

Never?

Never.

But a lot of Anglo-Indians did, for better opportunities…

That is a different thing. But then you see I myself earned all that I got from Calcutta. I was not a traitor, you know. I stayed in Calcutta because it gave me everything.

You went on to play in the 1952, 56 and 60 Games and would have ended up with four gold medals but for the disappointment in the 1960 final where Pakistan scored against the run of play. Looking back at your career, what are the memories that stand out?

Well, the one that you mentioned (the 1960 final). That would have been the grand finale of my career – four Olympic gold. Nothing could have been better in my career than that. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.

2. Personal interview with Keshav Datt, January 9, 2013 in Calcutta, India

Keshav Datt won gold with the Indian hockey team in the 1948 London and 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games. A right half-back who could also slot in at centre-half, Datt has a photographic memory of everything that has to do with hockey, on and off the field. “Those are certain things that interested me very much,” he says as a way of explanation.

Excerpts

Can you tell me a little bit about your early days?

Well my early days: born and brought up in Lahore. I was basically a badminton player. I was junior badminton champion in Punjab. But then my brother (Yogesh Datt), who was six-seven years older than me, he was a hockey player; he played for former Christian College, Lahore, which was a leading institution after Government College, Lahore, where I went. And then I started playing hockey because I used to see my brother and I was fascinated by the hockey kit and he used to talk a lot about hockey. And badminton was considered a ladies’ game, which was, you know, unfair. And because so many people talked about badminton as a ladies’ game and this and the other, it also had some effect on my mind. They never knew that badminton is more strenuous than any other sport. For instance, compared with tennis, in badminton you could get exhausted very quickly. Two long rallies and you are feeling you are running short of stamina.

So did you get introduced to hockey in Lahore itself?

I started playing in Lahore and it took me time to get used to hockey because badminton is a different kind of game altogether. But in hockey, badminton helped me with my footwork because you can’t be good in badminton unless your footwork is extremely good.

Anyway, after school, I was beginning to get the hang of hockey. But I am (the kind of) person, if I take on something I want to be extremely good at it, far above average. It’s in my blood you might say. I don’t like also-ran sort of business.

Do you remember which year was it when you started playing hockey?

See I finished my matriculation in 1942, so I’d started playing, say, in ’40-‘41. Something like that.’42 I finished school, then I joined Government College, Lahore, and I played in Government College A team, which was very, very good, and we won the university championship that we used to have.

Then after that was the Lahore district team, I played for that. Then Government College Lahore team went to Afghanistan, we played there. I was a member of the team. Then we had, well, a lot of trips. And I was then recognised as a hockey player.

And then first came a trip to East Africa, which Dhyan Chand captained. Very close to the Partition period. That was a very good team. That was goodwill mission. Government of India decided to send a hockey team to East Africa.

So when did the family shift to India, was it after Partition or just before Partition?

Partition was a big blow because we lost our home, we lost everything. All the old pictures and my prizes and what not because we never thought we would have to say goodbye to Lahore, to the house. I still miss that place. Because where you are born and brought up and the memories become sharper.

Have you ever been back to Lahore?

No, I am afraid not. There were one, or two, three opportunities, but every time something happened here. I had joined the tea business and I couldn’t get time to get leave to go to Pakistan.

How did you arrive in Calcutta?

Calcutta... basically after 1948 Olympics gold medal, I had no job or nothing and we had lost our home. And my eldest brother, he was in Customs, based in Karachi. So they were given the option, whether you want to stay in Pakistan and carry on working in Karachi or do you want to go back to India. Because Pakistan came into existence and India was still India, but under changed circumstances. So then he contacted me, he said, ‘Look, things are financially not very good and you’ve got nowhere to go to now till you find a job. So I stayed with him in Bombay for just about a year. From Bombay, there was this fellow, Commander Nandi Singh, he was my classmate in Government College, Lahore, and he was working for Calcutta Port Trust. So he said if you are interested in a job, there is Mr Mitter, that was the name of the chairman of the Calcutta Port Trust, and they are looking for a centre half. And my position was right half and centre half. So he said if you are interested, come over to Calcutta and the job is yours. And I came to Calcutta in the 50s and joined the Calcutta Port Trust where I worked for, as a probationer, for about a year. And then I got a job in Brookbond as a tea-taster. And from ’51 that lasted about 15 years.

So you and Mr (Leslie) Claudius played together (for Calcutta Port Trust) around ’50-’51...

Yes, our half line was Claudius as right half-back, I played centre half, and Joe Galibardy, the 1936 (Olympic gold medal winner), left half back. That was the Olympic half-line.

People talk about Leslie Claudius’s longevity, the fact that he played in four Olympics, but why did you not play in the’56 Olympics?

Once I joined tea, there was no time. It is a very busy line. The tea auctions, which used to sometimes start at 8 o’clock in the morning and go on till 6.30-7 o’clock in the evening. And it was hard work. But I couldn’t afford to chuck that job in the hope of getting something equally good.

Brookbond was a European company, British to be more precise, and they expected you to work really well to get somewhere.

I read recently, that you actually gave away your Olympic gold medals...

Yes, yes.

During the India-China war...

When they reached Assam that was the time. (India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal) Nehru at that time made an appeal, ‘Donate generously to the Prime Minister’s Special Fund.’ And I gave the gold medal. I was not the only one. There were some other people also who did the same thing.

Was it just the ’48 gold medal or was it also the ’52 medal?

It was the ’48 medal. The ’52 medal I still have with me. ’52 I was vice-captain. ’56 was my captaincy, but I was working with Brookbond and they were dead against sports. No the company was alright, but there were one or two people who didn’t like my playing sports. So I had difficulty finding time to play hockey. I gave up hockey at a much earlier stage. Otherwise I would have played four Olympics.

I saw that Leslie Claudius, who was a pretty junior member of the team, he played only one match in the 1948 London Olympics.

That’s right.

He played only a group league match.

He told you that?

No he did not tell me.

Where did you get this from?

I got this from the databse of the Olympics site.

Ya. See what happened it was slushy ground, thick grass, rain, slush all over and he was too small. Particularly European teams, and in particular UK, the British team, they played hockey like they

40 played rugby. And it was difficult to cope with them because they were the masters of those conditions. India and Pakistan found it very difficult. But we were lucky to have a man like KD Singh Babu, he was very good, and very brainy man. And he said no use trying to strike these small passes. So most of the time we were playing aerial hockey in the sense (hand gesture to show how they would lift the ball in the air) the ball doesn’t travel on the ground. And with that we adjusted very quickly and very nicely. And the British team did not know what to do. We scored four goals (in the 1948 Olympic hockey final) and it was mild drizzle and thick grass. Very difficult conditions.

I thought I would ask Mr Claudius later why he played only one match in London.

Under those conditions, Claudius was unable to cope with that completely. (The English players were) strong, rather like young bulls, and they would charge and you had to have some weight. Not that I was very strong or very big compared with them, but I had played right half-back, so then Pankaj Gupta, who was the manager of the team, he said, ‘Keshav you have to come in at right half- back.’ I said, ‘Yes, but I haven’t played right half-back for a long time.’ But he said, ‘You have to, you have to for the sake of India.’ And we had a very long discussion. And I had initially a lot of difficulty in playing right half-back after having played centre half for quite some time but I adjusted and it worked. The reason why Claudius (played only one match was) not that he was not a good hockey player, he was a very talented player, but he was too small under those conditions. Today it would not have been necessary, because on Astroturf it could have been alright. That is the reason and he played only one match. And that one match is important because otherwise you don’t get gold medal. You got to play at least one match. If your name is not there you don’t get the gold medal. Those days everybody, there were 20 of us, all got gold medals.

The team ensured everybody got some part of a game.

Absolutely. That means you have participated in the Olympics.

3. Personal interview with Neville Galibardy, June 3, 2013 in London, UK

Neville Galibardy is the fourth of 1936 Olympian Joe Galibardy’s seven children. The family settled in the UK in the mid-1950s and it was Neville who came back to India with his father in 2007 when Joe Galibardy’s alma mater, Goethals Memorial School in the hill town of Kurseong in north Bengal, celebrated its 100 years. Neville Galibardy is a storehouse of stories about his famous father.

Excerpts

Did Joe Galibardy talk a lot about hockey to his children?

Since we had gone to England (in 1956), nobody knew about him, and my father never even spoke about (the Olympic Games). Once he had left India, he had more or less cut all ties (with hockey). And we never ever spoke about it. He never mentioned it and he only ever spoke if somebody asked a question he would answer it and that was it. He wouldn’t expand on it. I even got two or three letters, quite extensive letters, from Australia telling me my father was in fact the first person who did the short corners, sort of pushed it instead of just hitting it; and also about the throw-ins, because nowadays they just hit it with the stick but in the old days they used to throw it in and he was the first one who rolled in on the ground.

Tells us about Joe Galibardy’s Olympic journey?

It was because of my mother (Merlyn) that my father got only one gold medal, instead of three.

Because she put her foot down for the ’48 Olympics (when she was expecting the birth of their child)...

And ’52. Because she was expecting (again). I said to my dad, ‘What were you thinking. The Olympics were coming up. Abstain, for a little while.’

His parents said to my mother, ‘Let him go, we will stay and look after you.’ She said, ‘No.’ Apparently my grandmother said, ‘Why not, we can look after you.’ She said, ‘No, you are not my husband. I want my husband to be here.’ So he missed another two Olympics. It would have been ’48, with Leslie Claudius, and Keshav Dutt said to me in 2000 (when mom and dad were on their way to Australia to see my brother and there was a big function at Ranger’s Club in Calcutta), ‘If your father had played in the ’48 Games with Leslie Claudius and myself, it would have been the best half- back line ever, since the game was invented to this day.’ So I often think as well that there would have been two more gold medals there...and if the War hadn’t come, he would have got another two gold medals because no one could touch India in those days. They were head and shoulders above everyone else. Like Barcelona is in football now. So he could have won five gold medals and been the king of hockey. But that’s the way it goes, doesn’t it? Fate dealt him, in that sort of a situation, a bad hand. And he ended up with only one gold medal instead of arguably five gold medals. That would have been unprecedented.

In 2007, when all the reporters interviewed him (during the 100 years celebration of Goethals Memorial School in Kurseong, India), they asked him if he had any regrets and straightaway he said, ‘No, no regrets.’ He might have had it, but he wasn’t showing it. And he was not going to run his wife down.

You mentioned the story of your father meeting Jesse Owens in Berlin in 1936. How did you come to know of the story? From your father?

Actually yes, it was one of the rare occasions when he opened up a bit and told me about it, so I got it first hand. He just told me one day, ‘You know son, we was at the (Olympic village)...’ the Indian camp was more or less adjacent to the American camp, and ’cause (my father) had read in the papers a lot about Jesse Owens and the things he would do on the athletic track, he just had to meet him. So he’s gone over there and they told him (Owens) is on the track training. And he’s gone and caught him up and he is jogging—I mean Jesse Owens is jogging, my dad’s running—and he spoke to him. ‘Are you the famous Jesse Owens?’ ‘Yes, yes.’ ‘Oh, you are going to win gold medals?’ And Jesse Owens said to him, ‘What do you do?’ “I play hockey for India.’ “Oh you are guaranteed a gold medal then.’ Nice little story to have come out of there.