It was to these Games that Dhyan Chand’s hockey players and the rest of the Indian athletes, still a part of the British empire, now headed. Interestingly, when the Indians, twice Olympic champions, set sail from Bombay on what was perhaps the mission of their lives, there was scarcely anybody around to see the team off. As recounted by one of the team members:
Only the Bombay Customs players, Aslam, Feroze Khan, Jagat Singh and Brewin were with us, so were Behram Doctor and S.K. Mukherjee. The pier was crowded but none took notice of us world champions! Those of us who had been on tour before found this a new experience and not a pleasant one.12
The first part of the journey was rough due to turbulent seas and all the players, except C. Tapsell, E.J.C. Cullen and Assistant Manager Pankaj Gupta, were seasick. While most of them recovered in a few days, Joe Phillips and Babu Nimal from Bombay repeatedly requested the team management to send them back. By now the team was worried about this lack of practice. The Statesman correspondent accompanying the hockey players noted that they were used to practising on the deck but the rough seas precluded that possibility until the fifth day of the voyage when they played hockey for an hour.13
In fact, only when the boat docked at Aden were the Indians able to practice full throttle. In Aden, the Indians had four hours on shore and kept themselves busy. The seriousness with which the hockey players were approaching their title defence was apparent from the fact that even on this small break in their voyage all they wanted to do was play. Soon after arrival the visitors went looking for a hockey ground and found the regimental training field of the 5/14 Punjab Regiment, which was then stationed at Aden. Members of the regiment, who had no prior knowledge of the arrival of the Indian Olympic team, were puzzled but elated at suddenly seeing their countrymen. This episode was documented by one of the players in his diary:
We left the boat with hockey sticks in hope that some hockey field or a plot of ground might be available where we could stretch our limbs. We asked the bus driver to take us to a hockey ground and he took us to a sandy plot of land, level but full of pieces of bricks, which we afterwards found to be the regimental ground.14
Once the nets were put up, the Indians asked the officer present if the ground could be used for practice. An unnamed Indian player later recounted to a newspaper reporter that at first, ‘He hesitated but as soon as he discovered we were the All-India team and that Dhyan Chand was with us…he allowed us to play.’15 The name of Dhyan Chand worked like a charm and once the regiment learnt of the team’s arrival the bugle was sounded; in five minutes the entire battalion came out of its barracks to watch the players. It was a surprise gift for them and many of the subedars and privates who knew Dhyan Chand were pleased to see him in Aden. They felt embarrassed because the Indians had come without prior notice and hastily tried to put together a civic reception for the world champions.
During their brief stay at Aden, the Indian hockey players also found time to watch a game of football and were amazed at the high standard and popularity of the sport. As an Indian player recalled: ‘A football match was being played on an adjoining ground and there were large crowds watching the game. I was surprised to see football popular in a desert and was more surprised to see the Arabs and Somalis play barefeet…The scouts from Calcutta instead of going to Quetta, Rangoon and Bangalore would be well advised to come to Aden. I found four players good enough for any Calcutta team. Their dribbling and ball control were revelations to me.’16
Getting Göring and Goebbels’ Autograph:
In the Heart of the Third Reich
For the Indian team, surviving as it was on a budget, the journey to Berlin was not the most comfortable. Having docked in Marseilles late on the night of 10 July, the Indians were to catch a connecting train to Paris en route to Berlin, but they missed the connection. As Dhyan Chand explained: ‘Dock workers there were on strike, and the passengers were put to great difficulty in getting their baggage through. It took us time to unload our luggage ourselves and get it through the Customs and other formalities, and the result was that we missed our train to Paris. We were lodged in an ordinary hotel in Marseilles for the night’. 17 It was only on the morning of 11 July that the Indians boarded a train for Paris. In Paris, as in Aden, not many were aware of their arrival and the players spent a quiet day, undisturbed by the city’s sports media. For some of them ‘this was fame with a vengeance’.18 In sharp contrast to the luxuries afforded to many modern sportsmen, this team of Olympic champions arranged its own travel at the lowest cost. Dhyan Chand’s recollection of this journey was written in words that leap out of the mists of the past to stab at the heart. As he put it in his usual nonchalant way: ‘We took a night train to Berlin. It was a job even to secure the third class seats provided to us. The night was cold and there was no sleeping accommodation. Cheerfully we forgot all these comforts. We were on a mission for our country’.19
The Indians finally landed in Berlin on 13 July and were accorded a splendid welcome at Berlin station. They may not have received a send-off worthy of the Olympic champions in Bombay but in a Berlin striving hard to put its best step forward, they were received as heroes. Dr Diem, chairman of the organizing committee of the Berlin Olympiad, welcomed the Indians, his speech being relayed through a microphone to a large waiting crowd. In a reminder of the fact that they were playing on behalf of the British Indian empire, ‘God Save the King’ was played, and a band escorted the Indians to a bus, which drove through the streets of Berlin to the city hall, where the Mayor of Berlin welcomed the Indians according to established Olympic tradition. Each member of the team was presented with an album containing pictures of Berlin, and Dhyan Chand received a medal:20 his celebrity status had preceded him.
By all accounts, the Third Reich pulled out all stops in welcoming the Indians. Here, in the heart of Britain’s greatest adversary, they were not just colonial subjects but honoured guests. After the welcome ceremony, the Indians were motored to the Olympic village 20 miles from the city. At the entrance to the village, the commandant in charge of security received the team. ‘God Save the King’ was played once again and the Union Jack with the star of India was hoisted next to the village gate. Eleven nations had already arrived and later the band members escorted the Indians to their cottage at the further end of the village. Unlike in 1932, when the team was quartered four men to a cottage, at Berlin the team stayed in one barrack containing 11 rooms and a common room.21 This was five-star treatment by any standards. Dhyan Chand wrote:
The cottage had 20 beds, a telephone and a refrigerator. Everything was kept spick and span, and every minute detail of our comforts had been attended to. Two stewards were there to look after us. One was Otto, an old-seasoned sailor who had visited India several times and spoke English well. The other was named Schmidt, and he spoke English haltingly. 22
In a reflection of the importance accorded to the Olympiad by the top brass of the Third Reich, the Games Village was often visited by top dignitaries. Hermann Göring, whose Air Force just four years later was to launch the London Blitz, and Joseph Goebbels, who had designed much of the propaganda around the Games, took personal interest. A bemused Dhyan Chand noted, ‘One day while we were in the dining hall, who should walk in but the burly Hermann Goering, clad in his military attire! We were after him in a trice to get his autograph. Later some of us obtained Dr. Goebbels’ autograph.’23 The Indians, it is evident from contemporary reports, were impressed with the arrangements and there was no grouse except on the question of distance.
But there was a hockey title to be defended. The day after they arrived in Berlin, the Indians went out to check the venue for the hockey competition. An unnamed player noticed the differences between the facilities at Los Angeles and Berlin: ‘The Olympic stadium here is a bit smaller than the American one. There is one advantage here—all the stadiums are located on one big plot of ground, whereas in America, barring the swimming and the main stadium, the others are quite apart.’24 The Indi
ans also had to adjust to the weather. Writing to his family back home, an Indian player mentioned that the climate in Berlin was chilly and on days it rained consistently. A military officer had been appointed as the attaché of the Indian team and they were being well looked after. This was essential as the city was far away and the team was feeling a bit out of sorts because of the distance.25
‘The Shock of Defeat’: They Could be Beaten
Dhyan Chand’s team had begun its tour preparations with a shock defeat to a local team in Delhi. Now in the first warm-up game on German soil, the team lost again. The Indians suffered a shock defeat against a German XI, losing 1–4. The Delhi defeat could have been dismissed as a one-off, but it had already planted the seeds of doubt in Dhyan Chand’s mind. This German blitzkrieg in Berlin was more serious and it served as a perfect wake-up call. The Indians now knew that they were not invincible and the Europeans had caught up. It retrospect, it served Dhyan Chand well because it led to a complete reappraisal of team strategy. Sixteen years later, the proud Indian captain wrote:
As long as I live, I shall never forget this match or get over the shock of defeat which still rankles in me. Hitler’s Germany had made great strides in their game…The result of the play shocked us so much that we could not sleep that night. Some of us even did not have our dinner. At night Pankaj Gupta, Jaffar and myself went into a conference, in which Jagannath also joined. We were unanimous that a substitute be obtained in place of Masood. That same night Gupta rushed to Berlin and sent a cable to Kunwar Sir Jagdish Prasad, president of the IHF, asking him to send Dara, failing whom Frank Wells or Eric Henderson, and also Pinniger. We decided that if Pinniger was not available, Cullen of Madras should be posted as center-half and not Masood. This we did until Dara arrived just a day before we played France in the semi-finals.’26
Dara was a Lance Naik stationed at Jhelum and was familiar as an inside forward with Dhyan Chand’s play.27 Money was short but such was the urgency that the federation tried to arrange Dara’s passage by air so that he could reach Berlin before the Olympic matches began on 2 August. Despite the best efforts of the IHF, Dara had to wait in Karachi for nine days before he managed a seat in an aircraft. He left by Imperial Airways, entrained at Brindisi, reached Rome, rested there for a day and finally reached Berlin by air to play in the semi-final against France the next day. This was still considered quick work and the team thanked the federation for this admirable handling of Dara’s last-minute inclusion.28
The psychological impact of that early defeat was enormous and it set off a great deal of criticism. The Statesman, which had a correspondent covering the hockey team’s travails, now devoted an entire special report titled ‘Why SOS Cable was sent to India’. The dispatch from Berlin began with the following post-mortem:
Friends in India must have been startled by the cable which Professor Jagannath sent to the Indian Hockey Federation’s President suggesting that Pinniger and an inside right should be sent to Berlin by air. Why this was thought necessary was explained to me by Mr Gupta, the assistant manager. It was felt that the team had no regular inside right and when they met at Bombay, Dhyan Chand at once suggested to the manager that Frank Wells should have been included in the team as Wells had proved a good partner to him in New Zealand. At Bombay, it was felt that with Emmett as inside right the team might shape up well.29
That the Indians were aware of the onerous nature of the task at hand was borne out when Professor Jagannath declared in an interview that the standard of European hockey had improved considerably in the four years between 1932 and 1936. In the same interview, he sounded optimistic about India’s chances of defending the title they had won at Amsterdam in 1928 and defended easily at Los Angeles in 1932. ‘Our Indian team is a good blend of youth and experience and we shall do our best to maintain the high standard of Indian hockey. Dhyan Chand and R.J. Allen, center forward and goalkeeper, are the only members of the 1928 team, who have retained their places this year, but many of the others now with us were members of the 1932 team, which visited Europe after the Los Angeles Games.’30
After the shock defeat in the first practice game, the Indians started playing every day but were still dissatisfied with some of their combinations. They went through rigorous physical drills in the morning and in the afternoon divided themselves into two sides to practice match situations for more than an hour. By now the players had settled down and the thinking was that there was no cause for alarm, with six practice games still to be played. Interestingly, these practice games were not played in front of spectators. They were played on private grounds and the media wasn’t permitted to cover these matches. The teams were allowed to make as many changes as they liked and none of the matches had an official status. In the second practice game, the Indians were back on song and won comfortably. This performance was a major confidence booster, as evident from the following recollection, ‘Cullen played a very good game at center half and Jaffer was tried at inside right, where he was a success. If nobody arrives from India, I think Jaffer will be our inside right and Cullen centre half.’31
That the locals too were warming up to the Indians once they started winning was evident after the practice game in Stettin, which the Indians won 5–1. Interestingly, Dhyan Chand refereed the game. The visit to Stettin, 100 miles from Berlin, reminded many in the team of their visit to New Zealand when swarms of autograph hunters never let the players out of sight. There were also a series of formal and informal functions organized by the locals to make the visitors feel at home.32
The shock defeat in the first practice game had prompted the team management to institute strict codes of discipline. As M.N. Masood writes, ‘It was also decided that every member should go to bed at ten in the evening. However, Mr Jagannath, Mr Gupta, Dhyan Chand and Gurcharan Singh went to see Menaka’s dancing the fourth day after this decision, and Mr Jagannath went again the following evening, returning at two in the morning.’33 Newspaper archives and contemporary reports of the period give no clue about the identity of the intriguing Ms Menaka but it’s clear that it wasn’t just all work for the Indians in Berlin; they were also having a good time. As Masood noted, ‘the senior members seldom went to bed at the fixed hour, and as the days passed, no restriction in regard to bed hours appeared to bind anyone until abruptly the following notice was seen on 28th July: “It has been observed that the members of the hockey team are not keeping regular hours. In the interest of sound training and physical fitness, it is essential to observe regularity in meals, physical training and rest…”’34
For many of India’s competitors in beating Dhyan Chand’s team would have been the greatest challenge. And it seemed that they would stop at nothing to make this possible. A controversy suddenly arose about the amateur status of the players and a question was raised with hockey’s international administrators about how India’s supposedly amateur players could stay away from work for so long to play hockey. Of course, every other participating country could have been asked the same question. Dhyan Chand narrated this distraction thus:
While we were in Berlin, a point was raised before the International Hockey Federation (FIH) that the Indian team was not composed of all amateurs. They posed the question: How could a player be away from his country and place of work for more than five months at a stretch if he is an amateur? Were the players being reimbursed for the pecuniary losses they were supposed to suffer? They gave the example of our 1935 six-month tour of New Zealand. We succeeded in convincing the authorities that the players were on leave with or without pay, and that the IHF did not reimburse us in any way except meeting our normal expenses. According to my information, Mr G.D. Sondhi was responsible for convincing the FIH gods about the bona fides of our players.35
The inimitable Mr Sondhi had worked his charm again.
‘Marriage Procession of Rich Hindu Gentleman’:
The Refusal to Salute Hitler
The Berlin Olympics were declared open on 1 August 1936. M.N. Mas
ood, a member of the team, has left a minute-by-minute description of the opening ceremony that provides fascinating reading. It was nothing less than a grand spectacle of Hitler’s ‘thousand-year Reich’. The Wermacht, as we have already noted, was fully mobilized in setting up the support infrastructure and the competitors were transported to the venue in Army trucks. The Indians, with Dhyan Chand carrying the flag, were by far the most colourfully dressed of the contingents on show. As Masood noted, ‘With our golden “kullahs” and light blue turbans, our contingent appeared as members of a marriage procession of some rich Hindu gentleman, rather than competitors in the Olympic Games’.36 But this was no ordinary ‘marriage procession’—its members were about to make a huge political statement by becoming one of the only two contingents who refused to salute Adolf Hitler.
The opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics was one of the great set-pieces of the Nazi era. As the giant Zeppelin, the Hindenberg, circled majestically over the stadium, Hitler and his Minister of Interior arrived amid great fanfare to inspect a military guard of honour. M.N. Masood noted the fervour that the Führer generated:
When the Führer neared the Stadium, a multitude of young boys who were watching the proceedings from outside, saw their idol approaching towards them. With one great cry, they shouted ‘Heil, Hitler!’ and broke the silence of the Maifield.37
In four years, that war cry would reverberate around the world but the lightening Panzer blitzkriegs and the horrors of the holocaust were still in the future. For the moment, at least some Indians were impressed by this disciplined spectacle of the resurgent Third Reich. As ‘the hundred thousand Germans in the Stadium stood to their feet and sang with one voice’ the two German national hymns, ‘Deutschland’ and ‘Horst Wessel-Lied’, Masood writes that it ‘made a strange impression’ upon the Indian contingent and ‘not an eye was left dry’.
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