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) By 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 1 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 2 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 3 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.