The India story of sweat, tears and glory

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By Boria Majumdar & Nalin Mehta [2]

Rs 499

Even as the excitement over the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony settles down and everyone comes around to the view that director Danny Boyle’s show was truly and completely inspired by Bollywood, the question uppermost in most Indian minds is: Can a country of a billion people better the three-medal tally achieved at the 2008 Beijing Olympics?

India’s 20 medals — both in team sport and individual events — in 22 Olympic Games may not reflect well on the country, but behind each medal is a story of sweat, tears, administrative woes and financial troubles that needs telling if we are, indeed, ever going to get serious about sports.
In their book Olympics: The India Story, Revised and Updated, authors Boria Majumdar and Nalin Mehta trace the journey of the country’s first Olympic participation in 1920, the Freedom Movement and the shift of power with Independence, to modern India’s first individual gold from shooter Abhinav Bindra in 2008.
The book is replete with anecdotes and stories surrounding Olympic participants, often touching on off-the-field happenings, too.
The year 1928 was the first time that an Indian team won a gold at the Olympics (hockey), and more than a triumph of sport, it was about that magical feeling of breaking free for the nation and team members Dhyan Chand, Feroze Khan, Ali Shaukat, Jaipal Singh, Sayed Yusuf, Kher Singh Gill. A colonised India under British rule had achieved something that it could call its own.
The authors write, “At a time when nationalist sentiment in India was gaining pace, the Olympics was the only international arena where Indian-ness could be projected on the sporting field… The Games also offered an opportunity for the once subordinate to ‘beat the master at his own game’.” (In the final
match against the Netherlands, Kher Singh scored two goals, defeating the hosts 3-0.)
Olympics: The India Story, Revised and Updated takes us back to 1920s, when India’s first sports club, the Deccan Gymkhana — with Jamshedji Tata as its president — raised subscriptions to finance a team to Antwerp in 1920 and the consequent setting up of the Indian Olympic Association.
India’s participation — and performance — did not evoke a great response from the nation, but it did trigger an urge for power and control among the Indian princes.
Four chapters have been devoted to India’s eight glorious gold medals in hockey — in the colonial era and post-Independence — the formation of the Indian Hockey Federation, and the decline thereafter.
Besides tournament details, the book also throws up interesting tales of the legendary Dhyan Chand and the first time India and Pakistan fielded their teams in the 1948 London Olympics — where players who had till then played together in British India, now represented two separate nations.
There is special mention of Dhyan Chand — a sepoy with the Indian Army on a meagre salary — and his magical prowess and popularity, and even his astonishment at owing a pair of expensive Austin Reed trousers during his visit to London in 1928, giving hockey and its history a high emotional quotient.
Independent India’s first gold in 1948 “unleashed some of the wildest celebrations Indian hockey has ever known”, the authors write. “If sport is in fact a metaphor for war, then hockey proved to be India’s most trusted weapon in the troubled years after Partition,” they add.
Interestingly, the book highlights the power struggle, provincialism and financial crisis that marred the national sport even then.
The first India-Pakistan face-off in the 1956 Olympics final in Melbourne finds special mention. Captain Balbir Singh Senior is quoted as saying: “That day when I led my team out to victory rostrum, I swelled with pride.” But the 1-0 victory margin brought with it indications of the downfall that the country was about to witness. Willic, a German hockey star, summed up the rough Indian style of play, as they struggled during the 1960 Rome and 1964 Tokyo Olympics: “You taught us and the world how to play, but now it is you who have forgotten how to play.”
While trying to find answers to India’s poor show at the Olympics, the authors also focus on the two Asian Games — 1951 and 1982 — that put India on the world map, as well as the advent of colour television and India’s stupendous Cricket World Cup feat. “Cricket took over with India’s triumph in 1983 and television created conditions for cricket to become a central component of new notions of national identity and consumer spectacle… In the process, however, hockey and other sports got left behind by the cold logic of capitalism and expanding markets.”
A special chapter has been devoted to the Indian Army and its contribution to sport, leading to Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore’s silver medal at the Athens.
Also finding mention are those who went close, but could not bring home the glory. Be it Milkha Singh’s split second decision for a quick glance that robbed him of a bronze in Rome or P.T. Usha’s agony in 1984 Los Angeles — the writers capture it all.
So what can we expect in London? Will the turnaround happen in 2012?
“It would be foolish to make predictions,” say the authors, before adding, “Sport in India is no longer a vehicle for merely imaging the nation, but has become one by which to transcend the nation… London, may well be a watershed event in the history of Indian sport.”