MAHATMA ON THE PITCH

Praise for the book Kausik has done some foundational work in the realm of sports scholarship in India. I hope this book will break further barriers. —Boria Majumdar, Sports journalist, academician and author. Bandyopadhyay’s book is an innovative take on one of the intriguing questions of Indian history: Did Mahatma Gandhi have an impact on cricket? Using a variety of sources, Bandyopadhyay offers a well-researched and readable account. —Ronojoy Sen, Author of Nation at Play: A History of Indian Sport. The intersection between culture, nation, history, politics and sport lies at the heart of understanding a global phenomenon. Kausik Bandyopadhyay’s intriguing connection of Gandhi and sport in India will broaden that understanding. —Professor Brian Stoddart, Historian, columnist and commentator.





Published by Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd 2017 7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj New Delhi 110002 Copyright © Kausik Bandyopadhyay 2017 The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by him/her which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-81-291-xxxx-x First impression 2017 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The moral right of the author has been asserted. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

For Papui, Mingki and Kumar —my three musketeers

CONTENTS Prologue: Why Gandhi and Cricket? 1. Mahatma Gandhi: The Making of a Global Indian Icon 2. Indian Cricket: The Making of a Global Indian Game 3. Scoring off the Field: The Story of Sporting Gandhi 4. The Story of Gandhian Cricket: Cricket’s Tryst with Gandhi 5. From Community to Communal: The Pentangular Debate 6. Gandhi’s Straight Drive: Mahatma on the Pitch 7. Let Him be the Third Umpire: The Pentangular Pandemonium 8. Politics at Play: Last Rites of the Pentangular 9. Postscript: Cricket and Gandhi Since Independence Acknowledgements Bibliography

PROLOGUE Why Gandhi and Cricket? In May 2016, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and cricket featured together in the Indian media for intriguing reasons. It was with reference to one Social Science textbook prescribed for class IX in Tripura that ‘a cricketing Gandhi’ made headlines. Written by Kalyan Chaudhuri, the book featured no national leaders except for Gandhi, and even he was mentioned ‘not for his contribution to India’s freedom movement but for his views on cricket.’1 There was much political hullabaloo over the issue as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the other non-left political parties condemned the Left Government of Tripura for deliberately doing away with the history of India’s freedom struggle and its illustrious leaders from the course on History in an attempt to brainwash students with communist ideas. The Tripura Board of Secondary Education (TBSE) denied any pressure on the part of the government in the process and defended the action by referring to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) guidelines as the basis for framing the new History syllabus for class IX.2 My intention here is not to examine the validity of arguments offered by interested political parties and the media over the syllabus controversy. What struck me in this entire debate was not so much the resentment about the omission of Gandhi as a freedom fighter in the book or syllabus but the crass public indifference to, and a kind of disapproval of, Gandhi’s cricket connection in colonial India. This

is but natural in a country where aspects of everyday culture like sports have long been ignored in educational curricula and academic research. However, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in India of late has taken up the matter in right earnest and included in the Social Science syllabus of class IX the history of cricket, where Gandhi admittedly finds a worthy place for his critical views on the game.3 Mahatma Gandhi and cricket are two of India’s biggest global emblems. While Gandhi remains India’s most enduring global icon well into the twenty-first century, cricket, the country’s most assertive national obsession, has become India’s most celebrated global brand along with Bollywood since the last decades of the twentieth century. Both have attracted tons of writings over the years, but the connection between Gandhi and cricket has not been explored with much acumen. A few books4 deal with Gandhi’s views on cricket briefly while some articles5 throw insufficient light on this untold relationship between the most important man of India’s freedom struggle and the most important game of contemporary India. The points and arguments offered are mostly repetitive, drawing heavily on the two classic histories of Indian cricket written to date.6 Written by Ramachandra Guha and Boria Majumdar, these works make relational references to Gandhi in their narratives. Yet, while useful in exploring Gandhi’s rare interactions with cricket, these works miss out the broader perspective of Gandhian ideas and assumptions that help situate his connection with the game. At first sight, a straightforward narrative of Gandhi’s life, drawing on his own autobiography and the hundreds of available biographies, points to the futility of forcing the man onto the sports/cricket field for the sake of writing a book. Yet, Gandhi’s lack of interest in, and general indifference to, modern sports, and his absence from the games field does not in any way preclude the reciprocal impact— both real and virtual—that Gandhi and cricket have had upon themselves and upon the nation. Mihir Bose, the renowned England-based Indian sports writer, for example, has attributed cricket’s becoming of India’s number one

sport replacing football after Independence to an intriguing Gandhian connection: It is possible that, had India won its Independence from Britain in different circumstances, cricket might not have occupied the position it does in India today. Had the British been overthrown out of India in the violent, revolutionary way proposed by the Indian nationalist Subhas Bose (1897– 1945), rather than agreed to withdraw peacefully, football rather than cricket would have become the major game. But while there was no revolutionary overthrow the British withdrew because of a combination of factors: exhaustion from the war, the potential revolutionary situation, and an astute Nationalist movement, led by Gandhi and his western Indian allies who were based around Bombay where cricket was strong. Cricket’s path was also smoothed by the fact that Gandhi’s campaign was motivated by love, or, at least, so it appeared. He wanted Indians to hate the actions and results of British policy in India, not the British themselves. Unique amongst nationalist movements, Gandhi taught the Indians to accept the good that was in the British, while rejecting the harm that they were doing to India and its people. This meant that, after Independence, there was no contradiction in accepting cricket— it could very simply be seen as one of the British ‘good things’ which ought to be retained. Cricket, without any fuss or much debate, was seen as part of the British system of which Indians approved.7 This explanation may look superficial, because, like cricket, other western sports such as football and hockey were similarly picked up by Indians in the line of the so-called Gandhian preference for the ‘British good things’, while cricket became the most important sport in India only in the 1980s, surpassing football. As Vinay Lal contends, ‘The observations about how the sport history of India would have been different had Subhas Bose prevailed over Gandhi should be viewed partly as a tongue-in-cheek remark and partly as a remark that deserves serious consideration since it implicitly delves into what we might call politics of knowledge. It’s certainly true that Bengal is to soccer as Gujarat (or Maharashtra) is to cricket. But I still feel that it overplays the rivalry between Bose and Gandhi.’8 Yet, the attempt to explore a Gandhian connection in cricket’s journey in independent India has much to commend it. Berry Sarbadhikary captured this connection more aptly even before India’s Independence:

Cricket is a fascinating subject but Indian cricket is more so because of the peculiar traits of the Indian people who play it. … To point this out is not to extol the Indians at Cricket as against others, just as Gandhiji’s loincloth does not necessarily constitute the ideal in the Indian national dress nor an example to the rest of the world. Yet, both are significant through the game or through the kit—for the better or for the worse.9 The life and afterlife of Gandhi coincides with cricket’s evolution as an Indian game. While the real occasions of meeting between Gandhi and cricket alias sport were very few—he probably never played or watched the game beyond his schooldays—the connections in terms of reciprocal impact were more intimate. This was because politics and sports go hand in hand in modern India. The points of convergence and conflict between Gandhi and cricket, therefore, merit attention and exploration. Mahatma on the Pitch is an attempt to identify these points of convergence and conflict. In this book, I set out some intriguing questions concerning the fascinating relationship between Gandhi and cricket: Did Gandhi ever play cricket? Did cricket ever figure in the Gandhian world of thought? What views did the most important man in the history of India’s freedom struggle have on the game that dominates Indian national consciousness in the twenty-first century? Were there any connections between Gandhi and cricket during the high tide of the national movement? Did Gandhi or his ideas make any impact on the game? Did he ever oppose the cause of cricket? Did cricket ever invoke Gandhi and his ideology after his death? These questions may seem as remote as Gandhi’s tryst with cricket! Mahatma on the Pitch seeks answers to these apparently quirky questions by exploring the intriguing rendezvous between two of the most enduring phenomena of modern India: Mahatma Gandhi, probably the greatest Indian icon of the twentieth century and Indian cricket, arguably the most assertive Indian national emblem in the twenty-first-century world. The story begins with Gandhi’s sporting pursuit in his childhood/schooldays in Rajkot (chapter 1), explores cricket’s evolution in India (chapter 2) and its tryst with Gandhi and his ideas and actions (chapters 3 and 4), twists at Gandhi’s most significant

comment on cricket against the ‘communal’ Bombay Pentangular tournament in 1940 (chapters 5–8), and ends with cricket’s status in the context of Gandhi’s afterlife and memorialization (chapter 9). The ideas and impacts of the British imperial ethic, nationalism, racialism, politics, caste movement, untouchability, communalism, regionalism, urbanity, commercialism, and so on, come into play in weaving the threads of the story. In the process, rereading Gandhi’s comments on Bombay Pentangular cricket in 1940, it brings into focus how the most important icon of our national movement viewed the most important sport of twenty-first century India. Had Gandhi been alive, the book argues, he might have been the happiest Indian to see cricket’s becoming of a great unifying force in independent India, as an Indian revolution has transformed the world of cricket in the new century. Notes 1. Barman, Priyanka Deb, ‘Marx in, Indian history out of school books in Left- ruled Tripura’, Hindustan Times, 24 May 2016, http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/marxinindianhistoryoutofschoolbooksinl eftruledtripura/story2rfODG2whnE9FYnTCPrINP.Html (Accessed 8 February 2017); ‘Tripura textbook slashes national icons, features Gandhi’s views on cricket’, Indiatoday. in, 25 May 2016, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/tripurahistorybookflaws/1/677111. html (Accessed 13 February 2017); ‘Do you know Mahatma Gandhi’s views on cricket? Read Tripura school textbook’, Z News, 24 May 2016, http://zeenews.india.com/news/india/do-you-know-mahatma-gandhis-views- on-cricket-read-tripura-school-text-book_1888457.html (Accessed 29 October 2016). 2. Ibid. Also see, ‘Gandhi erased from Tripura textbook’, The Times of India, 26 May 2016, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/GandhierasedfromTripuratextbook/art icleshowprint/52440549.cms?null (Accessed 8 February 2017); ‘Tripura government brainwashing students with communism: Chennithala’, The Indian Express, 1 June 2016, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/indianewsindia/tripuragovtbrainwashing studentswithcommunismchennithala2829437/ (Accessed 8 February 2017); ‘Indian history gives way to Marx, Adolf Hitler in Tripura Textbooks’, DNA, 27 May 2016,

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/reportindianhistorygiveswaytomarxadolfhitlerin tripuratextbooks2217191 (Accessed 8 February 2017). 3. See CBSE syllabus for Social Science, class IX for 2017–18 at https://www.cbsesyllabus.in/class-9/social-science-class-9-syllabus (Accessed 27 April 2017). In its course structure, Unit 1 entitled ‘India and the Contemporary World—1’ has three sub-units of which sub-unit 3 deals with ‘Everyday Life, Culture and Politics’. Section VII of this sub-unit offers a course on cricket as follows: ‘History and Sport: The Story of Cricket: (a) The emergence of cricket as an English sport (b) Cricket and colonialism, (c) Cricket nationalism and de-colonization’, to be taught and included in Chapter 7. 4. Bose, Mihir, A History of Indian Cricket, London: Andre Deutsch Ltd., 1990; Guha, Ramachandra, A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport, Delhi: Picador, 2002; Majumdar, Boria, Twenty-Two Years to Freedom: A Social History of Indian Cricket, New Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2004; Sen, Ronojoy, Nation at Play: A History of Sport in India, New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. 5. See, for example, Guha, Ramachandra, ‘Gandhi and Cricket’, The Hindu, 30 September 2001; Guha, ‘Gandhi: Did He Spin More Than Khadi?’, Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack 2008, http://www.espncricinfo.com/wisdenalmanack/content/story/377985.html (Accessed 29 October 2016); Ganguly, Arghya, ‘The link between cricket and Mahatma Gandhi’, The Times of India, 30 January 2010; Kumar, Ram, ‘Remembering Mahatma Gandhi’s tryst with cricket’, 2 October 2015, http://www.sportskeeda.com/cricket/remembering-mahatma-gandhis-tryst- with-cricket; Mukherjee, Abhishek, ‘Gandhi Jayanti: Mahatma Gandhi’s Cricket Connections and an XI’, 2 October 2014, http://www.cricketcountry.com/articles/gandhi-jayanti-mahatma-gandhis- cricket-connections-and-an-xi-194452 (Accessed 29 October 2016). 6. Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field; Majumdar, Twenty-Two Years to Freedom. 7. Bose, A History of Indian Cricket, p. 17. 8. Cited in Ganguly, ‘The link between cricket and Mahatma Gandhi’. 9. Sarbadhikary, Berry, Indian Cricket Uncovered, Calcutta: Illustrated News, 1945, pp. 9-10.

1 MAHATMA GANDHI The Making of a Global Indian Icon Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi remains an enigma in himself. While Gandhi’s contribution to Indian national movement and his efforts in fomenting a unified Indian nation remain a subject of sober debates, he had to face both the greatest of applaud and the sternest of criticisms during and after his life. If there are people who regard him as the ‘Father of the Nation’, ‘Bapu’ or ‘Mahatma’ or ‘the most radical dissenter of the twentieth century’, there are others who criticize him for his dependence on local elite leaders or ‘subcontractors’, or describe him a ‘masochist’ for his penchant for suffering, and ridicule him as ‘Mohammad Gandhi’ for his excessive sympathy for the Muslims, while his movement, for certain theorists, was nothing more than ‘a mere shadowboxing’. Gandhi’s contemporaries, too, often could not sail in the same boat with him because of ideological and methodological differences, sometimes creating unwanted distance between them or even leading to extreme bitterness in relations. Gandhi’s complex and uneasy relations with Chittaranjan Das, B.R. Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose and Muhammad Ali Jinnah testify to this point. Thus, while the admiration for the Mahatma has given birth to hagiography,

iconography or even mythology around him, the antipathy towards Gandhi similarly ranges from sober critique to rude image-bashing of the man.1 Just as Gandhi acknowledged his language to be ‘aphoristic’ with a lack of ‘precision’ and, therefore, ‘open to several interpretations’; the man’s image too remains open to reconstructions and deconstructions. Yet, Gandhi’s stand in relation to communalism and untouchability remained uncompromising, and in the end, took his life. Writing a few years back, Joseph Lelyveld rightly put him in perspective: ‘Always he (Gandhi) demanded a response in the form of life changes. Even now, he doesn’t let Indians—or, for that matter, the rest of us—off easy.’2 Early life and career Gandhi was born at Porbandar, a little seaport town on the coast of Kathiawar, Gujarat on 2 October 1969. His father Karamchand alias Kaba Gandhi was the diwan (the prime minister) of Porbandar. Gandhi was the last son of Karamchand’s fourth wife, Putlibai, who was a devout Hindu having the greatest impact on Gandhi’s character in his formative years. Gandhi was called ‘Moniya’ by his mother while his father called him ‘Manu’.3 Karamchand later moved to Rajkot where Gandhi had spent most of his childhood and adolescence. Initially, Gandhi studied at a primary school in Porbandar, and then joined a Gujarati Branch School at Rajkot after his father’s transfer. Next, he moved to the Main (City) Taluka School and finally, to Kattyawar High School (later known as Alfred High School), where he passed the Matriculation Examination in 1887. Meanwhile, in 1882, at a tender age of thirteen, he was married to a still younger Kasturbai, daughter of a family friend of the Gandhis, Gokaldass Makanji, thus attaining a premature manhood. Post- school, Gandhi was admitted to BA courses at Samaldas College at Bhavnagar, but he performed so miserably during the first term that both Gandhi and his family were visibly upset about his future. The turning point in his life came at this juncture in 1888, two years after the death of his father and the year his first son, Harilal, was born, when he, at the advice of Mavji Dave, a veteran family

friend, availed the opportunity to go to England to finish his education and obtain a degree in law. ‘The change from Kathiawar to London was extreme; he suffered terribly from solitude’4, while ‘adaptation to western food, dress and etiquette was a painful process’.5 Despite being haunted by shyness and isolation, Gandhi gradually took it upon himself to become an ‘English Gentleman’, and in 1890, he was described by one contemporary as ‘a nut, a masher, a blood—a student more interested in fashion and frivolities than in his studies’.6 However, Gandhi was back to his own self soon and became a proponent of the vegetarian movement in England. He was able to complete his law studies in England successfully and came back to India in 1891 with the conviction of a young, vegetarian barrister-at-law: ‘In conclusion, I am bound to say that during my nearly three years’ stay in England I have left many things undone and have done many things which, perhaps, I might better have left undone, yet I carry one great consolation with me that I shall go back without having taken meat or wine, and that I know from personal experience that there are so many vegetarians in England.’7 More importantly, out of Gandhi’s experiments with simple life later, comments Pyarelal, Gandhi’s personal secretary in his later years and his biographer, ‘grew his movement for the resuscitation of India’s villages, and her dead or dying handicrafts, symbolized by the spinning-wheel; his vegetarianism broadened into his experiments in Ahimsa. These became the two central planks in India’s non-violent struggle for independence under his lead.’8 Back home, Gandhi received a huge blow with the shocking news of his mother’s death. Next few years, Gandhi was in search of a successful law career in Bombay, albeit without avail. He turned out to be what B.R. Nanda calls a ‘briefless barrister’ and soon returned to Rajkot to act as a petition writer. During these years, Gandhi had a taste of European racial prejudice resulting in insult and humiliation. It was at this critical juncture that he got the offer of a job from South Africa. He was commissioned to Pretoria by a great Indian businessman of Durban called Dada Abdullah to fight a lawsuit involving £40,000 on his behalf in 1893. The failed barrister in India decided to try his luck in South Africa for a remuneration of

£105, a first-class return fare and actual expenses.9 This journey was to change not only Gandhi’s life for ever, but also the fate of Indians in South Africa soon, and the life of the Indian nation in the long run.10 The South African sojourn Just on his arrival in South Africa, Gandhi was assaulted at the hands of railway authorities of Pietermaritzburg. But completely ignoring his insult, he decided to stay in South Africa to give his Indian brethrens and sisters there a lead in their crusade against the white man’s colour prejudice and anti-Indian policy. However, it would be sheer over-enthusiasm to say that ‘it was in the waiting room of the Pietermaritzburg Railway Station … that Gandhi conceived the idea of passive resistance or Satyagraha’.11 Yet, the assault at the station was a watershed as it became ‘one of the most creative experiences of his life.’12 In the words of B.R. Nanda, the celebrated biographer of Gandhi, ‘From that hour, he refused to accept injustice as part of the natural—or unnatural—order in South Africa. He would reason; he would plead; he would appeal to the better judgement and latent humanity of the ruling race; he would resist; but he would never be a willing victim of racial arrogance.’13 It was Natal and Transvaal, which became the first political laboratories for testing the efficacy of his globally acclaimed strategy of ‘non-violent satyagraha’. That is why one of his biographers said that, ‘What Gandhi did to South Africa was less important than what South Africa did to him.’14 In the course of his stay in South Africa between 1893 and 1914, a young Indian barrister was transformed into an astute politician. During his first few days there, Gandhi quickly realized that the entire Indian community there suffered in the estimation of the European settlers. This unequal treatment certainly injured his emotions as an Indian. Moreover, Gandhi himself came to be known not as an Indian barrister, but as a ‘coolie barrister’.15 Gandhi’s major involvement in South African politics centred around the franchise question during

the late 1890s. His first act was to stubbornly resist a Natal Government Bill disenfranchising Asiatic settlers by organizing a strong opposition to it through a series of petitions. In 1894, Gandhi helped the Natal Indians set up the Natal Indian congress to fight against the anti-Indian legislation of the Natal Government. During his short stay in India in 1896, Gandhi published a pamphlet, known as The Green Pamphlet, on the grievances of the British Indians in South Africa. It drew the attention of the Government of India towards its responsibilities for their Indian subjects in South Africa. Moreover, it stressed the policy of non-violence for the Indian settlers to follow in their struggle against White discrimination. However, Gandhi preferred to remain mostly silent on the deplorable condition of the Black population in South Africa. Until 1906, the striking feature of his ideology was ‘not merely his reliance upon western examples and values but his dependence on them to the exclusion of anything Indian’.16 Gandhi, therefore, began his career as what Denis Dalton calls ‘a loyalist, totally committed to the values and institutions of the British Empire’.17 Gandhi launched a series of passive resistance movements against the discriminatory laws of the British government in South Africa including the Asiatic Law Amendment Act of the Transvaal Government (1907), the Asiatic Registration Amendment act (No. XXXVI) of 1908, and the Indian Immigrants Regulation Act of 1913. He and his followers waging satyagraha were arrested a number of times. His movement led to the appointment of an enquiry commission under the chairmanship of Mr Justice W.H. Solomon in 1913 in order to enquire into, and report on, the general grievances of the Indians in South Africa and the demands made by Gandhi to that effect. The Commission’s recommendations towards removing the grievances of the Indian community provided the basis of the Indians’ Relief Act, No. 22 of 1914 while Gandhi’s separate communications with General Smuts in resolving other administrative matters came to be known as the Gandhi-Smuts Agreement. ‘Indians’ Relief Act and Gandhi-Smuts Agreement marked a distinct triumph of the Gandhian technique of satyagraha as applied to the Indian struggle in South Africa till 1914.’18 To use Gandhi’s own words: ‘the Settlement may well be called our Magna

Charta, because it has vindicated passive resistance as a lawful, clean weapon, and has given in passive resistance a new strength to the community and I consider it an infinitely superior force to that of the vote, which history shows has often been turned against the voters themselves.’19 Throughout his South African career, the astute politician in Gandhi was always careful enough to serve only the Indian interests there. This was probably to assure the British Government of India and South Africa of the Indians’ loyalty to them, and in turn, ensure their sympathy for the grievances of Indians in South Africa. Given the heavy odds Gandhi had to fight against, he had to evolve a strategy to suit the situation facing him in South Africa. Yet, a large section of Indians, particularly the Muslims, were unhappy with the Indians Relief Act and Gandhi-Smuts Agreement. In fact, the Gandhian movement was more or less concerned with the interests of the upper-class Indians in South Africa. When the issue of the Natal Indian workers was brought into focus in 1913, Gandhi was about to leave South Africa. More importantly, Gandhi played little part in Black politics in South Africa since he was least concerned with the interests of the Black Africans. ‘If the black population did not figure in Gandhi’s campaign’, argues B.R. Nanda in defence of Gandhi, ‘it was partly because it did not suffer from the specific disabilities against which Indians were protesting.’20 It is also doubtful whether at the turn of the century, the Black population in South Africa would have readily accepted a young Indian barrister as their leader. Nanda also points out that, if Gandhi had clashed head- on with the Boer-British combine on the all-embracing issue of racial equality, he would have been bundled out of South Africa. In that event, he feels, the cause of racial equality would have suffered in the long run.21 However, despite the political imperatives of Gandhian movement in South Africa, it appears from a careful study of Gandhi’s writings such as The Green Pamphlet, that he accepted the racial hierarchy of society in his subconscious.22 In fact, the young and energetic M.K. Gandhi was then only maturing into a prudent politician, testing his political strategies to a safe, limited concern, far away from becoming an icon in the eyes of Indians all

over. He was still to tread all the way to the glory of becoming the ‘Bapu’ or the ‘Mahatma’. Homecoming of the rising star Several farewell meetings were organized to bid adieu to Gandhi in early 1914. He finally left South Africa on 18 July 1914 for England to meet his political guru Mahamati Gopal Krishna Gokhale and consult him about his future plans. Gandhi’s return to India on 9 January 1915 also elicited great public reception and he was given a hero’s welcome. Lord Hardinge honoured him with a Kaiser-e-Hind gold medal. The ‘callow diffident youth’ of 1893 was now a notable man of great self-respect earned through a hard experience in South Africa. While Gandhi already had his own understanding of Indian politics and society by then, as revealed through his famous tract Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule which he wrote during his return voyage from England to South Africa in late 1909, conditions were not ripe yet for him to join politics in India. Gandhi began to learn Indian conditions more realistically by visiting and coming in touch with people at various places in the next few years.23 His first visits were to his home towns—Porbandar and Rajkot, and then to Santiniketan in Bengal, where he met the great Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore. It was Tagore who conferred on him the title of Mahatma (great soul) at this time. The other great step Gandhi took in 1915 was to found the Sabarmati Ashram on the bank of the river Sabarmati in Ahmedabad with the untiring support of his fellow follower Maganlal Gandhi. Funded by Gujarati industrialists, the Ashram was soon to become the training ground of satyagrahis—young men and women to be imparted the basics of a truthful and celibate way of life along with moral and philosophical principles based on simple living, non- violence and constructive work.24 ‘The Sabarmati Ashram was to do for the satyagraha struggles of 1920 and 1930 what the Phoenix and Tolstoy Farm had done in South Africa.’25 Gandhi’s frequent tours across India between 1915 and 1919 helped in his rediscovery of an otherwise unfamiliar India that underwent major social transformation and political tumult during

Gandhi’s long absence from the country. When Gandhi was a school student, political consciousness had already caught hold of educated and professional middle classes in urban India. By the time Gandhi got the first taste of European racialism, nationalist leaders of India had already confronted the Ilbert Bill agitation by Europeans who vehemently protested against any attempt to empower Indian judges to try Europeans accused. Political associations and the press became major mediums to voice Indian opinions against the Raj. Regional associations cropped up in urban centres like Calcutta, Bombay, Poona and Madras, leading ultimately to the foundation of an all India body—the Indian National Congress in 1885. As Gandhi grew up as a political personality in South Africa, India went through a spate of social unrest and political conflict. The Congress began to wage moderate agitation against the colonial discrimination and anomalies under the leadership of W.C. Banerjee, S.N. Bannerjee, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and the likes. Communal tension was on the rise in the 1890s and the spirit of revolutionary movement began to make its presence felt in certain parts of the country. The first major mass movement was to rock Bengal and parts of India in 1905 against Lord Curzon’s decision to partition Bengal, albeit with communal violence affecting its unitary potential at times. The leadership of the Congress was wrested from the moderates by the extremists in 1907 under the able guidance of Aurobindo Ghose, Bipin Chandra Pal, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Lala Lajpat Rai to fight for the cause of swaraj (self-rule). The revolutionary movement thrived as a violent means of anti-British mass politics as a sequel to the anti-partition Swadeshi and Boycott movements, ranging from Khudiram Bose’s martyrdom at Muzaffarpur in 1908 to Bagha Jatin’s kiss of death at Buribalam in 1915. Meanwhile, the All India Muslim League, founded by Nawab Salimullah in 1906 and led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, after the outbreak of the First World War, eschewing its initial preference for British loyalty, decided to shake hands with the Congress in 1916 in terms of a pact signed at Lucknow. When Gandhi landed in India in January 1915, the political scenario was marked by a lull: the Congress was again under the domination of the moderates like Gokhale and Pherozeshah Mehta —extremist leaders like Tilak, Ghose and Rai were mostly out of

action; Muslim Congress leaders like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Ali Brothers were soon to be put behind the bars. This apparently stagnant political scenario must have been welcome for the British government; but it also set the ideal stage for Gandhi to enter Indian politics. Gandhian satyagraha in action Gandhi’s observation of events and processes during the five years since his return from South Africa was to transform a ‘safe’ loyalist politician with unswerving faith in British ideals and unfailing loyalty to the British Raj into an ‘uncompromising rebel’ with simmering resentment and utmost disloyalty towards British rule in India. Even when the Home Rule Movement under the leadership of Mrs Annie Besant and Tilak was making headlines in course of 1916–17, Gandhi remained opposed to ‘a political movement which was likely to embarrass the government during the war’.26 Gandhi’s somewhat deliberate isolation from mainstream Indian politics during 1915–19, however, did not preclude his interest and involvement in fighting injustices in the public sphere with his novel technique of satyagraha wherever the need arose. As Nanda rightly said, ‘The fact that he was committed to abstention from political agitation during the war did not prevent him from championing just grievances which could not brook delay.’27 Gandhi’s first intervention in Indian politics came in the form of a satyagraha for the peasants in Champaran, Bihar, in 1917, against European indigo planters, and it forced the government to offer relief to the peasants. The successful engagement in Champaran was followed by his more assertive interventions at Ahmedabad in Gujarat and Kheda in Bombay, in 1918. At Ahmedabad, he took up the cause of striking workers against mill-owners and through fast, he compelled the latter to pay heed to the workers’ demands. Meanwhile, Gandhi launched a no-rent satyagraha movement of peasants in Kheda against the government decision not to waive the land revenue and the confiscation of property in case of non- payment. As the government decided to relax its revenue collection

procedure, Gandhi called off the no-tax campaign. The movements in Champaran, Ahmedabad and Kheda around local issues of the subaltern people projected Gandhi as an emerging mass leader in Indian politics. Gandhi’s next major step was to wage a broader satyagraha campaign in 1919 against the pernicious Rowlatt Act which sought to introduce draconian measures to combat political violence and sedition, including arrest and persecution on mere suspicion. Gandhi, being a more fervent critic of violence, came up with satyagraha (soul force) as a superior and more effective substitute for bomb and pistol’.28 Gandhi described satyagraha as the ‘movement intended to replace methods of violence’. ‘Based entirely on truth’, it was ‘an extension of the domestic law in the political field’, and could alone ‘rid India of the possibilities of violence spreading throughout the length and breadth of the land for the redress of grievances, supposed or real’.29 The movement immediately became a country- wide agitation with sporadic incidents of violence. The government naturally came up with a heavy hand to suppress it. The British repression reached a climax when General Dyer unleashed unprovoked firing on a peaceful gathering at Jallianwala Bagh, killing hundreds of peaceful protesters on 13 April 1919. Gandhi suspended the movement, understanding that the masses were not yet ready for satyagraha. However, the attitude and action of the government in the aftermath of the massacre placed a great strain on his loyalty to the British Government. He came to the conclusion that the ‘system of government which he had been trying to mend needed to be ended’.30 Hence, he went on to launch his first major mass movement in India—the Non-Cooperation Movement in tandem with the Khilafat Movement, the latter being a part of the Pan-Islamic movement of the Muslim world for the restoration of the Ottoman Caliphate. Leading India to freedom

Gandhi’s hegemony in Indian nationalist politics as well as his fame as a dominant mass leader primarily rested on and centred around three anti-British mass movements he led with his unique weapon of non-violence—Non-Cooperation (1920–22), Civil Disobedience (1930–34) and Quit India (1942).31 While none of the movements succeeded in achieving their immediate aims of obtaining ‘Swaraj’, ‘Purna Swaraj’ or ‘Quit India’, the momentum and orientation they provided to nationalism in India not only put the British increasingly on the defensive, but also instilled great confidence in the minds of people across the country. His ideology and action in anti-colonial politics made him the undisputed leader of Indian freedom struggle. His mass appeal was electrifying all through, at times assuming miraculous and divine proportions in terms of popular impact.32 He used the simplest of methods and imageries to mobilize the masses and strike at the heart of the Empire at the same time. For example, Gandhi’s salt march from Sabarmati to the coastal village of Dandi in March–April 1930 was a defining moment not only in the history of Indian national movement, but also in the making of Gandhi’s iconography. ‘It illustrated Gandhi’s ability to use simple images to illuminate greater truth and reach out to millions.’33 While Gandhi’s ideology of non-violence and satyagraha remained integral to all his political campaigns, the incomprehensibility of the Gandhian ideology at the grass-root level often led to growing radicalization of the Gandhian political movement against a severely repressive government machinery, which softened his ideological rigidity in the course of time. On the other hand, Gandhi’s vision of social reform, particularly his untiring campaign against the evil of untouchability, remained strongly wedded to his political movements all through. However, central to all his ideas and movements in Indian politics and society was his lifelong effort to maintain communal harmony, to bring the Hindus and the Muslims closer to each other for the unity of the Indian nation.34 That’s why in the aftermath of the Calcutta riots of 1946, an aging and ailing Gandhi undertook fast unto death in order to restore peace and communal amity. Unfortunately, it was his misconstrued sympathy with the minorities, which brought a tragic

end to his life on 30 January 1948, when Nathuram Godse, a radical Hindu Mahasabha activist, assassinated him. The tragedy of Gandhi’s death reverberated throughout India and across the world for long.35 But his ‘violent death’, as Ashis Nandy sensed, made him ‘more relevant to the living than he could be in life’.36 As one western commentator declared immediately after his death: ‘He is a living power—more powerful in death than in life.’37 In other words, Gandhi, living or dead, means immense power and influence.38 Naturally, therefore, the culture and politics of memorializing Gandhi and studying his debated legacy became a major feature of his afterlife. If one takes a look at Gandhi in respect of his other luminous contemporaries such as Tolstoy, Vivekananda, Tagore, Ambedkar, Jinnah, Azad, Nehru or Savarkar,39 Gandhi becomes a distinctive proposition. He has been described as a rebel and a revolutionary at the same time.40 During his lifetime, Gandhi had already become a source of inspiration to millions of people across the world from fighting against the colonial domination to protesting against injustices of any kind. This was because, being an ‘instinctive communicator’, he could motivate and mobilize people emotionally by simple means and images.41 As Robin Jeffrey argues, ‘His dress, his speech and the nature of his travels and campaigns resonated subtly with the expectations of millions of Indians.’42 In fact, Gandhi’s body as projected through his appearance in his later years had a telling influence globally. As one western scholar recalls the impact of this ‘scantily clad Mahatma’, ‘When we in the West think of Gandhi, we probably conjure the older Gandhi of historic photos, dressed simply in cotton, vigorous yet frighteningly thin, barelegged and almost naked, meeting with dark- suited heads of state in cold, rainy climates like that of England.’43 Gilbert Murray’s interpretation of Gandhi’s body is even more revealing: ‘Gandhi would be a dangerous and uncomfortable enemy because his body, which you can always conquer, gives you so little purchase upon his soul.’44 Gandhi waged his non-violent movements with this soul force, which probably distinguished him from all other nationalist heroes across the world. Thus, Gandhi

became a global emblem of nationalist aspirations particularly in the Third World. After his death, his enigmatic charisma with his unique way of life, astonishingly simple yet powerful appearance and non- violent political methods outlived him and created a legacy that has made him India’s most enduring global icon.45 Notes 1 For an intriguing discussion on numerous perspectives of criticism of Gandhi, see Lal, Vinay, ‘The Gandhi Everyone Loves to Hate’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 43, No. 40 (4–10 October 2010), pp. 55-64. For diverse perceptions and nuanced evaluations of Gandhi, see Raghuramaraju, A. ed., Debating Gandhi: A Reader, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006; Markovits, Claude, The Un-Gandhian Gandhi: The Life and Afterlife of the Mahatma, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004. 2 Lelyveld, Joseph, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India, New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2011, p. xv. 3 Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Early Phase, Vol. 1, Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1965, p. 187. 4 Andrews, C.F. Mahatma Gandhi’s Ideas Including Selections from His Writings, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1929, p. 15. 5 Nanda, B.R. Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1958, p. 25. 6 Sachchidanand Sinha’s article in the Amrita Bazar Patrika—Republic Day Souvenir, 26 January 1951, cited in Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi, p. 27-8. 7 ‘Interview to the Vegetarian-II’, The Vegetarian, 20 June 1891, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (e-book) New Delhi: Publication Division, Government of India, 1999 (hereafter CWMGE), Vol. 1, pp. 48-9. For an interesting discussion on Gandhi’s first encounter with British culture, see Hay, Stephen, ‘Between Two Worlds: Gandhi’s First Impressions of British Culture’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 3, No. 4 (1969), pp. 305-319. 8 Pyeralal, Mahatma Gandhi, p. 268. 9 Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi, p. 35. 10 Gandhi’s political career in South Africa has been a subject of immense historical interest to scholars. Apart from what Gandhi himself wrote in his famous work Satyagraha in South Africa (CWMGE, Vol. 34, pp. 1-277), a number of studies appeared from time to time on the subject. The most important of these works are: Swan, Maureen, Gandhi: The South African Experience, Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985; Bhana, Surendra and Golam H. Vahed, The Making of a Political Reformer: Gandhi in South Africa, Delhi: Manohar, 2005; Huttenback, Robert A., Gandhi in South Africa, New

York: Cornell University Press, 1971; Pachai, Bridgal, Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1969; DeJong, Constance and Philip Glass, Satyagraha: M.K. Gandhi in South Africa: 1893–1914—The Historical Material and Libretto Comprising the Opera’s Book, New York: Tanam Press, 1983; Britton, Burnett, Gandhi Arrives in South Africa, Texas: Greenleaf Books, 2000; Uppal, J.N., Gandhi, Ordained in South Africa, New Delhi: Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1995; Joshi, P.S., Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa, P.S. Joshi, 1980; Bakshi, S.R., Gandhi and Indians in South Africa, New Delhi: Antique Publishers, 1988; Doke, Joseph J. M.K. Gandhi: An Indian Patriot in South Africa, Obscure Press, 2006; Hunt, James D., Gandhi and the Nonconformists: Encounters in South Africa, Columbia: South Asia Books, 1986; Narain, Iqbal, The Politics of Racialism: A Study of the Indian Minority in South Africa down to the Gandhi- Smuts Agreement, Agra: Shiva Lal Agarwala, 1962; Reddy, E.S., Gandhiji’s Vision of a Free South Africa, New Delhi: Sanchar Publishing House, 1995; Kovalsky, Susan Joan, Mahatma Gandhi and His Political Influence in South Africa: 1893–1914—A Selective Bibliography, Johannesburg: University of Witwatersrand, 1971; Ali, Shanti Sadiq, ed. Gandhi and South Africa, New Delhi: Hind Pocket Books, 1994; Brown, Judith M. and Martin Prozesky, eds. Gandhi and South Africa: Principles and Politics, Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1996; Guha, Ramachandra, Gandhi Before India, New Delhi: Allen Lane, 2013; Desai, Ashwin and Goolem Vahed, The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire, California: Stanford University Press, 2015. 11 Chattopadhyay, Haraprasad, Indians in Africa, Calcutta: Bookland Pvt. Ltd., 1970, p. 136. 12 Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi, p. 39. 13 Ibid. 14 Cited in Dalton, Dennis, Non Violence in Action: Gandhi’s Power, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 15. 15 Gandhi, M.K., An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Translated in English by Mahadev Desai (e-Book), Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1925, p. 128. 16 Dalton, Non Violence in Action, p. 13. 17 Ibid. 18 Chattopadhyay, Indians in Africa, pp. 165-68. 19 ‘Farewell letter’, Cape Town, 18 July 1914, Indian Opinion, 29 July 1914, CWMGE, Vol. 14, p. 256. 20 Nanda, B.R., Gandhi and His Critics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 31. 21 Ibid., p. 31.

22 Gupta, Dhruba, ‘Imagining Africa’, Anushtup (Sharadiya 1992); Bandyopadhyay, Kausik, ‘“Coolie Indians”, “Black Kaffirs” and ‘A Young Indian Barrister: A Nuanced Look at Gandhi’s Politics in South Africa’, Karotoya (Journal of the Department of History, North Bengal University), Vol. II (March 2008), pp. 62-71. 23 Polok, H.S.L., H. N. Brailsford and Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Mahatma Gandhi, London: Odhams Press Limited, 1949, Chapter 8. ‘The Return to India’, pp. 95-103. 24 Ibid., Chapter 9. ‘His Way of Life’, pp. 104-118. 25 Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi, p. 140. 26 Ibid., p. 150. 27 Ibid., p. 155. 28 Ibid., p. 172. 29 ‘Evidence before Disorders Enquiry Committee’, Ahmedabad, 9 January 1920, CWMGE, Vol. 19, p. 216. 30 Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi, p. 180. 31 For a detailed account of the movements, see Sarkar, Sumit, Modern India, 1885–1947, Delhi: Macmillan, 1983; Chandra, Bipan et al., India’s Struggle for Independence, 1857–1947, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1989; Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi; Brown, Judith M., Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990. 32 A brilliant discussion on Gandhian mass appeal is offered in Amin, Shahid, ‘Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921-2’, in Ranajit Guha, ed. Subaltern Studies III: Writings on South Asian History and Society, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 1-63. 33 Bose, Mihir, The Spirit of the Game: How Modern Sport Made the Modern World, London: Constable, 2012, p. 267. 34 One interesting study of Gandhi’s tryst with the problem of communalism is: Chakraborty, Gargi, Gandhi: A Challenge to Communalism: A Study of Gandhi and Hindu-Muslim Problem—1919–1929, New Delhi: Eastern Books, 1987. 35 For an interesting discussion on the reasons and meanings of Gandhi’s death, see Paranjape, Makarand R., The Death and Afterlife of Mahatma Gandhi, London: Routledge, 2014. Also see, Nandy, Ashis, ‘Final Encounter: The Politics of the Assassination of Gandhi’, in Nandy, At the Edge of Psychology: Essays in Politics and Culture, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980, pp. 70-98. 36 Nandy, ‘Final Encounter’, p. 90. 37 Jones, E. Stanley, Mahatma Gandhi: An Interpretation, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1948, p. 194. 38 See Dalton, Nonviolent Power in Action; Weber, Thomas, Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor, New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

39 An attempt to study Gandhi in the context of his contemporaries was made in Puri, Bindu, ed. Mahatma Gandhi and His Contemporaries, Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2001. 40 Karunakaran, K.P., New Perspectives on Gandhi, Simla: Indian Institute of Advances Study, 1969, chapter II, pp. 24-46. 41 This has been amply illustrated in Balaram, Singanapalli, ‘Gandhi’s Retrieval of Indigenous Culture’, India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 29, Nos. ¾ (Winter 2002–Spring 2003), pp. 14-24. 42 Jeffrey, Robin, ‘The Mahatma did not like the movies and why it matters: Indian broadcasting policy, 1920s–1990s’, in Mehta, Nalin, ed. Television in India: Satellites, Politics and Cultural Change, London: Routledge, 2008, p. 15. 43 Becker, Carol, ‘Gandhi’s Body and Further Representations of War and Peace’, Art Journal, Vol. 65, No. 4 (2006), p. 82. 44 Quoted in ibid. 45 How Gandhi as an icon has been globalized is discussed very well by Scalmer, Sean, ‘Globalizing Gandhi: translation, reinvention, application, transformation’, in Ganguly, Debjani and John Docker, eds. Rethinking Gandhi and Nonviolent Relationality, London: Routledge, 2007, pp. 141-62. For brief discussion on Gandhi’s global legacy, see Wolpert, Stanley, Gandhi’s Passion: The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 264-68.

2 INDIAN CRICKET The Making of a Global Indian Game Cricket is the ‘most English of English games’, ‘typifying the English spirit, character and way of life’. Yet, the game survived ‘the worst days of anti-British feeling that swept India before Independence.’1 C. Rajagopalachari, the astute politician and the last governor general, while explaining ‘this strange paradox’ remarked that ‘the day might come when India would give up English, but not cricket.’2 Rajagopalachari’s vision has proved prophetic as cricket has assumed the dimension of a national religion across India. Cricket’s unique Indianness has been in vogue in the writings of many authors since the 1980s. Take for instance, Ashis Nandy’s classic comment: ‘Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English’3; or, the words of Mihir Bose: ‘Nothing could be more English than cricket, yet nothing could be more Indian in the way the subcontinent has taken to the game and fashioned out of it something unique and very different to the English game.’4 No less intriguing are the titles of the seminal works by two of India’s finest cricket historians: A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of

a British Sport by Ramachandra Guha5 and Twenty-Two Years to Freedom: A Social History of Indian Cricket by Boria Majumdar.6 Simply put, cricket has become an integral part of Indian life, assuming the importance of a national obsession. Early overs of the nineteenth century It is reasonably clear that cricket came to India with the English East India Company. Cricket’s early pioneers were the officers and men of trading farms and regimental battalions, European professors of educational institutions, and naval men who used to play at ports of call like Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and Karachi. The first match was said to have taken place in 1721 ‘when two teams of visiting British sailors played a friendly match at a seaport in Kutch on the west coast.’7 The Calcutta Cricket Club, the oldest cricket club outside England, was formed by the officers of the East India Company in 1792. The game was restricted mostly to the British till the middle of the nineteenth century when Indians began to take interest and part in it. The British, as an integral part of their new modified policy towards Indian aristocracy in the aftermath of the Revolt of 1857, began to redefine their relations with the Indian princes.8 In the ‘orientalization’9 of British rule after 1857, however, imperial values were to remain distinctly superior, and were diffused with total conviction.10 The princes were not just to be imbued with western values but with a distinctly British sense of priorities. British hegemony in India was to be underpinned by the princes themselves, who were not merely to be ‘bought off’, but rather were to become honourary English gentlemen.11 Lord Curzon outlined the proper education of an Indian prince as follows: ‘Young chiefs … to learn the English language, and become sufficiently familiar with English customs, literature, science, modes of thought, standards of truth and honour, and … with manly English sports and games …’12 It was this kind of thinking which lay behind the setting up of the ‘Chiefs Colleges’ in India13 on the model of the public school system of Eton and Harrow in the 1870s and 1880s.14 The curriculum in

these colleges was expected to expose them to the superiority of British culture and enable them to uphold the status quo out of conviction rather than from greed or from fear. It was in that particular context that sports like cricket came to be utilized by the British as an important means of anglicizing the indigenous rulers from the 1880s onwards. Going by the maxim of the diplomat, Sir Hercules Robinson, that ‘a similarity of taste in amusements is a guarantee for common sympathy in more important matters’, the British had little to fear from the ‘sporting princes’.15 The native princes, on their turn, found in western sports a shortcut to social mobility vis-à-vis the colonial state, or in Ann Morrow’s words, an important way of ‘sweating the sex’ out of the other ranks.16 Sports that received royal patronage in the late nineteenth century included hunting, horse-racing, golf, polo, snooker or billiards and most importantly, cricket. Especially, the native princes began to patronize cricket to serve various purposes—peer rivalry, regional pride, nationalist instinct, social mobility, and financial or political benefit.17 Thus, the British began to employ what J.A. Mangan called the concept of ‘games ethic’ as part of their imperial project. The concept of ‘games ethic’ had shared with the notion of ‘muscular Christianity’18 propagated by the moral missionary, a firm belief in sport as an instrument of imperial moral persuasion. According to J.A. Mangan, the so-called ‘games ethic’ inculcated in the Victorian public schools was a useful instrument of colonial purpose.19 In late nineteenth-century India, too, the public/missionary schools and the headmasters, teachers and missionaries who ran them used sports like cricket as a moral tool, making it part of a broader imperial project. The Anglo-Indian schools and colleges of the cities and the boarding schools of the Raj situated in the hill stations certainly integrated these sports as an important part of their educational curriculum, thereby making it popular among Indian students. While the Parsis became the pioneers of cricket in western India, educated middle class took keen interest in popularizing the game in Bengal.20 In Bombay, while cricket came to be organized by various clubs and gymkhanas representing different communities such as Europeans, Parsis, Hindus and Muslims, in Calcutta cricket grew up around

various college and club teams. Soon cricket began to spread out to different parts of India—Gujarat, Central India, Karachi, Punjab and Madras. Foreign cricket teams started visiting India since the 1880s giving Indian sides first tastes of international encounters with the visits of a Sri Lankan side in 1884, an Australian team in 1885, G.F. Vernon’s English side in 1889–90 and finally Lord Hawke’s famous English team in 1893. Meanwhile, the first school cricket tournament, the Harrison Shield, commenced in Calcutta, followed by the renowned Harris Shield in Bombay in 1896.21 Cricket’s becoming of a popular game The most important plank for the growth and popularity of competitive cricket in colonial India was the annual Bombay cricket tournament run on community lines, which later came to be known as the Pentangular cricket. It owed its origins to the annual Presidency matches between the Parsis and the Europeans started in 1892. From 1906 to 1911, it became a triangular contest with the Hindus joining in the fray. In 1912, the Muslims too participated in the contest, and the tournament became a quadrangular affair. Finally, in 1937, the Rest comprising Indian Christians and a few other religious communities joined the competition thereby making it Pentangular. Tournaments on the same model were gradually instituted in Sind, Karachi, Lahore, the Central Provinces and Delhi as well. The Bombay Pentangular continued till 1946 when its last edition was held. Throughout its history, the tournament remained the most popular and craved-for cricket contest in colonial India and most of India’s best-known cricketers played in it.22 Since Indian spectators were yet to feel the sense of a national cricket team or taste the success of the same till the early 1930s, the Quadrangular used to provide them with such feelings or successes at a community or regional level. Yet, ‘there was never any breach of communal harmony either on the part of the players or the spectators who flocked in large numbers to watch their favorite teams play.’23 In fact, the Bombay tournament in the 1920s to 1930s was known for its

‘carnival-like spirit’, and ‘very knowledgeable’ and ‘well-behaved’ crowd.24 The first all-India team toured England in 1911 with the Maharaja of Patiala as its captain. While the team performed much below expectations, Palwankar Baloo, an untouchable Hindu cricketer, shone as the lone star on the tour. Indian cricket in the next two decades mostly centred around the Bombay Quadrangular which made the game more popular across the country. In 1928, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was formed under the auspices of the Maharaja of Patiala and A.E.R. Gilligan, the Marylebone Cricket Club (M.C.C.) captain, with the Delhi businessman R.E. Grant-Govan as the president and Anthony de Mellow as the secretary.25 Soon the Imperial Cricket Council confirmed an M.C.C. tour of India in 1930–31 which ultimately got cancelled due to Gandhi’s civil disobedience. However, India’s return tour of England went on, as planned by the Council. This was India’s first official Test against an English side. Although defeated by a better English side, the tour brought the first Indian cricket icon into prominence—C.K. Nayudu, chosen one of Wisden’s cricketers of the year. It was followed by another M.C.C. team’s tour of India in 1933–34 under D.R. Jardine, the controversial figure of the infamous Bodyline series of 1932–33 between England and Australia. Meanwhile, in 1934, the BCCI took a significant step when it instituted the inter-provincial all India cricket tournament to be known as the Ranji Trophy. India made a return trip to England in 1936, preceded by a young Australian cricketers’ team visiting India under the banner of ‘His Highness the Maharaja of Patiala’s Team of Australian Cricketers’ in the winter of 1935–36.26 The growing tension and turbulence in Indian politics and the onset of the Second World War made an impact on the transition of cricket from the late 1930s. With the institution of the Ranji Trophy, the communal character of the Quadrangular/Pentangular cricket came under serious attack from various sections of society and politics. The anti-Pentangular movement and the resultant controversy reached such a proportion as to invoke Gandhi to resolve it. With Gandhi’s opposition to the tournament during the War, the Hindus withdrew from the Pentangular in 1940, but the

tournament continued with vigorous popularity forcing the Hindus to rejoin next year. However, with the partition of India becoming a distinct possibility, the communal vanguard ultimately led to its closure in 1946, the same year when India came back to Test cricket with its tour of England. Unfortunately, the Ranji Trophy which was supposed to replace the Pentangular could never become socially popular or commercially viable like the former. Struggle for recognition in independent India With India’s Independence, cricket had to fight for its status as a mass spectator sport in Indian society and culture against two stronger sports—football and hockey, and Indian cricket had to establish its credibility as a viable entity in the domain of international cricket. Despite Ranji’s innovation of cricketing shots, the British game was yet to become an Indian sport. With regional or club cricket less popular in India compared to regional or club football or hockey, it was important for the Indian cricket team to win at home and fare well on the foreign soil. The age-old dictum of ‘nothing succeeds like success’ proved worthy in the growth of cricket in postcolonial India. With India’s steady performances on the home soil, particularly its first Test victory against England in 1951–52 series, its series victories against Pakistan in 1952–53, New Zealand in 1955–56 and England in 1961–62 were considered remarkable successes, thereby making the game more popular. It was also with cricket that the first serious cultural exchange between India and Pakistan began. The first success on the foreign soil came in the form of a series victory in New Zealand in 1967–68, followed by the sensational series victories on tour in the West Indies (1970–71) and England (1971), which made Sunil Gavaskar India’s new cricketing icon and raised the status of India in international cricket map. Cricket, thus, became more and more popular with time in contrast to India’s gradual decline in football and hockey in the 1970s. The 1970s constituted an important era in the global history of cricket with the growing popularity of one-day cricket, the institution of the World Cup, and the onset of cricket commerce through Kerry Packer’s break-away World Series Cricket. Against this backdrop,

the historic moment of change came in Indian cricket when India defeated a star-studded West Indies team in the final to win the World Cup in 1983 under the captaincy of its new cricketing icon, Kapil Dev. It was followed by the winning of the Benson & Hedges World Championship in 1985. As cricket was gradually displacing football to become India’s key mass-spectator sport, India and Pakistan jointly organized the World Cup in 1987. The successful hosting of the tournament pointed to the potential of cricket commerce in the subcontinent under India’s leadership. The context was well set for the rise of India’s greatest cricketing icon to date— Sachin Tendulkar, who led Indian cricket into an age of fundamental transformation. An Indian revolution in world cricket As India embarked upon a policy of liberalization as a corollary to globalization in the early 1990s, the BCCI and India’s cricket administrators realized the potential of sponsorship, broadcasting and commercial profit by selling Indian cricket. In 1993, on the controversy over the telecast of international cricket matches to be played in the Hero Cup in India, a Supreme Court order annulled the monopoly of the state-owned Doordarshan and opened the telecast rights to the highest bidder.27 This ‘television-broadcasting coup’ signalled the commercialization of Indian cricket, ushering in its rapid commoditization and mediatization with the onset of a fast growing global electronic media as a result of the revolution in information technology. This transformed the nature and momentum of Indian cricket forever, making its apex body BCCI so cash-rich as to become India’s only sporting body to be run without government subsidy. As Boria Majumdar rightly argues, ‘The BCCI took the lead in marketing the sport globally and used the returns to fortify its status as a major player in world cricket.’28 The commercial success of the 1996 World Cup jointly hosted by India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka pointed to this enhanced status of subcontinental cricket led by India. In fact, with India’s meteoric rise as a cricketing giant both on and off the field, the nerve centre of world cricket was shifted from

London to Mumbai. The BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya played a crucial role in this process, and went on to become the president of the International Cricket Council (ICC) in 1997. On the other hand, cricket came to assume the status of a mass national obsession, a secular religion in India, with Indian cricket fans introducing intense forms of aggression, worship, hatred and violence in cricket fandom along with their Pakistani counterparts. The commercialization of the game brought with it a darker side as well. Indian alias world cricket came to face the challenge of betting and corruption scandals from the late 1990s, which led to a premature end to the careers of some renowned cricketers such as Mohammad Azharuddin, the Indian captain, and Hanse Cronje, the South African captain. In the new century, the rise of a new ‘team India’ under the energetic leadership of Sourav Ganguly heralded India’s ascendancy on the field of cricket as well. With an assertive Indian team on the field, Indian fans too came to redefine fandom in global cricket, transforming, thereby, the game’s status from a gentleman’s game into a mass sport. Indian cricket under Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Virat Kohli has facilitated this transformation in both attitude and performance. In the new century, India has become a world champion in all formats of the game—World Cup (2011), Champions Trophy (2002 and 2013), and Twenty20 World Cup (2007). The organization of the 2011 World Cup in the subcontinent and India’s victory showed to the world the transformation in the philosophy of cricket which was the result of both a revolution in Indian cricket as well as an Indian revolution in global cricket since the 1990s. The integrally connected processes of the commercial revolution in Indian cricket and the Indian revolution in world cricket were further accelerated by the institution of the twenty-over interregional cricket tournament with transnational recruits in India—the Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2008.29 The successful marriage between cricket and Bollywood also put an end to the longstanding unpopularity and commercial failure of regional cricket in India. Largely basking on territorial identities of urban conglomerations, threads of transnational fandom and traditions of hero-worship, the IPL has helped consolidate the monopoly of the BCCI on global

cricket commerce. In a globalized twenty-first-century world, India is the most coveted destination of all international cricketers, with all eyes of cricket fans focussing on the IPL. The domination of Indian cricket at the global stage may well remind us of the East India Company’s monopoly trade in India in the eighteenth century! It offers a successful model of cricket revolution for all countries to follow—a model that invokes W.W. Rostow’s model of economic growth for the industrial revolution in the twentieth century!30 In such a context, cricket has become a domain of India’s assertion along with Bollywood globally, in which the Indian diaspora take active interest, invest happily and identify diasporic nationalism with it. It is one sphere where India flexes its muscle at the global stage— commercially, culturally, and politically. In India, cricket means much more than a sport—commerce, politics, culture, religion, and even life, thereby projecting itself as a global Indian game. Notes 1 Sanyal, Saradindu, 40 Years of Test Cricket: India-England (1932–1971), New Delhi: Thomson Press, 1972, p. vii. 2 Ibid. 3 Nandy, Ashis, The Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games, London: Viking, 1989, p. 1. 4 Bose, Mihir, A History of Indian Cricket, New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 1990, p. 16. 5 Delhi: Picador, 2002. 6 New Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2004. 7 Sanyal, 40 Years of Test Cricket: India-England (1932–1971), p. 1. Downing’s Compendious History of the Indian Wars narrated, ‘When my boat was lying for a fortnight in some channel of the Gulf of Cambay, though the country was inhabited by the Culeys, we everyday diverted ourselves with playing Cricket and to other Exercises, which they would come and be spectators of…’ Cited in Mello, Anthony de, Portrait of Indian Sport, Delhi: Macmillan, 1959, p. 120. 8 For an elaborate view of the changing nature of British policy towards Indian princes in the nineteenth century, see Ashton, S.R., British Policy towards the Indian States, 1905–39, London: Curzon Press, 1982; Thompson, Edward, The Making of the Indian Princes, London: Curzon Press, 1978; Jeffrey, Robin, ed. People, Princes and Paramount Power: Society and Politics in the Indian Princely States, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978;

Metcalf, Thomas R., The Aftermath of Revolt: India 1857–1870, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964. 9 The term ‘orientalization’ is usefully employed by Francis Hutchins in Illusion of Permanence: British Imperialism in India, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967, p. 154. 10 See Mangan, J.A., ‘Eton in India: The Careful Creation of Oriental Englishmen’, in Mangan, J.A., The Games Ethic and Imperialism: Aspects of the Diffusion of an Ideal, London: Frank Cass, 1998, pp. 122-41. See also Mangan, ed. The Cultural Bond: Sport, Empire, Society, London: Frank Cass, 1992, passim but especially the Prologue. 11 Mangan, ‘Eton in India’, pp. 125-26. 12 Quoted from Raleigh, Sir Thomas, Lord Curzon in India: Being a Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy and Governor General: 1898–1905, London: Macmillan, 1906, p. 245. 13 These colleges were: Rajkumar College (1870) at Rajkot, Mayo College (1872) at Ajmer, Rajkumar College (1872) at Nowgong, Daly College (1876) at Indore and Aitchison College (1886) at Lahore. 14 The accepted definitive study of public school games as moral training is J.A. Mangan’s Athleticism in Victorian and Edwardian Public School: The Emergence and Consolidation of an Educational Ideology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981 and London: Frank Cass, 2000, with a new introduction. 15 Trelford, David, Snookered, 1986, pp. 24-5; Hyam, Robert, Britain’s Imperial Century, 1851–1914, London: Macmillan, 1976, p. 151, cited in Holt, Richard, Sport and the British: A Modern History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 215. 16 Morrow, Ann, The Maharajas of India, London: Grafton Books, 1986, quoted in Majumdar, Boria, Twenty-Two Yards to Freedom: A Social History of Indian Cricket, New Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2004, p. 22. 17 For details on the princely patronage of cricket, see Majumdar, Twenty-Two Yards to Freedom, pp. 22-74. 18 For a reflective discussion on this theme in the Asian context, see Mangan, ‘Imperial Origins, Christian Manliness, Moral Imperatives and Pre-Srilankan Playing Fields’—two chapters dealing respectively with ‘Beginnings’ and ‘Consolidation’, in Mangan and Fan Hong, eds. Sport in Asian Society: Past and Present, London: Frank Cass, 2003, pp. 1-49. 19 Mangan, The Games Ethic and Imperialism, p. 18. 20 While the origins and growth of Parsi cricket have been well documented since its inception, Bengal cricket did not find its chronicler in its early days. For Parsi cricket, see Sorabjee, Shapoorje, A Chronicle of Cricket among Parsees and the Struggle Polo vs. Cricket, Bombay: The author, 1897; Pavri, M.E., Parsi Cricket, Bombay: J.B. Marzban & Co., 1901; Patel, J.M. Framjee,

Stray Thoughts on Indian Cricket, Bombay: Times Press, 1905; Raiji, Vasant, India’s Hambledon Men, Bombay: Tyeby Press, 1986. 21 Majumdar, Twenty-Two Yards to Freedom, p. 155. 22 ‘Bombay Pentangular’, Indian Cricket Almanack: 1964–65, pp. 142-43; Sundaresan, P.N., ‘Bombay Pentangular’, Indian Cricket 1963, pp. 37-9. For a detailed history of the Pentangular tournament, see Raiji, Vasant and Mohandas Menon, The Story of the Bombay Tournament: From Presidency to Pentangular, Mumbai: Ernest Publications, 2000; Roy, S.K., ed. Bombay Pentangular, Calcutta: Illustrated News, 1945. 23 Raiji, Anandji Dossa, CCI and the Brabourne Stadium, 1937–87, Bombay: The CCI, 1987, p. 31. 24 Cashman, Richard, ‘The Indian Crowd’, in Guha, Ramachandra and T.G. Vaidyanathan, eds. An Indian Cricket Omnibus, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 155. Also see Cashman, Richard, Patrons, Players and the Crowd: The Phenomenon of Indian Cricket, Calcutta: Orient Longman, 1979, p. 114. 25 Guha, Ramachandra, A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport, Delhi: Picador, 2002, pp. 190-91. 26 Ibid., p. 233. 27 For an excellent discussion on this controversy, see Majumdar, Twenty-Two Yards to Freedom, pp. 367-405. 28 Ibid., p. 405. 29 The first edition of the tournament included eight teams: Rajasthan Royals, Kings XI Punjab, Chennai Super Kings, Delhi Daredevils, Deccan Chargers, Kolkata Knight Riders, Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers Bangalore. 30 Rostow, W.W., The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960.

3 SCORING OFF THE FIELD The Story of Sporting Gandhi Perhaps no Indian has written so profusely and frankly about himself and the world around him than Gandhi did during his lifetime. Similarly, Gandhi has hundreds of biographers,1 and closest in number to that in India would only be Rabindranath Tagore. Given such volumes of work by Gandhi and his biographers, it is not difficult to point out the occasions whenever the Mahatma played, observed or made references to modern sports like cricket during his lifetime. Gandhi’s connection with cricket, however, needs to be understood in the broader context of Gandhian ideas on modern civilization and his philosophy of leisure. As early as in 1909, Gandhi offered a strong critique of the modern civilization, the craze for machinery, and the industrial spirit of the West.2 The ‘puritanism’ and ‘austerity of Gandhian ethos’ along with his adversity towards modern civilization in the context of his non-violent battle against imperialism, communalism and social inequality probably made modern entertainment practices an anathema to him.3 As Robin Jeffrey has argued, ‘For him, film, radio and recording ranked as distractions and temptations, capable of diverting people from the

national quest for freedom and reformation.’4 This might well be true for Gandhi’s attitude towards modern sports, including cricket. It is, therefore, interesting to explore the illusions of a sporting Gandhi, who played little but observed, told or wrote a bit about sports in general and cricket, in particular. Little playful Moniya From his childhood, Gandhi, nicknamed Moniya, was a playful character. Pyarelal gives a fascinating account of little Moniya’s playfulness: Moniya was fond of playing out of doors, came home only when he felt hungry, and disappeared as soon as he had had some food. Nothing could curb his irrepressible energy. His father’s presence had some restraining effect, but the moment Kaba’s back was turned, he would begin turning everything in the house upside down.5 Although ‘a difficult and self-willed child’ insisting on ‘having his way always’, Moniya grew up as a boy of ‘a very peaceful disposition’ and became ‘very simple in his habits and tastes’.6 As for his sporting habits, Pyarelal writes: He was an adept at hide-and-seek and moi-dandiyo. Sometimes he used to take part in cricket or some such games. There were some physical culture appliances at home. Occasionally, he took exercise with these or went out for a drive in his father’s horse-carriage, but not often. His favourite exercise and recreation were long walks.7 Besides all this, he was fond of singing, listening to Hari-Katha (religious recitation), gardening, bathing, and washing clothes. Pyarelal narrated another interesting involvement of Moniya in sporting pursuit, referring to the latter’s dislike of lively sports: About a furlong from the house in which Moniya lived, there used to be a chowk, known as Shitala Chowk. On moonlit nights parties of Hindu and Muslim boys assembled there from different quarters of the city and played games for an hour or so after dinner. Moniya also used to go there but he had a temperamental dislike for boisterous games. He did not

participate in them, but loved to officiate as umpire and saw to it that the rules of the game were strictly observed by those who engaged in them. If anyone played foul, he would politely but firmly put him out of the field. He had a reputation for strict impartiality and everybody respected his award. When disputes arose among the players, he invariably acted as the peacemaker.8 A shy boy’s sporting encounters As Gandhi went to Rajkot and joined the high school, his aversion to sports became marked. When he was in the seventh standard, Dorabji Edulji Gimi, the Parsi headmaster of the school made gymnastics and cricket compulsory for the students.9 According to Pyarelal, ‘Gandhi disliked both, firstly because he was shy and shunned the company of other boys, secondly because he preferred to be by his father’s sickbed.’10 As Gandhi himself wrote: ‘I never took part in any exercise, cricket or football, before they were made compulsory. My shyness was one of the reasons for this aloofness, which I now see was wrong. I then had the false notion that gymnastics had nothing to do with education.’11 But he admitted later that ‘physical training should have as much place in the curriculum as mental training’.12 This was certainly in line with the British public school spirit which emphasized the importance of athletics as an integral part of educational curriculum in Victorian and Edwardian England.13 Interestingly, Gandhi once got excited to take recourse to meat-eating on the sly at the instance of one of his classmates in order to become physically ‘strong and daring’. He was influenced by the friend’s analysis of the Englishman’s strength, aptly reflected in a popular doggerel written by the Gujarati poet Narmad: ‘Behold the mighty Englishman / He rules the Indian small, / Because being a meat-eater / He is five cubits tall.’14 Gandhi, therefore, decided to have meat with the conviction that ‘if the whole county took to meat-eating, the English could be overcome.’15 In other words, he wanted his countrymen ‘also to be such, so that we might defeat the English and make India free’.16 However, Gandhi’s

fad with meat-eating did not last long as he mended his ways soon to become a vegetarian for the remainder of his life. Gandhi learnt from books about ‘the benefits of long walks in the open air’ and thus, ‘formed the habit of taking walks’, which gave him ‘a fairly hardy constitution’.17 But the real reason for Gandhi’s dislike of sports was his ‘keen desire to serve as nurse to my father’.18 He further stated: As soon as the school closed, I would hurry home and begin serving him. Compulsory exercise came directly in the way of this service. I requested Mr Gimi to exempt me from gymnastics so that I might be free to serve my father. But he would not listen to me. … The exemption from exercise was of course obtained, as my father wrote himself to the headmaster saying that he wanted me at home after school.19 Louis Fischer, one of the most celebrated western biographers of Gandhi, wrote about Gandhi’s amusements as a child: ‘As a boy, Mohandas amused himself with rubber balloons and revolving tops. He played tennis and cricket and also “gilli danda”, a game, encountered in so many widely separated countries, which consists in striking a short, sharpened wooden peg with a long stick: “peggy” or “pussy” some call it.’20 Ramachandra Guha refers to Fischer’s private papers housed in the New York Public Library where he found Fischer sending a list of questions through an Indian friend to Gandhi’s only surviving sister in December 1948.21 Guha reproduces the sequel as follows: In answer to ‘What does she remember about her brother Mohandas as a child and as a boy? Did he play games?’ she replied: ‘When Mahatmaji was young he used to play with rubber balloons, tennis, cricket and such other games. He used to have such great interest for those games that he would not remember even his meals… He would not stay at home in the evenings as he would get engrossed in playing.’22 Gandhi’s high schoolmate and boyhood friend Ratilal Ghelabhai Mehta, however, had a more exciting story to tell about Gandhi’s cricketing brawn and brain. According to him, ‘Gandhi was not only a cricket enthusiast, but wielded the willow too.’23 And he continued:

It is not commonly known that Gandhiji was a dashing cricketer and evinced a keen interest in the game. Many a time we played cricket together, and I remember that he was good at batting and bowling, though he had an aversion for physical exercises at school, as he has pointed out in his autobiography.24 He mentioned another interesting anecdote about Gandhi’s cricketing calibre: Once we were watching a cricket match together. In those days, there were ding-dong battles between teams of Rajkot city and Rajkot Sadar (camp area). At a crucial moment in the match, as if through intuition, Gandhiji said that a particular player would be out and, hey presto! That batsman was really out.25 Two young Indians in England Interestingly, when Gandhi arrived in England, he had among his four notes of introduction, one addressed to Prince Ranjitsinhji, who was to become the greatest Indian icon of English cricket.26 Ranji spent his college days in Rajkumar College at Rajkot where Gandhi too spent his adolescence. Cricket commentator, Scyld Berry, remarked that ‘both the prince and the self-made pauper were schooled in the sporting ethos of Rajkot and both probably went out to the world with ideas of British sportsmanship which they had internalized in college.’27 However, the view that they attended the same school or college remains unfounded. Rather, as Ram Kumar suggests, ‘the enduring thought of Gandhi and Ranji sitting together in a classroom as young boys, has remained a part of folklore.’28 In England, writes Ranji’s biographer Alan Ross, ‘With remarkable rapidity Ranjitsinhji began to assume the colourings of an English country gentleman. Gandhi was doing the same in London, prow long the West End in morning coat and tophat.’29 The England to which Gandhi went was ‘the land of philosophers and poets, the very centre of civilization’30—‘the England of the Sydney Webbs and Bernard Shaw, Bradlaugh and Annie Besant, Keir Hardie and John Burns, Edward Carpenter and Henry Salt, William Howard and

Havelock Ellis, Sydney Olivier, Hyndman and Ramsay Macdonald’.31 At the same time, it had become a land where Ranji, the Indian cricketing genius, had made a name for himself. Mukund Ramrao Jayakar, who was a law student in London at the height of Ranji’s cricketing career, noted in his autobiography: I have an equally good collection of the great cricketer ‘Ranji’, whom I used to see frequently at cricket matches at Lord’s cricket ground and Kennington Oval. What a personality! Thousands of British men and women adored him, and in the worship of his skill all sense of a different nationality was drowned. When he stepped majestically out of the pavilion, what a hum of admiration went forth. As a young Indian, I used to feel so proud that one of us could evoke such admiration.32 Saradindu Sanyal rightly says, ‘Long before our poets and philosophers, scientists and statesmen had earned recognition and respect abroad, an Indian cricketer had become an honoured name in a game which Englishmen had always regarded as their exclusive preserve.’33 However, Gandhi did not seem have any interest in Ranji’s cricketing career as his habitual dislike of modern games continued unabated. Added to this, his initial ambition to become ‘more English than an English gentleman’ had turned a full cycle after self-introspection, and he soon decided to be himself in order to serve his purpose of coming to England. More importantly, as Ramachandra Guha rightly points out, ‘it was only after Gandhi left London, in 1891, that Ranji moved to the University of Cambridge to make his name on its playing fields.’34 There is no evidence to show that the two ever had any interaction either in England or later in India. As Gandhi went on to pursue satyagraha, non-cooperation and civil disobedience as means towards swaraj, ‘Ranji continued to believe in the enlightened exercise of autocracy under the Crown as being the method most suited for the betterment of the Indian people’.35 While the ideology and action of the two went to entirely different directions afterwards, Ashis Nandy detects one interesting commonality in their vocations: ‘Ranji’s appeal and defiance of the textbooks of cricket were not different from Gandhi’s appeal and the Gandhian defiance of the textbooks of politics.’36

The young barrister’s sporting aspirations in South Africa During his long stay in South Africa, Gandhi’s disavowal of modern sports became clearer in his writings and correspondences. It was only on rare occasions that he paid attention or showed respect to sports like cricket or football. A few such instances may be a treat to readers. In 1904, Gandhi protested against the permit restrictions on Indians entering Transvaal and showed his dissatisfaction at the denial of the Transvaal authorities to allow the visit of the Indian football teams from Kimberley and Durban.37 In October 1906, when Messrs, Haji Ojer Ally and Gandhi went aboard by SS Armadale Castle to England as part of a deputation against Indian ordinances in South Africa, Gandhi referred to merriment and sports like deck cricket, ring tennis and egg-and-spoon race that passengers enjoyed on the ship. However, he could not participate in them owing to ‘Mr Ally’s poor health and my own studies’.38 Again, while writing a letter to Chhaganlal Gandhi in April 1907, he sent three issues of The Times of India requesting him to select and reproduce the pictures of ‘Gaekwar, the Jam and the Cricket Team’ in the Indian Opinion.39 In 1909, however, Gandhi strongly disapproved of ‘reports of football and cricket’ filling up all the spaces in newspapers.40 It is said that Gandhi once accepted an invitation from the Tamils in South Africa, who used to play and follow football passionately, to be ‘a patron of their sporting clubs in Durban and Johannesburg’. Gandhi did this, as Guha suggests, probably ‘out of social obligation, not love of football per se’.41 Mario Rodrigues, on the other hand, has an entirely different and engrossing story to tell about Gandhi’s love of football in South Africa: Unknown to most Indians, Gandhi was a huge football aficionado and his involvement with the game was long and passionate. He never became a professional or became famous as a player, but he preferred football to cricket. When he began his struggle in South Africa, Gandhi used the game to promote his political philosophy of non-violent resistance and to socially

uplift and integrate the Indian community in the ‘rainbow republic’. Sometime during his two-decade stay in South Africa (1893–1915), Gandhi started two football clubs, in Johannesburg and Pretoria (Tshwane), both named the Passive Resisters after the political philosophy, inspired by the writings of Henry Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy, that he adopted to fight racial discrimination and injustice in South Africa. It was a first of a kind—using sports for achieving political objectives. The apartheid regime later used sports to further its own ends.42 However, Rodrigues does not provide any evidences in support of his view and remains unsure as to ‘whether Gandhi was merely a club owner/promoter or took to the field himself, and whether he talked strategy with the team’.43 But the idea is intriguing since ‘football was an integral part of the lives of the Indian diaspora (mainly labourers and petty traders) in South Africa’ with ‘flourishing Indian provincial football leagues such as the Transvaal Indian Football Association and the Klip River District Indian Football Association (both in Gauteng)’, and hence, Rodrigues, giving full play to his imagination, presumes, ‘It was, therefore, natural that football stadiums were popular venues for Gandhi’s political rallies where he and his associates (such as L.W. Ritch) often turned up for his club games and spoke to players at half-time or after the match on the imperatives of non-violent politics and issues about racial discrimination.’44 Thus Gandhi, supposedly a supporter of Indians’ indulgence in sport in South Africa, was even said to have remarked: ‘Competition between passive resisters does not exhaust them; on the contrary, it ennobles them.’45 The FIFA World representing the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) spoke to community leaders in South Africa during the 2010 World Cup and came up with interesting findings on Gandhi’s link with football. Bongani Sithole, official guide at the Phoenix settlement which Gandhi established in the town of Inanda near Durban at the dawn of the last century, argued: Gandhi already knew football well from the time he spent in England completing his law studies. He was never a serious player himself, but seems to have taken the game to heart, above even his first loves of cricket and cycling—perhaps because at the time football was the

favourite sport of the less affluent classes. In South Africa, he must have quickly realized that the game’s popularity among the country’s disadvantaged communities made it a particularly effective means of reaching the people whose political sensibilities Gandhi most wanted to arouse.46 According to Poobalan Govindasamy, president of the South African Indoor Football Association, ‘Gandhi was convinced that football had enormous potential to encourage team work, and, therefore, when he established the Passive Resisters, he focused on promoting moral values such as team spirit and fair play.’47 He further argued: What fascinated Gandhi in particular was the notion he had of football’s nobility. At that time, the idea of team play was much stronger than the idea of individual ‘star’ players, and this is something that greatly appealed to him. He believed the game had an enormous potential to promote team work. Certainly he appreciated the game’s usefulness in attracting large crowds, but it would be a mistake to think that football was only a communications platform for Gandhi. It was, I believe, much more. It was one of his great personal passions and one of the ways in which he was able to find spiritual peace.48 Gandhi’s sporting legacy in South Africa was thus considered significant. ‘His organizational skills and drive helped to lay the foundations for the non-racial sporting structures of today’s South Africa’, says Govindasamy, ‘because it was Gandhi and his contemporaries who did more than anyone else at the time to involve non-whites, and particularly the country’s Indian population, in structured sporting activities.’49 Gandhi’s football links with South Africa were renewed when the first football team from South Africa, Christopher’s Contingent, mainly comprising people of Indian origin, visited India between November 1921 and March 1922. Gandhi was said to have offered his blessings to the visiting side and spent some time with them during their stopover in Ahmedabad.50 Gandhi’s aversion to modern sporting codes in South Africa