Knock-down, drag-out tale of Indian boxing

[1]

By Shamya Dasgupta [2]

Rs 250

If there is one criticism about sports literature in India, it is simply this — there is just not enough of it. Over the years, books relating to sports in India have tended — perhaps inevitably — to be on cricket. Cricket dominates not just the headlines, but also the most mindspace and, consequently, much of the literary effort has tended to be on or around the willow game.

This, of course, refers to writing in the English language. The picture in the regional languages is a little different.
Occasionally, someone takes the trouble to put together a publication on either football or hockey, sometimes tennis, and once every four years there is the inevitable trickle of books — mostly statistic-based — on the Olympic Games.
On the lesser-known, or lesser-followed sports, there is an acute dearth, which is why Shamya Dasgupta’s labour of love — the catchily-titled Bhiwani Junction — on boxing is a welcome addition to the thinly-populated shelf of Indian sports books.
Dasgupta, who was drawn to pugilism at a young age thanks to a combination of factors, but then “chickened out” of serious boxing, as he puts it himself, nevertheless retained his affection for the noble sport, and has in a significant way, repaid something of that emotional debt in the form of this book, which takes a long and searching look at the sport, its roots and where he sees it going.
The trigger, if one is allowed to use a shooting term here, is obviously the explosion of interest in the sport of kings in the aftermath of Vijender Singh’s bronze medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The lanky lad from the dusty bylanes of Kaluwas village in Haryana’s Bhiwani district, with something of a family history in the sport, became the first Indian to haul in a medal from the boxing ring, and in the process kicked off a revolution. The fact that the country has fielded its biggest ever contingent of pugilists at the ongoing London Olympics — seven men and one woman — is in its own way an acknowledgement of the sea change that has come into the sport.
Fan of Vijender he may be, but Dasgupta’s hero is Akhil Kumar, the one Indian fighter to give his fellows the confidence and courage to believe that they could take on the best in the world. Indian boxing has a hoary history, tracing its lineage back to the days of British rule, but had for reasons well-documented by the writer, fallen out of the public eye.
From its early beginnings in Kolkata and Mumbai (both metropolises then of course differently nomenclatured) to the days boxing was supported largely by either the Anglo-Indian community or the armed forces, Dasgupta manages to succinctly compress the early days but his book acquires real meat only in the modern context. He does deal briefly with the sport’s legendary administrators and former boxers, but reserves his best for what has happened in and around the ring over the last decade or so.
So if the likes of P.L. Roy, Santosh Dey, P.N. “Baboo” Mitter, Buddy D’Souza and Padam Bahadur Mall to the more recent Ashok Mattoo, Abhay Chautala and R.S. Dalal, Gurcharan Singh, Venkatesan Devarajan, Zoramntanga and others flicker across the pages, it is understandable, for today, Indian boxing stands on a cusp. From a past in parts glorious and yet not so shiny to a present pregnant with hope, the journey of Indian boxing has been a roller-coaster ride.
There is an insider’s viewpoint to Dasgupta’s work. For not only do pugilists and administrators figure in his account, but also those who are the real heart and soul of the sport — the coaches. Significant sections of Bhiwani Junction are devoted to the formative and supportive roles played by two vastly diverse characters, Jagdish Singh of Bhiwani and national coach Gurbux Singh Sandhu.
From the former’s stables in Bhiwani emerged Akhil, Vijender and a host of others who are in and around national contention today, while the latter as the chief coach of the national squad for close to two decades was the one under whom these fighters have acquired what can be called the final bits of polish. Or, as in the author’s words, Jagdish, Indian boxing’s most celebrated nursery teacher, and Sandhu, the principal of the graduation school.
The role these men have played in carrying the sport to its current high is well researched and presented, as is their fallout over their inevitable differences. In doing so, Dasgupta has gone to the nub of the problems that affect almost every Indian sport, which are too vast and intricate to detail in the course of a review.
He has also put together a cohesive sociological account of who and what the Indian athlete is all about, where and how s/he comes from, and under what circumstances. This alone is material for another book on a bigger scale, and one that needs telling, too, because it would go a long way in explaining why India fares as it does in edition after edition of the Olympics.
Suffice to say, this is a work that not only deals authoritatively with its basic subject, but also, by association and investigation, is a snapshot of the bigger picture. All of it presented in easy, flowing prose that pulls the reader into the tale from beginning to end.