Olympics-The India Story

by Boria Majumdar

  The All India Olympic meeting to be held at the Roshanara Club, Delhi on February 8–9 promises to be a unique event in the history of sports in India. Reservations have already been booked for the Indian team, which will proceed to France on the steamer ‘Lancashire’ ex-Colombo on 29 May. The team will be accompanied by a professional coach who will continue to train the players on steamer deck and in France for a month before the Olympic begins.26

  The detailed programme of the meet and the timings of all the events featured prominently in the dailies and provincial successes at the meet were greeted with considerable cheer in the regions. For instance, the fact that Bengali athletes made the finals in nine events was reported at length in the province and much was made of the fact that Bengal had beaten Madras, which had six final qualifications and Punjab, which had made it to the final of five events. The two stars from Bengal, T.J. Pitt and J.S. Hall, were both eventually selected to travel to Paris. The overwhelming popularity of this meet, and the regional pride it evoked, is borne out by the following report in Calcutta’s Amrita Bazar Patrika:

  The weather condition was excellent and spectators numbered several thousands. Viceroy and Lady Reading were present. In four events— hurdles, one mile, long jump and three miles, provincial and Indian records were beaten, although the world records have not been touched. Bengal was first in the composition of India’s Olympic team having won three places…At a meeting of the All India Olympic Committee held after the meet it was decided to send these men to Paris as the money is available—

  1. Dalip Singh of Patiala for Long Jump

  2. Lakshmanan of Madras (Hurdles)

  3. M.R. Hinge of Bombay (Marathon)

  4. T.K. Pitt of Bengal (100 and 440 Yards)

  5. J. S. Hall of Bengal (220 Yards)

  6. Sepoy Pala Singh of UP (Three Miles)

  7. J. C Heathcote (Madras), High Jump

  8. M.V. Venkatramaswamy (Madras), One Mile.27

  Patiala in the west, Madras in the south, Bombay and Bengal: already the regional composition of the Paris team was beginning to represent the disparate regions of India. H.C. Buck of the YMCA College of Physical Education in Madras, an American who had pioneered athletics coaching in India, escorted the athletes. Though the Indians did not win medals, they acquitted themselves better than at Antwerp, with two of them—T.K Pitt in the 400 metres and Dalip Singh in the broad jump—performing well.28

  The organized planning for the Indian participation at the Paris Games was driven by the formation of a permanent All India Olympic Association. Sir Dorabji Tata was invited to assume the presidency of the new body29 but it did not survive for more than three years. In 1927, another body, the Indian Olympic Association, was formed and it continues to administer Indian sport till the present day. Once again, Dorabji Tata was the president and A.G. Noehren the secretary. It was the new IOA that led India’s preparations for the 1928 Olympiad in Amsterdam where India had her first taste of Olympic success.

  ‘A CONTINENT AS BIG AS EUROPE’: THE YMCA, INDIA

  AND THE GLOBAL OLYMPIC MOVEMENT

  To make sense of how the Olympic ideal progressed in India through the 1920s, it is imperative to see it in the context of global trends about Olympism in the same period and the ‘Olympic explosion’ that took place in another under-developed region, Latin America. In both regions, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) played a pivotal role in stimulating Olympism. The Olympic movement needed a vehicle of organization in every new country it targeted. The YMCA, a global body with finely organized national tentacles in many underdeveloped countries, provided a ready option. As we shall see, Dorabji Tata’s association with both bodies proved a pivotal fulcrum.

  The Latin American ‘Olympic explosion’ in the 1920s, as Cesar Torres calls it, was largely possible because of a partnership between the IOC and the YMCA. According to Torres’ masterful study, the ‘explosion’ occurred due to a confluence of three factors: ‘Latin American sporting cultures at the end of the First World War; an appreciation of De Coubertin’s new strategies of globalization developed during the war; and a recognition of the crucial role that an alliance between the IOC and the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA)…’30

  During the First World War, De Coubertin was gravely concerned that the Games might be exterminated by the tumultuous political conditions created by the continuing violence. This anxiety made it essential to seek newer pastures for his Olympic ideology and he began to see this expansion as the key to the survival of the Olympic Games. The emphasis was to spread the Olympic gospel to areas unaffected by the war. If he could globalize Olympic affairs, De Coubertin thought, he would ensure that if not in Europe the Games would at least continue in other corners of the world. He was simultaneously growing more and more anxious about the potential of the Inter-Allied Games being organized in the US. These Games, designated as the ‘Military Olympics’, were being planned in collaboration with the YMCA. Nervous about its bearing on the Olympic endeavour, De Coubertin, as Torres mentions, wrote to Elwood S. Brown, the international director of the YMCA on 25 January 1919, objecting against the ‘action of the YMCA in deciding to hold Olympics in France in 1919’. Brown immediately wrote back allaying De Coubertin’s fears, declaring that the Inter-Allied Games ‘is not a rival of the Olympic Games in any sense’.31 His assurance had a comforting effect on De Coubertin and this started a long association between the two that lasted several years and transformed the fundamental nature of the Olympic movement.

  It was at Brown’s insistence that De Coubertin agreed to utilize the wide reach of the YMCA to spread the message of Olympism across Latin America. Stressing the role of the YMCA, Brown declared:

  a most unusual opportunity now existed to give a great impulse to physical training throughout the world, to develop backward areas along the lines of Olympic ideas and ideals, and to contribute definitely to the extension of your Committee’s influence.32

  Assured of De Coubertin’s support, Brown officially presented his proposal to the IOC at Antwerp in August 1920. It is of great importance that Sir Dorabji Tata, representing British India, was present in this session and followed the entire deliberation with keen interest. The proposal stressed the idea that the YMCA and the IOC had similar goals and drew attention to the YMCA’s global structure. All its branches played key roles in promoting physical education and ‘manly sporting activity’ and its organizational strength, Brown noted, was expected to add manifold to the IOC’s global potency.

  The YMCA had already held regional games like the Far Eastern Games in 1913 that helped in stimulating popularity of Olympic sports across the world. IOC recognition, Brown insisted and De Coubertin concurred, would impart legitimacy to these efforts and this was the primary reason why the IOC unanimously accepted the scheme proposed by Brown. ‘With the partnership fully endorsed and Brown named South American charge-de mission, the IOC and the YMCA embarked on the first project the YMCA had in store, the 1922 Latin American Games.’33

  Dorabji Tata had already learnt his lessons at Antwerp and soon after his return to India insisted on enlisting the support of Dr A.G. Noehren of the Madras YMCA for India’s Olympic cause. It was no accident that the selection trials in Delhi for the 1924 team were conducted under the expert supervision of H.C. Buck, staff of the Madras YMCA College of Physical Education.34

  On the IOC’s part, it did everything possible to encourage British India to join the Olympic family. The YMCA presence did much to boost the IOC’s confidence and even though there was no permanent Indian Olympic institution in 1920 or 1924, the IOC allowed the Indian delegation to participate in the Games as part of its vision to globalize the movement. While Tata acted as a bridge, the IOC was also independently in touch with the Indian YMCA. There is evidence for this in a letter from Dr J. Henry Gray, national physical director for the YMCA for India, Burma and Ceylon to Count Baillet Latour on 28 December 1928. The letter was primarily meant to update the IOC president
on the progress of Olympism in India. To start with, Dr Gray thanked the IOC president for sending him back issues of the ‘International Olympic Bulletin’ and also for including him in the IOC’s mailing list. He then suggested that Olympic organization in India had begun on a positive note in 1922 and the power behind this, as in Latin America, was the YMCA. 35

  Though the involvement of the YMCA had lost its sheen with the resignation of Dr Noehren in 1927, YMCA cadres were still carrying on the bulk of the work in the provinces to promote Olympic sports and were instrumental in maintaining the fabric of the provincial sports organizations. In a country the size of India, this was no small matter. As Tata noted:

  India is such a vast continent, as big as Europe without Russia. When I went to Calcutta to see the Olympic Games last month, for the eight days that I was away from Bombay five of those were spent in the train. 36

  The YMCA’s early role in the Indian Olympic movement cannot be emphasized enough. Its national network provided a lifeline for those who wanted to set up a national sporting movement.

  ‘IMPOSSIBLE TO SELECT A NATIONAL

  REPRESENTATIVE’: THE ‘NATION’ IN THE GAMES

  The YMCA provided a vital crutch in the early years and nobody knew better than Tata that the Olympic movement in India was still in its infancy. Central to the challenge was the problem of creating a national consciousness in a land divided along the multiple axes of region, caste and language. Writing in 1929, a year after India had won its first hockey gold in Amsterdam, Tata acknowledged:

  … India is not yet ripe for the International Olympic Games. The love of such things is not ingrained here. There are so many communities, so many religions, so many languages and dialects, so many different customs and ideals, that it is almost impossible to select a national representative that would meet all requirements.37

  There were two other major problems: the lack of stadiums and the relatively small size of a leisured class that could patronize sport as a watching public. As Tata noted at the end of his tenure as the head of the Indian Olympic movement, the foremost necessity was to have permanent stadiums, which would allow the organization of the Games in at least two of the provinces. He had already approached the provincial municipalities and the government for funds to implement his projects of stadium building but nothing had come out of such overtures. Local stadiums were an urgent necessity because it would be impossible for the poor to travel long distances. Dorabji also stressed the point that the leisured class in India was much smaller than in Europe and the majority of Indians had little leisure time to devote to sports, making the progress of Olympic sports increasingly difficult. Finally, each province had its own indigenous pastime and people did not take much interest in other events.38

  It may be mentioned here that Dorab Tata was not alone in pressing for the building of stadiums in India. In Bengal too, the Raja of Santosh, Sir Manmatha Nath Roy Chowdhury, emphasized a similar need for a permanent venue for sport in the 1920s:

  Speaking for Bengal, I may say, without any fear of contradiction, that a sports stadium in Calcutta is the need of the moment. Sport in Bengal will receive a serious check if we fail to provide at the psychological moment a central home for sports. Besides, in a city like Calcutta where the huge sporting crowds always cause anxiety to the police and people alike, the problem of providing accommodation for spectators can no longer be ignored…We must have a sports stadium, which could accommodate in its auditorium no less than 60,000 people.39

  Be that as it may, the Tata—Noehren combination successfully created the Indian Olympic Association in 1927. However, within months of its establishment, the organization entered troubled waters with both leaders resigning on personal grounds. Noehren resigned because he was leaving India permanently for England while Tata gave up the presidency for reasons of ill-health. In a letter to the IOC president, Count Baillet Latour, on 21 February 1927, he outlined his reasons in detail:

  I have sent in my resignation as President of the All India Olympic Committee and I also wish to resign from the international Olympic Committee. I feel that with my advancing age and infirmities I can no longer devote the time and energy necessary for the position. It is with very great regret that I feel compelled to resign… It has not been decided who the new President or Secretary will be.40

  In view of his vision for the promotion of Olympic sport in India, it was not surprising that the IOC accepted Sir Dorab Tata’s resignation with considerable reluctance.41

  PATIALA AND THE REST: THE PRINCES AND

  THE POLITICS OF COLONIAL SPORT

  The issue of picking successors for Dorab Tata and A.G. Noehren had become politicized from the start. At the heart of it was the battle between the Indian princes for control over Indian sport which was seen as an avenue for social mobility. In this context, there is no more celebrated example of the importance of sport for many princes than that of Ranji. It is now well documented that Ranji, a disinherited prince, won back his crown of Nawanagar largely because of the social capital he had gained as a cricketing icon in England.42 By the time Tata resigned from the presidency of the IOA, the Olympic movement too had become a prize catch for the princes to fight over. In fact, in his very first letter acknowledging Tata’s resignation, the IOC president noted that the name of the prince of Kapurthala had been suggested to him as a possible successor.43 The debate over succession raged on at several levels: at one level it was about which prince would now get to establish control as a patron; at another level it was about whether the issue was solely a domestic one with the IOA unilaterally empowered to nominate a successor; and thirdly it was about whether the IOC, which had helped India all along, could justifiably interfere in the succession dispute.

  With the princely spheres of influence in cricket and football already well demarcated44 and with Olympic sport gaining in prominence, it wasn’t surprising that the succession dispute became a battle royale between several Indian princes with an interest in sport. Key players were soon split along lines of allegiance and each player tried to make a case for his candidate being the most suitable replacement. Of all the qualities sighted as essential in the successor, the one common denominator was that the candidate had to have the personal means and influence to visit Europe frequently. This was considered crucial to keep a tab on international developments, liaise with the IOC, learn of its plans and programmes and having thus imbibed new ideas implement them back home. Sir Dorabji Tata repeatedly emphasized in all his correspondence with the IOC, that a regular presence in Europe was a necessary precondition.45 This pointed towards two things. First, the global Olympic movement at this stage was still a league of gentlemanly elites from various countries. Second, though the movement rode on nationalist emotions within India, it was still top-driven and controlled by moneyed and political elites. The days of democratization of the movement were still in the future and many would argue that this is a process that, at least in India, is still far from completion, as the subsequent chapters highlight.

  Reacting to the IOC’s suggestion that the Maharaja of Kapurthala, a frequent visitor to Europe, be nominated his successor, Tata in a handwritten letter to the president from Geneva on 16 June 1927 stated that the Indian Olympic Association had already requested ‘His Highness the Maharaja of Burdwan’ to assume the presidency. Burdwan had not yet said yes and Tata appeared apprehensive about his candidacy:

  The Maharaja I know has been the local President for the Presidency of Bengal, but I am not aware that he has taken any personal interest in the working of the All India Olympic Association. I do not know with whom the nomination of the President for All India rests, with your committee or the Indian committee. I imagine that they will be a little jealous of their privileges and claim the right to nominate their own President.46

  In a clear indicator of the battle for control among Indian princes, he admitted that his own presidency so far had created a lot of discord in India from a rival section, which wanted Ranji, the
great princely icon of Indian sport, to lead the Olympic movement. That crisis had only been averted because Tata, himself good friends with Ranji, heartily acquiesced with the suggestion only to be told by the Jam sahib of Nawanagar that he did not want anything to do with the IOA at that stage.47

  Tata personally was in favour of the Maharaja of Kapurthala, who, he thought, was better qualified to represent India at the IOC. ‘Kapurthala is every year in Europe and unlike me or Burdwan can be present at all European functions.’ Because he travelled to India every winter after his European vacation was over, he was also in a position to closely monitor the day-to-day activities of the Indian Association.48

  As the names of Kapurthala, the Jam of Nawanagar and Burdwan were doing the rounds, the powerful Maharaja of Patiala, already a key figure in Indian cricket, threw his hat in the ring. It can be surmised that Patiala’s coming into the fray was the principal reason behind Ranji’s backing off. This was because Patiala had been Ranji’s strongest source of financial support at times of crisis. In fact, the connection between Ranji and Patiala was very well known in Indian sporting circles. Ranji had played for Patiala’s team in 1898—99 and had been his ADC in the years before he won the crown of Nawanagar. While touring Bengal in 1899, Ranji and Patiala had been accorded a royal reception, the Calcutta Town Hall spending the huge sum of Rs 3,000 on the occasion.49

  Patiala’s interest in Olympic affairs fundamentally transformed equations in India. By September 1927, Tata was informing his friend Count Baillet Latour that the Maharaja of Kapurthala had already declined the presidency of the IOA. Burdwan too had decided to withdraw his candidature, clearing the turf for Patiala.50 The dispute lingered, and by early 1928 Tata had developed serious doubts about the suitability of princes who themselves were not sportsmen, heading sporting organizations. In a letter to the count, he suggested that though the maharajas were keen on shooting, hunting, polo and other sporting activities, they had little knowledge of track and field events and not all of them were frequent visitors to Europe. He emphasized that the only reason he had backed Kapurthala so far was because Kapurthala visited Europe regularly. However, he had since then realized that the Maharaja had little knowledge of Olympic sports and would hardly be of any practical assistance to the IOC’s cause. In Tata’s words: