MAHATMA ON THE PITCH

Despite this somewhat freakish story of Gandhi’s tryst with football, it was Gandhi’s tone of rejection of modern sporting activities that became conspicuous with time in South Africa. At the school in the Phoenix Settlement established by Gandhi, it is noted, ‘instead of playing tennis or cricket, he wanted the students to share the daily chore of manual labour and thus grow sturdy’.51 In July 1910, the final match of the world heavyweight boxing championship between ‘White’ Jim Jeffries and ‘Negro’ Jack Johnson at Reno, USA, attracted millions including ‘old and young, men and women, rich and poor, government officials and common citizens’.52 He was amazed to see people traveling all the way from Europe to view two men ‘hitting each other and displaying their brute strength’.53 Gandhi was cryptically sarcastic about this sports fad: The people of America went mad over this show, and America is reckoned a very civilized country! What did the spectators gain from this show? We can offer no satisfactory answer to this question. There are some who hold that the body is strengthened through demonstrations of this kind and people learn how to defend themselves. A little reflection will show that this is altogether a mistaken notion. It is, of course, good to harden the body, but that cannot be done through boxing matches in public. There are many other means, and natural ones, of strengthening the body. This is no more than a pretext. The truth of the matter is that people enjoy seeing a fight and give their adoration to physical strength only. They think nothing else can match it. In thinking thus, they deny the soul and therefore deny God. The only epithet that can be applied to such a people is ‘barbarous’. There is very little to learn from them.54 Gandhi’s conclusion was far more sharp in this regard: … the show in America was attended by grownup people. Lengthy telegrams were dispatched to newspapers at a huge cost. The reports were followed with interest by millions. Thus, the show was not looked upon as something uncivilized; on the contrary, it was regarded as a mark of civilization. This, in our view, is the extreme limit of barbarism.55 In late-1910, a correspondent requested the Indian Opinion to ‘open columns regularly for sporting news’. Gandhi’s response was to shun any relevance of modern sports for Indians in South Africa:

We have nothing against sport as such. And, if our columns were not almost solely devoted to the cause of the Indian struggle in South Africa, and if we had enough support from the sporting Indians, we would not be unprepared to set apart a portion for regular sporting news. But we ask our young friends whether sport should occupy so much of their time and attention as it does now. Indeed, those Indians who know what is going on around them, cannot afford to be in a sporting mood. Our forefathers did wonderfully well without the fashionable sport of today. Sport indulged in for the sake of developing the body is of some use. But we venture to suggest that agriculture, the inherited occupation of Indians—indeed of the human race—is better sport than football, cricket and all other games put together. And it is useful, dignified and remunerative. Football and cricket may be well for those who have the drudgery of the desk work to go through from day to day. But no Indian need undertake that task.56 The reason behind this continuous disavowal of modern sports like cricket is not far to get. Gandhi’s ideas on the nature and value of exercise for a sound health make it clearer: ‘Exercise does not necessarily mean moidanda (an Indian game), football, cricket or going out for a walk. Exercise means physical and mental activity.’57 For him, only a farmer’s way of life justifies the famous English saying that that ‘he alone is healthy who has a sound mind in a sound body.’ Hence, his assessment of western sports like cricket which the British adopted and spread across the world was scathing: In the West, they have invented games like cricket for such people. … To be sure, spending time in sports does give some exercise to the body, but exercise of this kind does nothing to improve the mind. … What proportion of men of high intellectual calibre shall we find among those who regularly play cricket or from among the large number who play football? In India, what do we observe as regards the mental development of the princes who give their time to sports? Again, how many of those with well- developed intellectual powers are sportsmen? Experience shows that highly intellectual men are seldom sportsmen as well. … neither exercising the brain alone nor the body alone is enough and also that exercise which serves no useful purpose, namely, that derived from sports, has little meaning. Real exercise is that which trains, continuously, both mind and body alike. He alone who takes such exercise can preserve good health. The farmer is the only such person. Then, what are those to do who are not farmers? The exercise obtained from sports such as cricket leaves much to be desired. We must,

therefore, think of a form of exercise something like what the farmer gets.58 The only alternative exercise to agricultural work Gandhi suggested was walking, ‘the king of physical exercises’. Continuing disavowal of modern sports in India After his return from South Africa, Gandhi continued to express his disapproval of modern sports like football and cricket as means to a sound body and stressed the importance of indigenous physical culture ingrained in simple manual labour such as agriculture. In a letter to J.M. Lazarus, one of his close associates in Natal, Gandhi wrote: That a sound body carries a sound mind is after all a truism, but it is to be interpreted with many qualifications. … To me a sound body means one which bends itself to the spirit and is always a ready instrument at its service. Such bodies are not made, in my opinion, on the football field. They are made on cornfields and farms. I would urge you to think this over and you will find innumerable illustrations to prove my statement. Our colonial-born Indians are carried away with this football and cricket mania. These games may have their place under certain circumstances. But I feel sure that for us, who are just now so fallen, they have no room. Why do we not take the simple fact into consideration that the vast majority of mankind who are vigorous in body and mind are simple agriculturists, that they are strangers to these games, and they are the salt of the earth? Without them your and my existence would be an impossibility, whereas you and I are totally unnecessary for their well-being.59 A year later, Gandhi, while criticizing the contemporary system of education and urging to change the existing system for a better educational environment, preferred agricultural practices to modern sports like cricket or football for the well-being of students: In order to create the right conditions for imparting a good knowledge of agriculture and weaving, all our schools should be located, not in the densely populated parts of towns or cities, but in places where big farms may be developed and where classes may be conducted in the open air. In such schools, sports for the boys will consist in ploughing the fields. The

idea that, if our boys and youths do not have football, cricket and such other games, their life should become too drab is completely erroneous. The sons of our peasants never get a chance to play cricket, but there is no dearth of joy or innocent zest in their life.60 Gandhi reiterated the same point in his address to students in Bihar next year: ‘I think games like cricket have no place in a poor country like India. We have a number of inexpensive games of our own which afford innocent joy.’61 A few days later, in his speech at the Second Gujarat Educational Conference, he followed it up nicely: I include in the term ‘physical training’ sports, games, etc. These, too, have been little thought of. Indigenous games have been given up and tennis, cricket and football hold sway. Admittedly, these games are enjoyable. If, however, we had not been carried away by enthusiasm for all things western, we would not have given up our inexpensive but equally interesting games like gedi-dado, gilli-danda, kho-kho, mag-matali, kabaddi, kharo pat, nava nagelio, sat tali, etc. Exercises which provided the completest training for every bodily organ and the old style gymnasium where they taught wrestling have almost totally disappeared. I think if anything from the West deserves copying, it is drill. … Thus, it is necessary to introduce in our schools indigenous games, exercises and the Western type of drill.62 Gandhi’s doubts on the value of modern sports in training a strong body or imparting proper physical education continued to be expressed in the 1920s. As he wrote in an article in 1926: Now let us examine our body. Are we supposed to cultivate the body by playing tennis, football or cricket for an hour every day? It does, certainly, build up the body. Like a wild horse, however, the body will be strong but not trained. A trained body is healthy, vigorous and sinewy. The hands and feet can do any desired work. A pickaxe, a shovel, a hammer, etc., are like ornaments to a trained hand and it can wield them. That hand can ply the spinning-wheel well as also the ring and the comb while the feet work a loom. A well-trained body does not get tired in trudging 30 miles. It can scale mountains without getting breathless. Does the student acquire such physical culture? We can assert that modern curricula do not impart physical education in this sense.63

Same year, he appreciated Richard B. Gregg’s condemnation of ‘parasitism’ and critique of parasitic nature of public amusements which included watching others play cricket along with thronging to cinemas, theatres and music halls.64 In one of his visits to Ceylon in 1927, while appreciating the distinction of students of a college in athletics and games, Gandhi went on to extol the virtues of indigenous games in place of modern sports: I am glad indeed that you are giving due attention to athletics and I congratulate you upon acquitting yourselves with distinction in games. I do not know whether you had any indigenous games or not. I should, however, be exceedingly surprised, and even painfully surprised, if I were told that before cricket and football descended upon your sacred soil, your boys were devoid of all games. If you have national games, I would urge upon you that yours is an institution that should lead in reviving old games. I know that we have in India many noble indigenous games just as interesting and exciting as cricket or football, also as much attended with risks as football is, but with the added advantage that they are inexpensive, because the cost is practically next to nothing.65 Such a view, Gandhi cautioned the audience, should not make them believe that that he was an indiscriminate despiser of everything that comes from the West. In fact, his reasoning was fairly simple in this regard: We of the East very often hastily consider that all that our ancestors laid down for us was nothing but a bundle of superstitions, but my own experience, extending now over a fairly long period of the inestimable treasures of the East has led me to the conclusion that, whilst there may be much that was superstitious, there is infinitely more which is not only not superstitious, but if we understand it correctly and reduce it to practice, gives life and ennobles one. Let us not therefore be blinded by the hypnotic dazzle of the West.66 Interestingly, while Gandhi was abrogating the value of modern sports and emphasizing the need to revive indigenous sports occasionally, the western part of India, along with its eastern counterpart, began to witness a ‘surge of interest’ in indigenous

physical training and exercises in the second and third decades of the twentieth century.67 Contrasting attitudes towards the value of sports Gandhi was not even convinced of the value of sports as a bond of unity at this stage. As he once stated: ‘What is required is not the so- called unity achieved through schools, gymkhanas or through games and sports. Unity of hearts is all that is necessary. If this cannot be had, all else is futile; if this is accomplished, nothing else is necessary.’68 However, later on, he found games and sports to be useful as a means of social exchange and uplift of Harijans (Hindus of lowest castes or untouchables).69 However, he wanted students to help Harijan children by ‘organizing not expensive but indigenous sports for Harijan children in which the students would play side by side with the children’.70 Although, he did not appreciate the idea of presenting football to the Harijan boys by any of his followers because, ‘For a country like India a ball that costs ₹4 to ₹5 is an expensive thing’.71 He even suggested to students that serving the cause of Harijans silently would be hard, but pleasurable, greater than cricket or tennis in joy.72 In the late 1920s, Indians began to excel in hockey and clinched the gold medal in Olympic hockey in 1928. The expectations for the Indian team to repeat the performance in the next edition of the Olympics to be held in Los Angeles in 1932 were naturally high. In 1931, as the Civil Disobedience campaigns under Gandhi’s leadership were on, Gandhi was requested by C.E. Newham on behalf of the Indian Hockey Federation to subscribe to the Olympic Hockey Fund to support the preparations of the Indian hockey team for the ensuing Olympics. Gandhi, however, tendered a strange response of indifference to this request: You will be surprised to know that I do not know what really the game of hockey is. I did not know that the masses were interested in it. I have never, to my recollection, watched any game either in England, South Africa or in India. I have never attended cricket matches and only once

took a bat and a cricket ball in my hands and that was under compulsion from the head master of the High School where I was studying, and this was over 45 years ago. This confession does not in any shape or form mean that I am opposed to games, only I have never been able to interest myself in them. In the circumstances, it would simply mystify the people if I now came out with a new card even though it might be for the laudable purpose of winning more English friendships and more English sympathy and support for the cause which makes life worth living. I hope you will appreciate my difficulty and therefore inability to help you.73 It is, however, interesting to note that Gandhi himself at times applied the allegory of modern sports to explain the British way of politics. In 1937, he wrote: ‘The British people apply the same laws to the game of politics that they apply to the game of football which I believe is their invention. They give no quarter to the opponent and ask for none.’74 Similarly, he once drew attention to their sporting spirit and calmness in face of critical situation as a learning example to Indians: Failures do not dismay or demoralize them. They take them with calmness and in a sportsmanlike spirit. Wars are for them a national game like football. The defeated team heartily congratulates the successful one almost as if it was a joint victory, and drowns the sorrow of defeat in an exchange of glasses of whisky. If we have learnt nothing worth from the contact with the British, let us at least their calmness in the face of misfortunes.75 Gandhi also began to appreciate the value of sports in international cultural exchange by late 1930s. In an interview to an Egyptian deputation in 1937, at the suggestion of Prof. Habib Ahmed that ‘Our youths should go to India and yours should come to Egypt as sportsmen’, Gandhi said: ‘Not only may we have an exchange and a mixing together in the field of sport but we should have it in the field of education.’76 A few sporting anecdotes

On other occasions when Gandhi spoke about sports or physical culture, he remained unconcerned about modern sports or cricket.77 Yet anecdotes have it that like Ranji, Duleep and Pataudi, Gandhi was in an English touring side! It was claimed that he belonged to D.G. Jardine’s M.C.C. team which toured India in 1933–34. But ‘how he was chosen is the question which even the M.C.C. selectors cannot possibly answer.’78 The story, as narrated by a journalist, thus seems intriguing: The great simply willed so and what he willed became an accomplished fact. It is said when Miss Laxmi Merchant, sister of the celebrated cricketer Vijay Merchant, requested Mahatmaji for an autograph, he turned over the pages and put his name as the 17th player of the M.C.C. team! The book is one of the treasured documents of the M.C.C. at Lord’s, the headquarters of world cricket.79 Gandhi also seemed to have been close to Indian cricketers of his age. The Nawab of Pataudi was said to have recollected an occasion ‘when Gandhi in his lighter moments challenged the Nawab to a game of cricket (single wicket)’.80 The ensuing conversation was revealing: To the Nawab quipped: ‘Mahatmaji, I am sure you can beat me at cricket while I cannot outwit you in politics.’ The Mahatma gave a toothless chuckle and added: ‘Nawab Saheb, apne mujhe abhi se bowled kar diya (Nawab Saheb, you have already bowled me.)’81 A similar anecdote became popular with regard to Gandhi’s meeting with Gama Pehlwan, India’s champion wrestler in the late 1920s. As Joseph Alter narrates it nicely, ‘Joking about the apparent difference in their respective physiques—Gandhi, thin almost to the point of emaciation and Gama thick and sturdy—Gandhi asked Gama if he would care to wrestle with him. Gama replied, “How can I hope to win against one who has single handedly flipped an empire onto its back”.’82 Alter has studied in depth Gandhi’s almost obsessive concern with his body in terms of sex, health and diet in relation to his avowed ideals of ahimsa, satyagraha or sarvodaya.83 But this concern did not seem to make any worthy impact on his link with

cricket as such. However, Gandhi’s ideas and practice of asceticism must have been a major bar to his getting connected with any kind of indulgence or entertainment per se. Notes 1 It is fruitless to try to mention even a good number of them here at one stroke. I mention the relevant ones as and when the need be during the course of this book. 2 Gandhi, M.K., Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule (e-book), Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1938. For recent interpretations on Hind Swaraj, see Shah, Ghanshyam, ed. Rereading Hind Swaraj: Modernity and Subalterns, New Delhi: Routledge, 2013. 3 For a somewhat different perspective on Gandhi’s engagement with the West, see Lal, Vinay, ‘Gandhi’s West, the West’s Gandhi’, New Literary History, Vol. 40, No. 2 (2009), pp. 281-313. 4 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. 19. As Jeffrey mentions, when Gandhi once met Charlie Chaplin during his visit to England in September 1931, he had not even heard of Chaplin. ‘Interview with Charlie Chaplin’, London, 22 September 1931, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (e-book) New Delhi: Publication Division, Government of India, 1999 (hereafter CWMGE), Vol. 53, p. 393. 5 Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Early Phase, Vol. 1, Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1965, pp. 194–95, emphasis in original. 6 Ibid., pp. 195-96. 7 Ibid., p. 196. 8 Ibid., pp. 197-98. 9 Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (e- book), Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1925, p. 20. 10 Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, p. 206. 11 Gandhi, An Autobiography, p. 21. 12 Ibid. 13 For details on athleticism in public school education in England, see Mangan, J.A., Athleticism in Victorian and Edwardian Public School: The Emergence and Consolidation of an Educational Ideology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. 14 Gandhi, An Autobiography, p. 27. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid.

17 Ibid., p. 21. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., pp. 21-22. 20 Fischer, Louis, Mahatma Gandhi: His Life and Times (e-book) London: Jonathan Cape, 1951, p. 12. 21 Guha, Ramachandra, ‘Gandhi: did he spin more than khadi?’ Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack 2008. http://www.espncricinfo.com/wisdenalmanack/content/story/377985.html (Accessed 29 October 2016) 22 Ibid. 23 Ratnam, K.V. Gopala, ‘Gandhiji, the Cricketer’, Sport and Pastime, Vol. XVI, No. 27 (7 July 1962), p. 5. 24 Ibid. The same story is narrated in Upadhyaya, J.M., ed. Mahatma Gandhi as a Student, New Delhi: The Director, Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1965, p. 46. 25 Ibid. 26 The other three notes were addressed to Dr. P.J. Mehta, Sjt Dalpatram Shukla, and Dadabhai Naoroji. Gandhi, An Autobiography, p. 56. Also see Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, p. 229; Ross, Alan, Ranji: Prince of Cricketers, London: Collins, 1983, p. 27. 27 Cited in Ganguly, Arghya, ‘The link between cricket and Mahatma Gandhi’, The Times of India, 30 January 2010. Also see Nandy, Ashis, The Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games, New Delhi: Viking, 1989, p. 61. 28 Kumar, Ram, ‘Remembering Mahatma Gandhi’s tryst with cricket’, 2 October 2015, http://www.sportskeeda.com/cricket/remembering-mahatma-gandhis- tryst-with-cricket (Accessed 29 October 2016). 29 Ross, Ranji, p. 40. 30 ‘Interview to the Vegetarian-I’, The Vegetarian, 13 June 1891, CWMGE, Vol. 1, p. 43. 31 Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, p. 238. 32 Cited in Sanyal, Saradindu, 40 Years of Test Cricket: India-England (1932– 1971). New Delhi: Thomson Press, 1972, pp. vii-viii. 33 Ibid., p. vii. 34 Guha, Ramachandra, ‘Gandhi and Cricket’, The Hindu, 30 September 2001. 35 Ross, Ranji, 1983, pp. 169-70. 36 Nandy, Ashis, The Tao of Cricket, p. 63. 37 Gandhi, ‘An Engine of Oppression’, Indian Opinion, 10 September 1904, CWMGE, Vol. 4, p. 75. 38 Gandhi, ‘The Departure Voyage-II’ (SS Armadale Castle, 11 October 1906), Indian Opinion, 17 November 1906, CWMGE, Vol. 5, p. 392. 39 Gandhi’s Letter to Chhaganlal Gandhi dated 20 April 1907, CWMGE, Vol. 6, p. 393.

40 Gandhi, M.K., ‘London: Did They Reach North Pole?’, Indian Opinion, 9 October 1909, CWMGE, Vol. 10, p. 81. 41 Guha, ‘Why Gandhi would have been appalled by the “Gandhi-Mandela Trophy”’, The Telegraph, 31 October 2015 and ESPNCricinfo, 31 October 2015, http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/935051.html (Accessed 13 February 2017). 42 Rodrigues, Mario, ‘When Bapu kicked the ball’. Livemint, 4 June 2010, http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/jQeJWmFWK8GWnrw5yNpaeL/WhenBapuk ickedtheball.html (Accessed 13 February 2017). 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Fifa.com, ‘Mahatma Gandhi, football legend’, 22 October 2010, http://www.fifa.com/news/y=2010/m=10/news=mahatma-gandhi-football- legend-1322010.html (Accessed 15 June 2017). 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. For more details on Gandhi’s link with football in South Africa, see TBI Team, The Better India, ‘Meet Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi—The Football Aficionado’, n.d. http://www.thebetterindia.com/35523/gandhi-football/ (Accessed 15 June 2017); Foottheball.com, ‘Mahatma Gandhi and Football: Experiments with Sport in South Africa’, n.d. https://www.foottheball.com/featured/mahatma-gandhi-south-africa-football- passive-resisters/186449 (Accessed 15 June 2017); Mishra, Aniket, ‘Gandhi and Football: The Mahatma’s Experiments with the Beautiful game’, 2 October 2015, https://www.sportskeeda.com/football/gandhi-and-football-the- mahatmas-experiments-with-the-beautiful-game (Accessed 15 June 2017). 50 Rodrigues, ‘When Bapu kicked the ball’. Also see Cricket Connects: Indo- South African Cricket Relations, Festival of India in South Africa 2014, Ministry of Culture, Government of India, 2014, p. 22. 51 Bandopadhyayay, Anu, Bahuroopee Gandhi (e-book), 1964, p. 61. 52 Gandhi, ‘Who Is Uncivilized?’, Indian Opinion, 23 July 1910, CWMGE, Vol. 11, p. 91. 53 This typically Gandhian response was also noted in a few pieces earlier. Sudipta, ‘5 memorabilia that prove Mahatma Gandhi was never interested in cricket and other sports’, http://sportzwiki.com/cricket/5-memorabilia-that- proved-mahatma-gandhi-was-never-interested-cricket-and-other-sports/ (Accessed 29 October 2016); Guha, ‘Why Gandhi would have been appalled by the “Gandhi-Mandela Trophy”’. 54 Gandhi, ‘Who Is Uncivilized?’, pp. 91-2. 55 Ibid., p. 92. 56 Gandhi, ‘A Reproach’, Indian Opinion, 3 September 1910, CWMGE, Vol. 11, p. 115.

57 Gandhi, ‘General Knowledge about Health [-XV]: Exercise’, Indian Opinion, 12 April 2013, CWMGE, Vol. 13, p. 63. 58 Ibid., p. 65. 59 ‘Letter to Lazarus’, 17 April 1915. CWMGE, Vol. 14, pp. 403-4. 60 Gandhi, ‘The Present State of Education’, Samalochak, October 1916, CWMGE, Vol. 15, p. 257. 61 ‘Speech at Bihar Students’ Conference’, Bhagalpur, 15 October 1917, Mahatma Gandhini Vicharsrishti, CWMGE, Vol. 16, p. 62. 62 ‘Speech at Second Gujarat Educational Conference’, Broach, 20 October 1917, Mahatma Gandhini Vicharsrishti, CWMGE, Vol. 16, p. 92. 63 Gandhi, ‘What is Education?’, Navajivan, Education Supplement, 28 February 1926, CWMGE, Vol. 34, p. 335. 64 Gandhi, ‘Notes: “The Morals of Machinery”’, 11 April 1926, Young India, 15 April 1926, CWMGE, Vol. 35, p. 72. 65 ‘Speech at Mahinda College’, Galle, 24 November 1927, CWMGE, Vol. 40, pp. 428-29. 66 Ibid., p. 429. 67 Gannesi, Namrata R., ‘The Debate on “Revival” and the Physical Culture Movement in Western India (1900–1950)’, in Katria Bromber, Birgit Krawietz and Joseph Macguire, eds. Sport Across Asia: Politics, Cultures and Identities, London: Routledge, 2013, pp. 121-43. 68 Gandhi, ‘Notes to Correspondents’, Navajivan, 3 May 1931, CWMGE, Vol. 52, pp. 29-30. 69 In December 1932, as part of the observance of the ‘Anti-Untouchability Day Programme’, it was suggested that games, sports and parties should be held by mixed gatherings of Harijans and high caste Hindu children. See ‘Anti- Untouchability Day Programme’, 6 December 1932, The Hindustan Times, 7 December 1932, CWMGE, Vol. 58, p. 131. 70 ‘Letter to S.K. Dutta’, 3 January 1933, CWMGE, Vol. 58, p. 361. 71 ‘Letter to Diwakar Singh’, 22 March 1933, CWMGE, Vol. 60, p. 116. 72 ‘Speech at Students’ Meeting, Nagpur’, 9 November 1933, Harijan, 17 November 1933, CWMGE, Vol. 62, p. 146. 73 ‘Gandhi’s Letter to C. E. Newham’, Ahmedabad, 19 August 1931, CWMGE, Vol. 53, p. 238. 74 Gandhi, ‘Religious Oath and Non-Religious’, Harijan, 22 May 1937, CWMGE, Vol. 71, p. 276. 75 Gandhi, ‘Plea for Calmness’, on the train to Calcutta, 17 February 1942, Harijan, 22 February 1942, CWMGE, Vol. 82, p. 28. 76 ‘Interview to an Egyptian Deputation’, 3 March 1937, Harijan, 13 March 1937, CWMGE, Vol. 71, p. 19. 77 See, for example, ‘Letter to “Sporting Star”’, Indian Opinion, 4 May 1912, CWMGE, Vol. 12, p. 188; ‘Speech at Sports Function’, Durban (9 July 1914), Indian Opinion, 2 September 1914, CWMGE, Vol. 14, pp. 212-14; ‘Physical

Training and Ahimsa’, Harijan, 13 October 1940, CWMGE, Vol. 79, pp. 270- 75. 78 Ratnam, ‘Gandhiji, the Cricketer’. 79 Ibid. Ramachandra Guha rightly considers the episode to be act of humour on the part of Gandhi. See Guha, ‘Gandhi and Cricket’. 80 Ratnam, ‘Gandhiji, the Cricketer’. 81 Ibid. The same anecdote can be found in Prabhu, R.K., This Was Bapu: One Hundred and Fifty Anecdotes Relating to Mahatma Gandhi, Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1954, p. 65. 82 Alter, Joseph S., ‘Somatic Nationalism: Indian wrestling and militant Hinduism’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3 (1994), p. 583. 83 Alter, Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000; ‘The Body of One Color: Indian Wrestling, the Indian State and Utopian Somatics’, Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1993): 49-72; ‘Gandhi’s Body, Gandhi’s Truth: Nonviolence and the Biomoral Imperative of Public Health’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 55, No. 2 (May 1996): 301-322; ‘Indian Clubs and Colonialism: Hindu Masculinity and Muscular Christianity’, Comparative Studies in History and Society, Vol. 46, No. 3 (2004): 497-534; ‘Somatic Nationalism’: 557-588.

4 THE STORY OF GANDHIAN CRICKET Cricket’s Tryst with Gandhi While Gandhi’s direct involvement with modern sports, including cricket, is seen to have been a rare phenomenon till 1940, it would be naïve to dismiss the possible impact of Gandhian ideas and actions in the world of cricket during the course of the national movement and social reform led by him. Gandhi’s struggle against British imperial rule, discriminatory caste system, and Hindu-Muslim communal strife endeared him to become a connoisseur of social and cultural expressions to be imbibed by the Indian cricket field. His anti-colonial mass politics, his unending fight against untouchability, and his lifelong struggle to restore communal amity affected Indian cricket on a serious note. In fact, there were fascinating instances, to use a journalistic jargon, ‘when Indian cricket could not duck Gandhi and how Gandhi sometimes, even if he tried to, could not duck cricket.’1 Hence, Gandhi’s unwitting influence on cricket until 1940, the year Gandhi’s most intriguing comment on and connection with cricket came to the fore, was no less significant and fascinating. A Gandhian struggle against untouchability

When Gandhi was fighting the cause of Indians in South Africa, one lower-caste Hindu named Palwankar Baloo was making an unusual effort to break the barriers of caste-ridden society on the field of cricket. Baloo was a chamar2 by caste; yet, he rose to play for the Hindus from the late 1890s and became a part of the first Indian team to visit England in 1911. Despite prejudices and oppositions from quarters of upper-caste Hindus, Baloo became an indispensable cricketer by his sheer merit. He had to face severe discrimination off the pitch in the early years of his struggle. Nationalist leaders like Ranade and Tilak praised him in public and many had already begun to consider him the best Indian bowler of the time. As Ramachandra Guha commented, ‘By virtue solely of his deeds on the cricket field, Baloo had become a hero and inspiration to countless Untouchables.’3 Baloo’s three younger brothers— Shivram, Vithal and Ganpat—were soon to join him to play for the Hindus in the Quadrangular cricket. The Palwankar brothers began to make headlines in Indian cricket from 1913 onwards. However, Baloo was denied captaincy by the Hindu Gymkhana time and again and at times dropped from the team for his low caste status. This was a time when Gandhi had just returned from South Africa, and was yet to raise his voice against untouchability. The political situation of India became volatile by 1919. Gandhi followed up his successful campaigns at Champaran, Kheda and Ahmedabad with a more assertive satyagraha against the Rowlatt Act. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre prompted Gandhi to launch his Non-Cooperation Movement which he integrated with the Khilafat Movement, leading to the strengthening of Hindu-Muslim unity and joint demonstrations by them. The Quadrangular of 1919 witnessed Baloo once again being deprived of a just captaincy. By the time the next Quadrangular started, Gandhi’s stand against untouchability became pronounced: ‘Untouchability is a crime against God and humanity.’4 Gandhi’s attack on untouchability was steadily making an impact on the people: ‘My conscience tells me that untouchability can never be a part of Hinduism. I do not think it too much to dedicate my whole life to removing the thick crust of sin with which Hindu society has covered itself for so long by stupidly regarding

these people as untouchables.’5 Against this backdrop, Baloo was dropped from the team and D.B. Deodhar was preferred to Shivram and Vithal to substitute M.D. Pai as captain after the latter’s illness forced his withdrawal from the first match.6 In protest, the Palwankar brothers resigned from the team. However, things were finally restored to honour after one match and the three brothers were recalled. Baloo, being appointed the vice-captain, was given a chance to lead the team in the absence of Pai during the second innings of the Parsis in the final. It was also around this time that Gandhi became more categorical about his critique of untouchability, linking it with the achievement of swaraj. As he asked, ‘Do we hope to win swaraj while reviving the practice of untouchability at the same time?’7 Or he exclaimed: ‘The effort to win swaraj while clinging to the sin of untouchability, a load of dirt, is like the attempt to throw dust up at the sky.’8 In such context, argues Ramachandra Guha, ‘He (Gandhi) never watched Baloo bowl or Vithal bat, but his campaign against Untouchability emboldened the Palwankars and their followers to fight more openly for their rights.’9 The victory of Gandhi’s untouchables As the Non-Cooperation Movement gained momentum in 1921, calls for boycotting the Quadrangular at that critical stage of nationalist struggle were heard. Gandhi had already called for a boycott of the visit of the Prince of Wales during the same time. However, there were others who did not favour the intrusion of politics onto the cricket field and wanted the tournament to continue. As the tournament went under way, some cricket fans boycotted it and sent their ticket money to the Congress Committee’s Malabar Relief Fund.10 The captaincy debate continued amidst all this and reached a climax in 1922 when Shivram and Vithal again protested by withdrawing themselves from the Hindu team. The tournament was played in Poona, a bastion of more conservative upper-caste Hindus, where Gandhi was in Yeravada jail since the withdrawal of the Non-Cooperation Movement in February 1922. As a result, the Hindus had to play without the Palwankar Brothers and they lost to

the Parsis easily. The marginalization of the Palwankars inspired B.V. Varekar, a ‘radical playwright’ of the time, to produce ‘a remarkable play entitled Turungachya Darat (At the Gate of a Prison) on the bloody intersection where the politics of cricket met the politics of caste’.11 The strike of Shivram and Vithal coupled with the Hindus’ poor performance in the Quadrangulars of 1921 and 1922 made a serious impact on the selection committee of the Hindu Gymkhana when they assembled to select the team for the 1923 tournament. Varekar’s role in the wider backdrop of Gandhi’s ever-growing protest against untouchability might have played its part when Vithal was finally appointed as captain. Thus, an untouchable became the leader of the Hindu team vindicating the Gandhian dictum against the sin. The Hindus under Vithal went on to win the coveted trophy by beating the Muslims by an innings and overpowering the Europeans in a thrilling final. A newspaper editorial wrote after the victory: The success of the Hindu team was largely due to the confidence which its captain inspired. The heartiest congratulations of all lovers of cricket are due to him and to his team and no less to the Hindu Selection Committee which did not allow a pernicious caste prejudice to come in the way of selecting the right man to lead the team.12 A letter to the editor of the same newspaper linked the victory to Gandhi’s prophecy: The Hindus’ brilliant victory was due to the judicious and bold step of the Hindu Gymkhana in appointing Mr Vithal, brother of Mr Baloo—premier bowler of India—who is member of the Untouchable Class to captain the Hindu team. The moral that can be safely drawn from the Hindus’ magnificent victory is that removal of Untouchability would lead to swaraj —which is the prophecy of the Mahatma.13 Another reader of the newspaper, attaching an ‘Indian National point of view’ to the victory, interpreted it in ‘moral and political’ terms rather than purely cricketing one: ‘The most agreeable upshot of the set of matches was the carrying of Captain Vithal on the shoulders of Hindus belonging to the so-called higher castes. Hurrah! Captain

Vithal! Hurrah! Hindus who forget caste prejudice! Mahatma Gandhi Maharaj ki jai!’14 No way can we know if Gandhi had ever heard or read about this vindication of his lifelong fight against untouchability as he never referred to it in his writings. But surely, the social reformist Gandhi achieved a momentous victory in the feat of cricket reformist Vithal on the sports field. In 1926, Vithal broke another major barrier when the Hindus under him won the coveted tournament by defeating the Europeans in Poona. He received the trophy at the same pavilion Baloo was always debarred from entering earlier because of his low caste.15 More importantly, while Vithal’s triumph was being looked upon as an assertion of the untouchables in the cultural sphere of sport in the mid-1920s, B.R. Ambedkar was all set to make his way into Indian politics to serve the interests of the depressed classes. Ambedkar, an ardent admirer of Baloo during his student and early teaching career, fought hard to accord recognition to his cricketing hero.16 Yet, Baloo, a supporter of Gandhi, was to become his rival in politics when Baloo decided to enter the political arena to represent and protect the interests of the depressed classes in the 1930s. Gandhian nationalism at play As the Civil Disobedience Movement began under Gandhi’s leadership in 1930 with the famous Dandi Salt March, cricket in India and particularly the Quadrangular cricket of Bombay were inevitably affected. The tournament was stopped and suspended from 1930 to 193317, and the possibility of an English team’s visit to India in late 1930 was lost. As the movement gained momentum and the government under Lord Willingdon came down upon it with a heavy hand to suppress the nationalist fervour, cricket fell victim to political turbulence. Mihir Bose narrates the situation aptly: The Quadrangulars remained suspended, nationalist Hindus refused to have anything to do with cricket, and Vijay Merchant, who had been emerging as a major batsman, and several other Hindu players, were asked not to go for the trials to select the team to tour England in 1932. …

So it happened that, against the background of the premier domestic tournament suspended and some of its promising players not available, India embarked on its first great cricket adventure: the first test match tour of England.18 It may be a coincidence that the stronghold of Indian cricket from the beginning was to become a centre of Gandhi’s nationalist campaigns —Bombay. At the same time, cricketers too seemed to have been influenced by Gandhian movement as well as his ideas. This was the case with Vijay Merchant, who stayed away from the trials for the selection of the Indian team for its first official Test tour to England in 1932 to show solidarity with the Civil Disobedience Movement. However, ‘like Gandhi’, argues Mihir Bose, ‘(Vijay) Merchant could see the good in British rule and cricket was part of what he wanted to retain.’19 But when the Indian team took the field on 25 June 1932 to play their maiden Test match against England at Lords, with the scorecard flashing a bizarre 19 for 3 for England within twenty minutes, Neville Cardus wrote poetically: ‘In my mind’s eyes I saw the news flashing over the air to far-flung places in India, Punjab and Karachi and Kuala Lumpur [which of course was not in India] to dusky men in the hills, to the bazaars of the East, and Gandhi himself and to Gunga Din.’20 Thus, any achievement in Indian cricket, Cardus admitted, perhaps unwittingly, was to be a matter of pride and relational reference to Gandhi. Interestingly, one report lauded the performance of the Indian cricket team in contrast to that of Indian politicians at the Round Table Conference held in 1931. According to it, Indian cricketers made a better impression than their politicians had done in 1931. Probably because the ‘English likes sports better than politics, and it is just as well’, ‘what the Round Tablers might fail to achieve the Naidus alone might succeed.’21 A cricketer’s turnover to politics When the proposal to revive the Quadrangular tournament was mooted in 1933, some members of the Hindu Gymkhana opposed it, even though Gandhi was released from jail and the movement had

been suspended. In 1934, as ‘the Congress accepted an alternative path against the British’, ‘the Quadrangulars were revived.’22 Meanwhile, in August 1932, the British Government announced the ‘Communal Award’, granting separate electorates to the untouchables as demanded by Ambedkar. Gandhi, then in Yeravada jail, went on a fast unto death in protest. Baloo, extending his full support to Gandhi, requested Ambedkar to revise his stand in order to save Gandhi’s life. In the ensuing negotiation that followed, Baloo, along with Mr Rajah, another untouchable leader, met Gandhi and played a crucial role in negotiating a truce between the two leaders. The outcome was the signing of the Poona Pact on 24 September, subsequently ratified by the government, granting reservation of seats for depressed classes in the joint electorate. Next year, Baloo fought a by-election as a Hindu Mahasabha candidate in the Bombay Municipality, with the blessings of Gandhi and the support of the Congress who did not put up any candidate against him. While Baloo’s rise to prominence in public life was primarily due to his cricketing fame, he did not use cricket to promote his political or electoral interests, resulting in his defeat in the election to a large extent. Ambedkar changed his stance in 1935 and once again aroused the cause of separate electorates, hinting even to conversion to another religion for the sake of the security of the untouchables. Baloo opposed him, publicly referring to Gandhi’s struggle on the same issue and hoped a change of heart for Ambedkar. In the 1937 provincial elections, the Congress decided to field Baloo as their candidate against Ambedkar in the Bombay Legislative Assembly. The Congress press statement favoured Baloo’s candidature in no uncertain terms: ‘He is a famous cricketer. He is a staunch Nationalist and was of great help in bringing about the Poona Pact. (He) stands against disruption of the Indian Nation for the sake of any community.’23 Baloo’s choice as the Congress candidate owed much to his heroics in cricket as the voters of cricket-crazy Bombay were expected to vote for him out of their devotion to this legend, if not for practical reasons. Ramachandra Guha aptly comments in this context: ‘The cricketing metaphor is inescapable: it would be the hardest match he would ever play.’24 In a closely fought battle,

Ambedkar prevailed over his once-admirable sporting hero. Yet, it should go to the credit of a Gandhian Baloo that the challenge he took up stubbornly on the cricket field was taken up in the field of politics, albeit in a divergent way, by Ambedkar. Thus, while a sporting or cricketing Gandhi may not be an enviable proposition owing to cricket’s minimal impact on Gandhi, the idea of Gandhian cricket looks viable because of Gandhi’s impact on the course of Indian cricket. Guha sounds perfectly logical when he says: ‘Cricket might not have affected Gandhi, but Gandhi certainly affected cricket. The political movements he led and the social changes he sought to bring about had their consequences on how the game was played in the subcontinent.’25 In fact, Gandhi’s often-espoused term of ‘sportsmanlike’ in the game of politics leads one to argue that Gandhi believed in the moral values and fair play ingrained in modern sports. K.V. Gopala Ratnam has made the point succinctly: ‘Mahatma Gandhi was a real cricketer who played the game in politics, thereby proving that the cricketer is essentially a gentleman’s game.’26 Yet, it remains debatable whether Gandhi really played the game of politics with a straight bat in the spirit of the gentleman’s game! Notes 1 Ganguly, Arghya, ‘The link between cricket and Mahatma Gandhi’, The Times of India, 30 January 2010. 2 Chamars were people who earned their living by working on leather, and were considered untouchables. 3 Guha, Ramachandra, A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport, Delhi: Picador, 2002, p. 122. 4 M.K. Gandhi’s Letter to C.F. Andrews, 25 May 1920, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (e-book) New Delhi: Publication Division, Government of India, 1999 (hereafter CWMGE), Vol. 20, p. 358. 5 Gandhi, M.K., ‘Miscellaneous Issues’, Navajivan, 30 May 1920, CWMGE, Vol. 20, p. 380. 6 Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field, p. 142. 7 Gandhi, M.K., ‘Conditions for Swaraj and Practice of Untouchability’, Navajivan, 21 November 1920, CWMGE, Vol. 20, p. 510.

8 Gandhi, M.K., ‘More about “Antyajas”’, Navajivan, 19 December 1920, CWMGE, Vol. 22, p. 123. 9 Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field, p. 149. 10 Ibid., p. 152. 11 Ibid., p. 155. 12 The Bombay Chronicle, 15 December 1923; cited in ibid., p. 161. 13 Ibid., emphasis in original. 14 The Bombay Chronicle, 18 December 1923; cited in Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field, p. 162; emphasis added. 15 Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field, p. 167. 16 Ibid., p. 169. 17 Raiji, Vasant, C.K. Nayudu: The Shahenshah of Indian Cricket, Bombay: The Marine Sports, 1989, p. 11; Deodhar, D.B., March of Indian Cricket, Calcutta: Illustrated News, 1948, p. 84. 18 Bose, Mihir, A History of Indian Cricket, New Delhi: Rupa Publications, 1990, pp. 61-2. 19 Ibid., p. 112. 20 Cited in ibid., p. 75. 21 The Field, July 1932, p. 18; cited in Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field, p. 194. 22 Deodhar, March of Indian Cricket, p. 84. 23 The Bombay Chronicle weekly edition, 17 January 1937; cited in Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field, p. 240. 24 Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field, p. 241. 25 Guha, ‘Gandhi and Cricket’. 26 Ratnam, K.V. Gopala, ‘Gandhiji, The Cricketer’, Sport and Pastime, Vol. xvi, No. 27 (7 July 1962), p. 5.

5 FROM COMMUNITY TO COMMUNAL The Pentangular Debate The 1930s constituted a critical decade in the history of Indian society and polity. The second phase of Gandhian mass politics reached its high noon with the Civil Disobedience Movement (1930– 34). The Communal Award was declared by the British in 1932 to provide further sharpening of the communalization of politics, albeit redressed by the Poona Pact for a few years. Provincial ministries were formed in 1937 with the Congress-Muslim League tussle assuming new heights. The League under Jinnah’s leadership was becoming adamant on the demand for Pakistan. Within the Congress, Gandhi made a political rival of his own when Subhas Chandra Bose defeated his protégé Pattabhi Sitaramayya in 1939 to capture the Congress presidency twice in a row, ultimately resulting in his exit from the Congress, thanks to Gandhi’s untiring and intriguing opposition. As these cross-currents were rocking Indian politics and society, the Second World War began on 1 September 1939, and India as part of the British Empire became vulnerable to its tentacles. To make the matter worse, the Muslim League adopted the famous Pakistan resolution at the Lahore session of the League in March 1940. It is against this backdrop that the debates around

the Quadrangular/Pentangular cricket began to stir the Indian cricket world. The Quadrangular in action The Bombay tournament continued successfully without creating any significant communal tension anywhere since 1912. The other Quadrangulars, played in Sind, Karachi, Lahore, the Central Provinces or Delhi, also remained more or less peaceful affairs afterwards. In fact, as Mihir Bose noted, ‘In those early days, the development of Bombay cricket, and thereby Indian cricket, was due to the different communities sharpening their competitive instincts on the cricket field’.1 How the communal element was played out contrastingly in the crowd behaviour during the Pentangular matches was captured vividly by Richard Cashman: Most of the crowd were segregated along communal lines, choosing to join their respective gymkhanas, and it was not uncommon for some spectators of the Parsi galleries to deride their Hindu opponents as ‘tatyas’, implying they were simpletons or rustics, and for the Hindus to retaliate and refer to their Parsi opponents as ‘crows’, a reference to the custom of the disposal of the dead. … such banter was good-humoured but then there is always a cutting edge to ethnically directed humour. It is difficult to gauge the extent of any communal feeling for the party of forty organized by the Hindu, Vijay Merchant, were regularly accommodated in the Islam Gymkhana, where they were well accepted.2 However, communal cricket did not auger communal tension probably because ‘cricket attracted an educated and largely middle class audience whereas those involved in communal unrest came mostly from poorer groups.’3 Even J.C. Maitra, a leading journalist and one of the staunchest critics of the Quadrangular tournament in the 1930s, conceded that ‘the tournament has kept the spirit of communalism within reasonable bounds of decency and decorum among the upper classes of the communities concerned’.4 In the aftermath of the withdrawal of the Non-Cooperation Movement by Gandhi in 1922, Hindu-Muslim relations went beyond the heyday of joint Non-Cooperation/Khilafat agitation and became strained. Yet,

when the Muslims clinched their maiden Quadrangular in 1924, the Hindu players attended their victory celebrations where Mohammed Ali Jinnah championed the cause of Hindu-Muslim unity on the field of cricket: ‘Even their Hindu brethren would rejoice in the Mahommedans’ success in a spirit of true sportsmanship. The cricket field has many lessons to teach in other walks of life. The brotherly feeling that prevailed through-out the play was no less remarkable and he hoped their Hindu brethren as sportsmen would no less be pleased, but also rejoice at the Mahommedans’ winning the championship.’5 A somewhat different picture emerges from B.R. Kagal’s reminiscences about communal club cricket in Bombay. Writing in 1940, Kagal recollected earliest instances of disorder bred by the communal Triangular tournament: The early experience appears too have been far from satisfactory so far as the crowd psychology went. … I have recollections, as a small boy, of having witnessed more than one scene of this kind from the pavilion of one of the leading Gymkhanas. Of course, it must be admitted that the participants in these ‘melees’ came mostly from the mavali or the goonda (rowdy or goon) class but that did not prevent more respectable classes of people getting occasionally mixed up either by accident or even through indiscreet and misplaced enthusiasm. No wonder parents forcibly kept boys away from matches, which should have proved in most cases a source of valuable cricket education. Looking back nearly thirty-five years, I distinctly recollect thoughts and reactions, which I would be ashamed to own up to publicly at present. … It was not unusual, in the first decade of this century, to find a couple of lathis (sticks) carefully stored in the kit-bag, along with the gear, as a matter of pure precaution.6 However, Kagal immediately noted, ‘on the whole, barring a few exceptions, the relations between the participants was generally cordial’.7 Citing faulty umpiring as the most common cause of crowd hostility, he recounted: ‘The unfortunate aspects of these matches were that bad umpiring led to the rousing of decidedly worse passions amongst the spectators, though the players themselves might be content to feel that “it was all in the game”. In fact, often, the players readily went to the rescue of the members of the

opposing teams and protected them from being mobbed by goondas.’8 Kagal argued that the ‘conditions improved outwardly’ ‘with the conversion of the Triangulars into Quadrangulars’, i.e. with the inclusion of the Muslims in the tournament.9 Yet, writing in 1929, Sir Chunilal V. Mehta, a former captain of the Hindus and finance minister of the Government of Bombay, predicted the ominous writing on the wall: At present there is too much of the communal character even in this king of sports and it is desirable that it should be avoided. I do not think, fortunately for us, this communal tension has expressed itself very acutely so far and it might be said that at least in regard to the two major communities in India, namely the Hindus and the Muslims, the feeling has been thoroughly sportsmanlike and friendly. But it is necessary to take action in time and I am looking forward to association in sport for the encouragement rather than otherwise of communal friendship.10 From community to communal Gyanendra Pandey has argued that a fundamental change in the nature of nationalism and communalism occurred in India since the 1920s, resulting in their signification ‘to a large extent in opposition to one another’. ‘Before that time’, argues Pandey, ‘the nation of Indians was visualized as a composite body, consisting of several communities, each with its own history and culture and its own special contribution to make to the common nationality. India, and the emerging Indian nation, was conceived of as a collection of communities: Hind u+Muslim+Christian+Parsi+Sikh, and so on.’11 This idea fitted in well with the community-based sporting competitions held across India run by various sports organizations. The crucial change came sometime around the 1920s when ‘this vision was substantially altered, and India came to be seen very much more as a collection of individuals, of Indian “citizens”.’ It was in the context of this change, he says, ‘that the concept of communalism was fully articulated.’12 Pandey’s point merits attention in so far as it focuses on the changing nature of the construction of an ‘imagined political

community of the future (nation/nation-state) by Indian nationalists at different times’.13 This view, while marginalizing the significance of the cultural/social domain in the construction of the same nation14, points to a reality in Indian life. It was the reality of a flaw in Hindu- Muslim relations which Rabindranath Tagore brilliantly captured long back in one of his celebrated aphorisms, ‘Saturn cannot enter unless he finds a hole’. Therefore, while the British divided the two communities to rule India, ‘what accounts for the gradual consolidation of these two rival blocs was probably the logic internal to these communities which, of course, had its root in the larger socio-economic and political environment’.15 The delicate passage from community to communal in India in the second quarter of the twentieth century was made slippery by a complex web of politics of imperialism and nationalism, in ‘the context of a search for nationhood and/or a distinct place within the nation by those (Muslims) who apparently felt threatened under the prevalent socio- economic configurations’16, resulting in a serious rift between the Hindus and the Muslims. The situation became extreme from the late 1930s when the political transition from community to communal began to affect the social and cultural spheres. Pentangular cricket was caught napping in this web of tricky threads of communal politics, and, ultimately, fell victim to it in 1946. The debate gains momentum The Quadrangular debate began in full swing from the early 1930s— whether community-based cricket was acceptable to the Indian nation in making and ‘whether it exacerbated or alleviated communal tensions of the city.’17 Apparently, the debate seemed to be one of the ideas between two schools of thought: one holding that ‘communal matches are designed to bring—and have actually brought—the otherwise warring communities together through the medium of cricket’, while the other arguing that ‘communal cricket is likely to lead—and has actually led—to unhealthy rivalry which tears the communities farther apart’.18 There were many distinguished people who regarded the Quadrangular cricket as a unifier. Sir

Lancelot Graham, the first Governor of Sind, commented: ‘Communal matches bind communities together and foster harmony on and off the field, not only in cricket but in other games. I am in favour of such matches particularly in India which is a land of many communities.’19 On the eve of the resumption of the Quadrangular in 1934, a vehement critic of the same, J.C. Maitra noted, ‘if the sale of tickets at the various Gymkhanas is any indication of its popularity among the votaries of the game, communalism has won with all ten wickets in hand.’20 Interestingly, the anti-Quadrangular voices began to be heard only after the formation of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in 1928 while it gained momentum with the institution of the Ranji Trophy in 1934. In 1935, Berry Sarbadhikary, after watching that year’s Quadrangular, wrote: ‘For sometime I have felt that Quadrangular cricket is no longer necessity and that it is now apt to lead to more harm than good. … The time has come when we must play the great game as cricketers and Indians. There is no more time to play cricket as Hindus, Muslims and Parsis.’21 A.L. Hosie, the Hampshire amateur, criticizing him straightaway, pointed to ‘the best of spirit’ of the Quadrangular in which he played.22 The Nawab of Pataudi, going a step further, not only supported the Quadrangular but backed it up against the inter-provincial national championship for the former’s ‘great traditions’.23 The 1936, Quadrangular was preceded by a spell of Hindu- Muslim riots in Bombay, and The Bombay Chronicle therefore suggested that ‘the time has definitely arrived for the stoppage of this communal fight in sport which merely adds to the bitterness rather than promotes friendly feelings between the respective communities’.24 Once the Quadrangular frenzy was under way, the same newspaper admitted that ‘Bombay is almost inseparably wedded to it. (The fans’) love for it is so great that they would not talk of anything else, nor would they part with it so easily.’25 In fact, H.N. Contractor later recounted that the Quadrangular of 1936 ‘actually ended the serious riots’ in the city of Bombay and that ‘sport did not act as a source of infection but rather as a remedy against the disease’.26 Sarbadhikary, however, had more serious points to raise

for the abolition of the tournament. Drawing attention to the selection procedure of the Indian national team on the basis of performances in the Bombay tourney, he argued that selection was infested with communal jealousies, thereby endangering the interest of the national team. Citing India’s England tours of 1932 and 1936, he observed, the team spirit ‘suffered very largely as a result of communal differences to start with, which might have later developed into acute personal differences as well.’27 He cited Jack Hobbs, who knew Indian cricket quite well, commenting in 1936 that ‘With all the keenness and skill I have noted, India will never rise to the status of a leading cricket country until all political and religious rivalries are forgotten on the field’.28 In early 1937, when the Bombay Quadrangular Committee was contemplating the inclusion of a Rest side in the tournament, J.C. Maitra, urged the abolition of the tournament for the sake of national interest: We have to turn India from so many communities into one nation. Instead of showing up our communal colours, we have to present one solid front of united nation. So we need to inculcate the spirit of nationalism among our people, instead of harping on our communal differences. Sport—and cricket of course—does not know any caste, creed, colour or class. It is indeed a shame to Bombay that she makes a distinction which does not exist in other parts of the world. The sooner this distinction is removed, the better it would be for the game and the people as a whole.29 J.M. Ganguly, another noted sports journalist of the time, argued on the same line: When the Quadrangular matches were conceived and started, times were different; the sports atmosphere was clear and unclouded by communal and sectarian feelings … Victory in the Quadrangular was not taken as a communal victory, but merely as the result of a better performance by the winning side, and which did not leave any rancour or mean jealousy … Those happy days are now gone, thanks to those self seeking leaders who want to gain their ends by ranking up communal fanaticism, and who would not rest on their oars after doing all the mischief they could in the political sphere but would go out in search of new fields and pastures green. Even the sacred field of sport they would not leave unmolested.30

However, with the inclusion of the Rest, the Pentangular became more popular among the masses, and the debate around the tournament continued unabated. From debate to crisis With the onset of the Second World War, international cricket came to a standstill. India’s forthcoming international ventures—MCC’s tour of India in 1939–40 and India’s scheduled tour of England in 1940—got cancelled as a result.31 However, domestic cricket including the Pentangular and the Ranji Trophy ‘continued to be played in right royal earnestness.’32 The staging of the Pentangular, in that context, was to excite vehement debates about the advisability of organizing the tournament in such a tense socio- political situation. Thus, as the Pentangular season was approaching in 1940, debates on whether to hold it or not were on top. Arguments in favour and against the Pentangular poured in and flooded the newspapers. The Muslim captain, Wazir Ali, supporting the Pentangular, declared: ‘I fully believe that the Pentangular is not, in the least, anti-National and will, and must, go on in the interests of Indian cricket. … every match that I have played in or watched has been played in an atmosphere of perfect sportsmanship and amity.’33 K.S. Duleep Sinhji, on the other hand, considered ‘inter- communal cricket an unfavourable influence on the whole’ and ‘asked cricket fans to follow and support the Ranji Trophy.34 The Bombay Sentinel, in its column ‘What the People Say’, brought out the contrasting views nicely. The view to stop the Pentangular for the year offered by C.K. Nayudu and 21 others emphasized: The country is in a turmoil today. Everyone of our trusted leaders is being clapped behind prison bars. Prime Ministers, Ministers and members of Legislature, representatives of the electorates are courting imprisonment and ere long we will all be leaderless. At a juncture like this, when all of us are thinking in terms of communal harmony and freedom for the country, it is but natural that many young men some of them leading sportsmen, should feel that we should not indulge in the Pentangular cricket this year. How can we think of sports

and play cricket when our trusted are being thrust into prisons to rot behind bars.35 However, in defence of the Pentangular, it was argued: ‘The communalism in Pentangular of which we are hearing so much during very recent years is more exaggerated than real. There is communalism to the extent that the different communities inhabiting this country are pitched against one another and there is a secret desire in every person that the community to which belongs should be victorious. Beyond this there cannot be any place for communal bitterness.’36 Furthermore, Gandhi’s opinion was invoked to justify the continuance of the tournament: The latest cry is that the tournament should not be held this year because Congress has launched Satyagraha. Till very recently Gandhiji was saying that the country is not ripe for Satyagraha. Even thereafter he is not for mass action. Gandhiji himself knows that the people at large, not to speak of a large section of Congressmen themselves, are not so much in support of the ways of the Congress today as they were during the last Satyagraha movement. It is therefore absurd to try to force abandonment of Pentangular when almost everything has been arranged to conduct the tournament.37 Some members of the Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee (BPCC), too, came to intervene in the matter at this point. Recalling how ‘during the 1930 movement the public and gymkhanas continuously expressed their sympathy with the national struggle by refusing to stage this “tamasha”’, Purshottamdas Tricumdas of the BPCC sounded ‘a note of warning’: ‘if matches are played our opponents are certain to exploit the occasion to show that the public of this great city which gave such a splendid account of itself between 1930 and 1934 is today indifferent to the struggle which is far from such.’38 Tricumdas’s call was reiterated soon by K.M. Munshi, home minister in the Bombay Government, in the following words: When India is denied the right to be a comrade of Britain in War, when 1,500 elected representatives of your country have decided to prefer to be locked up in British jails, … I ask you, will you be able to enjoy the

Pentangular? Will not the cricket carnival be exploited by those who are against your country by telling the world that whatever your elected representatives may do the people are so happy and reconciled to their unfortunate lot that they have time to go and enjoy cricket matches?39 The Bombay Students’ Union also called for the general public as well as students of Bombay not to attend the matches.40 Finally, P. Subbaroyan, president of the BCCI, describing the inter-provincial Ranji Trophy as ‘the future of Indian cricket’, raised his strong voice for the abolition of the Pentangular: ‘with political Pakistan in the offing we do not want sport to be evolved in the same fashion’.41 Meanwhile, a section of the members of the Hindu Gymkhana, in a requisition to its managing committee, demanded that ‘in the event of the Pentangular Committee not cancelling the Pentangular Tournament, in view of the present situation of the country this Gymkhana resolves not to participate in the said tournament’.42 The Bombay Pentangular Tournament Committee, however, announced the final schedule of the competition on 5 December 1940 with the hope of accommodating the Hindus in it.43 The managing committee of the Hindu Gymkhana called an emergency meeting of its members on 13 December, the day before the scheduled start of the tournament to consider the proposed withdrawal from the tournament. Thus, while other gymkhanas were fully in support for the continuance of the Pentangular, the Hindus were in deep strife over the issue. Ramachandra Guha nicely captures this dilemma: ‘It was the Hindus of Bombay who were caught in a bind. Placed against their undoubted love of the Pentangular were the insistent claims of Congress nationalism. With their leaders in jail, and given the insolence with which the Viceroy had treated their offer of conditional cooperation, could they turn up this year at cricket?’44 Notes 1 Bose, Mihir, A History of Indian Cricket, London: Andre Deutsch Ltd., 1990, p. 33. 2 Cashman, Richard, Patrons, Players and the Crowd: The Phenomenon of Indian Cricket, Calcutta: Orient Longman, 1979, pp. 116-17.

3 Ibid., p. 117. 4 The Bombay Chronicle, 28 February 1937, reproduced in Maitra, J.C., Indian Sports Flashback, Bombay: The Author, 1965, p. 30. 5 The Bombay Chronicle, 12 December 1924, cited in Guha, Ramachandra, ‘Cricket and Politics in Colonial India’, Past and Present, No. 161 (November 1998), p. 186-7. 6 Kagal, B.R. ‘Communal Cricket’, in Maqsood, Syed M.H., ed. Who’s Who in Indian Cricket, Delhi: The Author, 1940, pp. 24-32, reproduced in Majumdar, Boria, ed. Indian Cricket through the Ages: A Reader, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 219-25; emphasis in original. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Cited in The Bombay Chronicle, 15 December 1940, in Maitra, J.C., Indian Sports Flashback, p. 34-5. 11 Pandey, Gyanendra, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 210. 12 Ibid. 13 This is more like straight jacketing the idea of nations as politically imagined communities as offered by Benedict Anderson in his celebrated Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (revised edition, New York: Verso, 1991). 14 While I refer to this social/cultural domain, I have definitely in mind Partha Chatterjee’s idea of the ‘inner domain of sovereignty’. For details, see Chatterjee, Partha, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1995. 15 Chakrabarty, Bidyut, ‘Introduction’, in Chakrabarty, Bidyut, ed. Communal Identity in India: Its Construction and Articulation in the Twentieth Century, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 20. 16 Ibid., p. 7. 17 Cashman, Patrons, Players and the Crowd, p. 116. 18 Sarbadhikay, Berry, Indian Cricket Uncovered, Calcutta: Illustrated News, 1945, p. 62. 19 Cited in ibid., p. 63. 20 Cited in Guha, Ramachandra, A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport, Delhi: Picador, 2002, p. 228. 21 The Statesman, 2 December 1935, cited in Sarbadhikay, Indian Cricket Uncovered, p. 65. 22 Sarbadhikay, Indian Cricket Uncovered, p. 65. 23 Ibid., pp. 65-6. 24 Cited in Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field, p. 236. 25 The Bombay Chronicle, 10 November 1936 and weekly edition, 15 November 1936; cited in ibid., p. 236.

26 Cited in Sarbadhikay, Indian Cricket Uncovered, p. 67. Also see Docker, Edward, History of Indian Cricket, Delhi: Macmillan, 1976. 27 Sarbadhikay, Indian Cricket Uncovered, pp. 69-70. The same view was offered by Kagal in his article on ‘Communal Cricket’ in 1940. 28 Sarbadhikay, Indian Cricket Uncovered, p. 70. 29 The Bombay Chronicle, 28 February 1937, reproduced in Maitra, Indian Sports Flashback, p. 31. 30 Ganguly, J.M., ‘Quadrangular Cricket: A Plea for Its Abolition’, Indian Cricket, Bombay (January 1938), p. 188; cited in Majumdar, Boria, Twenty-Two Years to Freedom: A Social History of Indian Cricket, New Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2004, p. 237-8. 31 Ramchand, Partab, India’s Captains: From Nayadu to Ganguly, New Delhi: Penguin, 2004, p. 45. 32 Ibid. Also see Johari, Pushkar, Cricket Vignettes, Old Masters, Memories. New Delhi: Minerva Press, 1999, pp. 53, 79. 33 The Times of India, 27 November 1940, p. 9. 34 The Bombay Chronicle, 22 October 1940; cited in Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field, p. 267. 35 The Bombay Sentinel, 2 December 1940, p. 2. 36 Ibid., 4 December 1940, p. 2. 37 Ibid. 38 The Bombay Chronicle, 2 December 1940; cited in Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field, p. 268. 39 The Bombay Chronicle, 3 December 1940; cited in Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field, p. 269. 40 Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field, p. 269. 41 The Bombay Chronicle, 6 December 1940; cited in ibid., p. 269. 42 The Times of India, 6 December 1940, p. 8. 43 Ibid. 44 Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field, p. 70.

6 GANDHI’S STRAIGHT DRIVE Mahatma on the Pitch The Pentangular debate reached a point of crisis in the first week of December 1940. The top brass of the Hindu Gymkhana knew that its emergency meeting would not resolve the matter easily with so much of divergence and bitterness already rampant in the rank and file of the Gymkhana. Hence, they preferred to seek the counsel of Mahatma Gandhi on the matter to resolve the impasse. A three- member delegation of the Hindu Gymkhana comprising its president, S.A. Shete; vice-president, M.M. Amersey; and one member of the managing committee, Jamnadas Pitambar, met Gandhi at his Wardha ashram on 6 December 1940 and sought his advice. Mahatma’s verdict on cricket Once the ball was in the court of Gandhi, the Mahatma had to either play it or duck it. Being an astute politician, the Mahatma decided to play the ball with a straight bat and tried to produce a politically correct straight drive. His verdict on the Pentangular cricket, aptly

described as ‘his most direct, considerate and consequential intervention in the world of cricket’1, deserves reproduction in full: Numerous inquiries have been made as to my opinion on the proposed Pentangular Cricket Match in Bombay advertised to be played on the 14th. I have just been made aware of the movement to withdraw from the match, I understand, as a mark of grief over the arrests and imprisonment of satyagrahis, more especially, the recent arrests of leaders. A deputation of three representatives of the Hindu Gymkhana have also just been consulting me as to what their attitude should be. I must confess ignorance of these matches and of the ‘etiquette’ governing them. My opinion must, therefore, be taken as of a layman knowing nothing of such sports and special rules governing them. But I must confess my sympathies wholly with those who would like to see these matches stopped. I express this opinion not merely as a satyagrahi desirous of getting public support in some way or other for the movement. I must say at once that the present movement is wholly independent of such demonstrations or adventitious support. But I would discountenance such amusements at a time when the whole of the thinking world should be mourning over a war that is threatening the stable life of Europe and its civilization and which bids fare to overwhelm Asia. I would rather that all those who are blessed with intelligence and opportunity devoted both to devising means of stopping what appears to be senseless slaughter. It is like an ill wind which blows nobody any good. And holding this view I naturally welcome the movement for stopping the forthcoming match from the narrow standpoint I have mentioned above. Incidentally I would like the public of Bombay to revise their sporting code and erase from it communal matches. I can understand matches between colleges and institutions, but I never understood reasons for having Hindu, Parsi, Muslim and other communal Elevens. I should have thought that such unsportsmanlike divisions would be considered taboos in sporting language and sporting manners. Can we not have some field of life which cannot be touched by the communal spirit? I should like, therefore, those who have anything to do with this movement to stop the match broaden the issue and take the opportunity of considering it from the highest standpoint and decide once for all upon banishing communal taints from the sporting world and also deciding upon banishing these sports from our life whilst the blood-bath is going on. I sat this in fear and trembling and with apologies to Mr Bernard Shaw and others who think that a nation’s amusements most not be interrupted even while its flower of manhood is being done to death and is engaged in

doing others to death and in destroying the noblest monuments of human effort.2 This statement was followed by another small dictum when Bhalerao, the secretary of the Bombay Hindu Cricket Club, in a telegram dated 11 December 1940, asked Gandhi ‘whether he wanted only Hindus to boycott the Pentangular cricket matches’. Gandhi replied categorically: ‘ALL WHO HOLD MY OPINION MUST REFRAIN WHETHER FEW OR MANY.’3 Even before Gandhi met the Hindu Gymkhana representatives, one BPCC member, who seemed to be in touch with Wardha regarding the matter, understood that Gandhi was ‘acquainted with the nature of public feeling in the city regarding the tournament’.4 It was therefore predicted, ‘The news from Wardha is likely to lead to sensational developments. It is probable that the Hindu Gymkhana will withdraw their team from the Pentangular, which means Bombay’s annual cricket festival will be shorn of all its glory.’5 Gandhi sounded categorical in his support to shun the Pentangular at a politically turbulent time affecting public life in India and the whole world. This was in line with what Gandhi suggested in Hind Swaraj more than three decades earlier. An Indian of real strength, he argued, ‘will understand that at the time of mourning, there can be no indulgence’.6 But his incidental comment on erasing communal code from cricket alias sport was a reflection of his uncompromising stand on the question of communal amity in India. Gandhi’s political stroke thus amply reflected the politicization of sport as well. Guha aptly remarks: The Mahatma’s credo was Hindu-Muslim unity: he had fought for it, and he was to die for it. Hindu-Muslim unity necessarily meant the unity of India. Did not the existence of a tournament on lines of community then undermined the idea of an inclusive nationalism? For if the Muslims were allowed a separate cricket team, what was to stop them demanding a separate nation?7 What could Gandhi have done otherwise in playing the ball? Even from a perspective of political advisability, Gandhi was reluctant to appreciate the element of ‘change of heart’ in cricket, which he so

fervently advocated throughout his life. If he could appreciate the game’s role in fostering communal amity in the years preceding 1940 through the Pentangular, he would have taken the chance to encourage the show to go on to cultivate the already enriched field of social unity vis-à-vis the communal face of politics and point out if Hindus and Muslims could remain in peace and brotherhood on the cricket field despite virulent rivalry, why could they not be able to remain so in politics and society, keeping India united? However, in a tense socio-political situation, Gandhi, going by his political instinct, deemed that to be too risky a proposition. Or may be Gandhi’s rigidity about the ideal of satyagraha and his aversion to modern codes of leisure stood in the way of experimenting with cricket as a cultural tool to foster communal amity. Amusing reactions to Gandhi’s shot The response of cricketers and the public to Gandhi’s verdict was curiously mixed. Interestingly, even after Gandhi’s opinion was made known to the public, the Pentangular trial matches featuring a Hindu representative eleven attracted large crowds.8 Large-scale rumour and apprehension about a hoard of students trying to stop the game with serious demonstrations came to naught as ‘all it apparently succeeded in doing was providing the crowd with some amusement’.9 The Times of India described the situation nicely: The demonstrators arrived with a couple of black flags and a few banners at 3.20 p.m. and proceeded to walk the length of the west and south sides of the ground, shouting slogans against communal cricket in general and the Pentangular in particular, but evidently disheartened by the laughter and jeering to which they were subjected, they retraced their steps and just faded away, less than half an hour after their arrival.10 The newspaper thus failed to see any ‘connection between satyagraha and cricket’.11 People began to question Gandhi’s view on several grounds. A certain G.P. Prabhu found it absurd and unjust ‘to start any move to

stop the matches at this late hour’.12 Russa Mehta’s critique of Gandhi was more scornful: Some of the members of the Hindu Gymkhana Selection Committee had even to drag Mr Gandhi who had never played cricket, … As for Mr Gandhi saying that there should be no cricket because of the mourning for the War, I say it is sheer hypocrisy on his part. Mr Gandhi is the one man who is teaching the people of this country not to assist the British in their greatest hour of need merely because the British cannot satisfy his political demands. Clearly then, he has no right publicly to express his sympathy by suggesting cancellation of the very popular cricket matches, a part of the proceeds of which can be given to help swell the various War Funds. … None of the past great National leaders as Dadabhoy Naoroji, Gokhale, Tilak or Sir Phirojsha Mehta have ever raised their voice against this Tournament. Furthermore, each community has had for years its own Gymkhana in Bombay and elsewhere where membership is exclusive. A very large and modern swimming pool is in the course of construction for the use of Hindus only. Before you ban the Pentangular Tournaments, I suggest you start at the root of the so-called evil by doing away with all exclusive Clubs and Gymkhanas.13 For B.P. Acharya, ‘The idea that because the world is mourning, a game like cricket should not be played or seen once in way, is ridiculous. Next time, some other leader might suggest we must give up cinemas, smoking, tea and such other so-called luxuries just because the people in the other parts of the world are suffering.’14 Another commentator, Phiroj S. Bhiwandiwala, suggested: If Mahatma Gandhi had sincere sympathy with the people who suffer mentally and physically due to the war he would have certainly appealed strongly to the Indians to contribute large-heartedly to those funds which are raised for non-combatant purposes viz., Red Cross funds, Lord Mayor or London’s funds, etc. Perhaps, he is so engrossed in his narrow circles of political thoughts that he does not even get time nor has he the desire to know that these funds are raised for humanitarian purposes.15 Finally, there was Kesavaram Reddy, who condemned the hypocrisy of Gandhi’s followers in mixing up sport with politics:

I read in the press a report of Mr Sundardas Morarji, a Congress leader, condemning the Pentangular, as it encourages communalism even in sport. But it is this “enlightened Nationalist leader” who is the chief organizer of the Hindu swimming pool, which is out and out communal. It is a pity that our Nationalist leaders like Mr Morarji indulge in tall talk of Nationalism, but have the audacity to practise naked communalism even in sport. Could any one of our Nationalist leaders explain this enigma and Political Chameleonism?16 Equally interesting was the rebuttal of Gandhi by ‘a cricket lover’ reader in The Times of India: I think, it will not be out of place to point out here what the Mahatma once said, that recognizing the Muslim League as the only political body representative of Muslims in India was like undoing the fifty years’ work of the Congress. Cannot the same principle be applied to the present attitude of Mr Gandhi towards Bombay’s annual cricket carnival? … The Mahatma’s argument against the continuity of the Pentangular Cricket Tournament, in effect that it should be dropped because it is a form of amusement, and that too while a bloodbath is going on, makes strange reading. Indeed, one is tempted to ask whether it is fair in Gandhi’s part to embarrass and put obstacles in the way of democracies in general and law and order in this country in particular while this bloodbath is going on, and to incite people lawlessness and civil disobedience.17 The reader appealed to ‘sportsmen and particularly to the Hindu players who are unlikely to be selected for the Pentangular to rise to the occasion by proving that political considerations do not stand in the way of sport’.18 The cricket correspondent of The Times of India admitted the fact that Gandhi’s statement could become ‘a decisive factor in favour of the movement to cancel the Pentangular’. Yet, he expressed astonishment ‘at the frank and reasoned criticism it seems to have evoked almost everywhere’.19 The gist of opinions he gathered from many quarters goes like this: ‘We respect Mr Gandhi’s opinion in politics as being that of a great statesman and patriot. But when he offers it in connection with cricket and the Pentangular, subjects about which he himself pleads ignorance, we feel he has no locus standi.’20 Rightly describing the decision to consult Gandhi in this

matter as a matter of surprise, the correspondent tried to offer an analysis of Gandhi’s position: And, if his statement is analysed, it is stated, it will be found that Mr Gandhi has entirely evaded the issue on which he was approached— whether in view of the present situation in the country, that is with so many of the political leaders being jailed, the Hindu Gymkhana should participate in the Pentangular. Mr Gandhi has fallen back, instead, on issues that have never arisen at all, either in the Pentangular Tournament Committee, or in the attitude and demands of those who signed the requisition. Mr Gandhi’s remarks on the war issue in this case, it is opined, are strangely inconsistent with his present political attitude, which, far from minimizing the ‘blood bath’, tends rather to aggravate it and, what is more, to bring it nearer home, while his homily in regard to communalism in sport is just a revival of that annual tirade which, owing to its constant and stereotyped repetition, has almost completely lost its meaning.21 The Mahatma scores a boundary As this Gandhi-bashing was going on in the press, a majority of the Hindu cricketers, five hundred to be exact, submitted a signed petition to the president of the Hindu Gymkhana, bringing to his notice that ‘your Gymkhana’s move in not participating in this year’s Pentangular has no support from majority of Hindu Clubs’. The petition further argued: If any section of the Hindu Gymkhana wanted to start a movement to boycott the Pentangular, they should have given sufficient time to different Hindu Cricket Clubs and to Cricket loving public to consider the desirability of playing or not playing the Pentangular. This opportunity has not been given and today the Clubs are faced with heavy losses due to want of demand for seats in the Stadium which have already been taken over against advance payment. Further we have to point out that the Hindu Gymkhana are not the sole representatives of Hindu Cricket of this Presidency but that they owe their existence and importance to the confidence and cooperation of the sporting Hindu community.22

While the resolution to stop the Pentangular was passed by a narrow margin of votes (280-243) in the emergency meeting of the Hindu Gymkhana on 13 December, thereby vindicating Gandhi’s opinion, the immediate reception of it by the public was far from cordial. The Bombay Chronicle described the situation vividly: There was intense excitement within and outside the Gymkhana. On the lawns of the Gymkhana assembled a large crowd largely composed of boys, who kept up shouting their slogan ‘Hindus must play’ and ‘Stop drinking and gambling and then interfere with sport’. These youngsters were difficult to keep in hand as hooliganism and stone throwing were indulged in. The meeting itself was a most disorganized affair. Both, camps, for and against, were determined to have their say at one and the same time. Shouting generally drowned every effort to speak out. A number of attempts were made to take the sense of the meeting but every time tactics to outwit a genuine vote frustrated the efforts. It was eventually decided to take count of opinions be making members leave the room one at a time after pronouncing their views on the issue. This led to a result, which doomed the Pentangular, though it was victory for those who respected Mahatma Gandhi’s dictum.23 Thus, Gandhi’s straight drive was found to be well orchestrated, and it reached the boundary in the sense that it had the desired result of preventing the Hindus from taking part in the Pentangular. Once the decision was made known to the crowd outside the Gymkhana, in the midst of jubilation among the anti-Pentangular lobby, the crowd seemed to be ‘unnaturally silent’. The reaction seemed outrageous: Then they burst out into a veritable storm of fury, reviling the Hindu Gymkhana’s Managing Committee and screaming out threats and imprecations against those who had brought upon them what they described as a major calamity. On their sighting one of the prime movers in the agitation against the Pentangular, their fury increased, and they began to surge into the Gymkhana, throwing chairs about and hammering on the doors as the staff intervened. In the Gymkhana itself, and among many of the members, heated arguments ensued, with mutual recriminations freely exchanged. There appeared to be confusion everywhere, …24

It became clear after the event that Gandhi’s statement made all the difference in the entire episode. One prominent member of the Hindu Gymkhana, who supported the resolution, argued later that ‘he considered the Managing Committee had been unwise in deciding to seek Mr Gandhi’s opinion on the subject, but that, having obtained it, they should have accepted it without question, and not followed a policy which only tended to make him appear ridiculous.’25 This outraged K.F. Nariman, Bombay’s stalwart Congressman: ‘it passes one’s comprehension as to why old and experienced cricketers should make a pilgrimage to the most unsporting spot on the earth, to consult the least sportive Saint, who has perhaps never handled ‘Satanic’ instruments like a ball and bat nor even witnessed this ‘Game of Devils’.’26 Meanwhile, the Hindu cricket clubs across Bombay decided to challenge the decision of the Gymkhana and made an effort to raise a Hindu representative eleven to play in the Pentangular. However, the effort went in vain as the Bombay Pentangular Committee did not accord formal consent to it.27 ‘The more you hail him, the more we bash him’ As criticisms began to pour on an unknowledgeable Gandhi for commenting on cricket in his capacity as a politician, many came to defend him as well. The BCCI president P. Subbaroyan stated unequivocally: ‘I did not want to say anything about the Pentangular though the matter was referred to me as I felt that it might be said that I took this opportunity to achieve what I have in mind, but now that Mahatmaji has spoken, I feel free to say that the authorities will be doing the right thing if they abandon communal cricket.’28 J.C. Maitra, hailing the Mahatma for his indictment against the communal tournament, argued: ‘The language Gandhiji has used does not come from a mere political leader or a saint, but flows from the depth of a man who has fully realized the vicious and disintegrating tendency of communal rivalry on the political field.’29 Echoing Gandhi’s sentiments, he further hoped:

… seeing this anti-national nature of this form of sport, Bombay will abandon it once for all. This Festival has outlived its useful period of service. The stimulus it gave to the game in its early career is no longer necessary. … In a country like India which is so divided by communal rivalries and jealousies at present, this form of sport is doubly dangerous.30 Sir Vijay, the Maharajkumar of Vizianagram, in full support of Gandhi, stated: ‘Mahatma Gandhi has expressed himself unequivocally on communal cricket. He gave it as his considered opinion that communalism carried even into the domain of sport is no happy augury human growth. It is high time that we gave Pentangular cricket the burial it had always deserved.’31 Berry Sarbadhikary dubbed the attempt to dismiss Gandhi’s opinion ‘on that one shortcoming’ (that he never played cricket) as ‘a colossal ignorance’. In his opinion, ‘Men like Gandhiji can feel the pulse of the nation infallibly and are competent to give an opinion where principles and policies are involved, whatever the sphere—even if it is no wider than just that plot of cricket green.’32 Taking strong exception to those who ‘decried Gandhiji’s opinion as that of a mere politician’, he argued: Even if the battle of Waterloo had been won on the playing fields of Eton and of which the Englishman is justly proud, Gandhiji may not desire India’s young to grow up uninoculated with the communal virus to be able to win the battles of cricket as much those of life and for the country. That is platitude-infested India!33 In Sarbadhikary’s opinion, the ground for stopping the Pentangular was simple logic: ‘Communalism is indisputably the bane of Indian political life and, for that matter, of Indian national life. It would follow, therefore, even as two and two is four, that communal cricket is opposed to national cricket.’34 A Bombay Chronicle editorial, therefore, urged for the permanent abolition of the Pentangular: It is now high time this form of competition was buried for ever. The communal basis may have helped to stimulate interest in the game in its early career. The time has, however, arrived when it should give way to a more congenial form. The proposed Zone Quadrangular provides an

excellent means for bringing together the best talents in the country and at the same time fostering national feeling among all lovers of sports. We earnestly hope those who are in authority will make an early move in this direction.35 However, as it transpired, the agenda behind the anti-Pentangular movement was far more complicated. As Nariman noted a few days after the conclusion of the 1940 tournament: There was no opposition to this tournament from the official Congress; on the contrary, the secretary of the BPCC had actually issued a statement on behalf of the organization, not to boycott the game, but some individual Congressmen desired artificial political demonstration, because they thought that the natural popular enthusiasm was lacking, and hence, in spite of Gandhi’s aversion to such engineered demonstration, the annual fixture was sacrificed, under a false screen of communalism and nationalism.36 Similarly, The Times of India correspondent suggested immediately after the Muslims had won the Pentangular in 1940: ‘Despite the defection of the Hindus—there actually would have been no defection at all if the wishes of the Hindu community and the Hindu players themselves had been consulted—another Bombay Pentangular Tournament, … has come and gone.’37 In fact, many Hindus missed their side and bitterly regretted its absence. As one sports critic, writing under the pseudonym ‘Tallin’ in The Bombay Sentinel, recollected later, ‘One Hindu whitecap sitting behind me on one of the days of the tournament last year (1940) said quite aloud after a quick survey of the various capacity-filled stands that ‘‘except Gandhiji, all the Hindus are here”.’38 Interestingly, shortly afterwards, in January 1941, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, at a students’ function at the Cooperage Ground, ‘enjoined the Muslims students assembled there to consider themselves Muslims first’, and declared: ‘The discipline which sports teach must be harnessed for the benefit of the Muslim community as a whole.’39 Dr Mehellashah Pavri, one of the doyens of Parsi cricket and a champion of the Pentangular, strongly reacting to Jinnah’s call, argued that ‘this sentiment was bound to undermine the true instincts

and tenets of sport’. ‘It is most unfortunate’, he pointed out, ‘that the rivalries of the political field have been let loose on the sporting arena. It will do no good to our sports.’40 J.C. Maitra, while reporting on this, added that ‘Jinnah has rendered our sport a distinct disservice by preaching the young Muslim students a maxim which is altogether foreign to the code of sport’.41 Expressing serious concern at Jinnah’s attitude, Maitra warned: The path of progress in the sporting field cannot lie through the air-tight compartments of communalism and separatism. All must work together and proceed together to reach the same goal of India’s championship in the domain of world sports. Does Jinnah want that we should close down our national and provincial associations, so that communal bodies may spring up and have full play? I cannot imagine a worse prospect than this. All those who have the true interests of Indian sport at heart need to ponder over it with all the concentration of mind they can command.42 Maitra therefore proposed a zonal Pentangular to replace the communal Pentangular. The Ranji Trophy was already proposed as a viable alternative to it by men like him. The Bombay cricket authorities, however, were not keen to pay heed to such calls at all. It was clear that while the decision to withdraw from the Pentangular in 1940 was only to show respect to Gandhi’s verdict after a close contest in the Hindu Gymkhana, such verdict might not be strong enough to repeat another withdrawal next year. Notes 1 Guha, Ramachandra, A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport, Delhi: Picador, 2002, p. 270. 2 The Bombay Chronicle, 7 December 1940, p. 1; The Bombay Sentinel, 7 December 1940, p. 3; The Times of India, 7 December 1940, p. 1; Amrita Bazar Patrika, 8 December 1940, p. 11. For an abridged version, see ‘Statement to the Press’, Wardhaganj, 7 December 1940, The Hitabada, 8 December 1940, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (e-book) New Delhi: Publication Division, Government of India, 1999 (hereafter CWMGE), Vol. 79, pp. 415-16. 3 ‘Telegram to Bhalerao’, 12 December 1940, Pyarelal Papers, CWMGE, Vol. 79, p. 433.

4 The Bombay Chronicle, 7 December 1940, p. 1. 5 Ibid. 6 Gandhi, M.K., Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule (e-book). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1938, p. 97. 7 Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field, p. 272. 8 The Times of India, 10 December 1940, p. 11. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 9 December 1940, cited in Sen, Ronojoy, Nation at Play: A History of Sport in India, Gurgaon: Penguin/Viking, 2015, p. 118. 12 The Bombay Sentinel, 10 December 1940, p. 2. 13 Ibid., 12 December 1940, p. 1. 14 Ibid., 13 December 1940, p. 2. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 The Times of India, 12 December 1940, p. 11. 18 Ibid. 19 The Times of India, 14 December 1940, p. 11. 20 Ibid., emphasis in original. 21 Ibid. 22 The Bombay Sentinel, 13 December 1940, p. 1. 23 The Bombay Chronicle, 14 December 1940, p. 8. 24 Ibid. 25 The Times of India, 16 December 1940, p. 12. 26 The Bombay Sentinel, 16 December 1940; cited in Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field, p. 276. 27 The Bombay Chronicle, 20 December 1940, p. 9. 28 Ibid., 10 December 1941; cited in Majumdar, Boria, Twenty-Two Yards to Freedom: A Social History of Indian Cricket. New Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2004, p. 244. 29 The Bombay Chronicle, 15 December 1940; reproduced in Maitra, J.C., Indian Sports Flashback, Bombay: The Author, 1965, p. 33. 30 Ibid., p. 35. 31 The Bombay Chronicle, 19 December 1940, p. 9. 32 Sarbadhikay, Berry, Indian Cricket Uncovered, Calcutta: Illustrated News, 1945, p. 61. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 The Bombay Chronicle, 28 December 1940, p. 6. 36 Ibid., 31 December 1940, p. 3. 37 The Times of India, 28 December 1940, p. 8. 38 The Bombay Sentinel, 4 December 1941, p. 2.

39 The Bombay Chronicle, 28 January 1941; reproduced in Maitra, Indian Sports Flashback, p. 38. 40 Ibid., pp. 38-9. 41 Ibid., p. 39. 42 Ibid., pp. 39-40.

7 LET HIM BE THE THIRD UMPIRE The Pentangular Pandemonium As the Pentangular of 1941 was approaching, debates around it intensified further. While it is true that there were people who were genuinely concerned about the potential of communal strife the Pentangular could generate in tense political and social moments, in reality, behind the façade of communalism as the rationale to stop the Pentangular, lay the commercial and political interests of the BCCI and the Ranji Trophy promoted by the princes, a group of cricket administrators, and factions of the Congress. As Boria Majumdar has argued, ‘The anti-Pentangular movement demonstrates the influence of vested politico-economic motives behind the projected ideal of secularism.’1 The factors at play in the Pentangular pan were myriad: communalism, princely politics, commercial conflict, media rivalry, factionalism in cricket administration, anti-Bombay sentiments, and even radio commentary. Gandhi, the third umpire

Anticipating another bitter spell of controversies, M.G. Bhave, the secretary of the Maharashtra Cricket Association, in his letter dated 26 August 1941, once again sought Gandhi’s opinion regarding communal cricket and the participation of Hindus therein. Gandhi, this time, playing the part of reticent modern-day third umpire on the cricket field, made his position firm in his brief reply: ‘I retain the same opinion as before. I am utterly opposed to communalism in everything but much more so in sport. You may make what use you like of this opinion. Please do not ask me to do anything more. I have no time.’2 This time, however, the Mahatma was not keen to commit a shot and decided to leave his opinion open to be made use of the way one liked. He also made it clear that he would not have any further time to ‘do anything more’ on the issue. However, the referral to Gandhi in that context became a case of referring a yet-to-be- made decision to the third umpire to arrive at the same. Trails of third umpiring Most of the princes including those of Nawanagar, Vizianagram and Patiala too began vehemently to oppose the continuance of the Pentangular any further. The Jam Saheb of Nawanagar, claiming to speak on behalf of the ‘Princely Order’, hit the nail on the head: The importation of communalism and politics into the playground has been the bane of sport in our country. The move now afoot in Bombay against communal cricket and the Pentangular matches on communal lines is a very welcome and timely one; and I have no doubt all true lovers of sport and sportsmen will wholeheartedly support this move. For the healthy development of sport, I consider it is high time we got rid of communalism and other such invidious distinctions and vivisections on the field of sport. Games must be played for the sake of the games and should have no basis except skill, most certainly not caste, creed or colour.3 The Jam banned all players of his state from participating in the Pentangular. The Maharajkumar of Vizianagram immediately supported this step: ‘An ounce of practice is better than a ton of theory. It is only by penalizing those players who take part in communal games that we can effectively end communalism, at least