Any analytical
discussion on the game of football in India would be incomplete without a brief
reference to its growth and development in Britain. The game was introduced in
England after the Norman conquest of 1066. It was more of a battle between two
whole villages rather than a game, taking in its turn a toll of life, limb and
property. Despite periodic proclamations to outlaw the game, it survived until
Edward II banned football on the eve of the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. The
apathy against football continued until Richard Mulcaster imposed rules on
football as a mean of eliminating or at least reducing roughness or violence of
the game and to promote in the young the virtues of health, strength and
character. He made an attempt to have a stipulated number of players on either
side or a schoolmaster to supervise training and settlement of dispute in
matters. These ideas were too revolutionary for his time and their
acceptability was delayed by three hundred years, i.e. at the turn of the
nineteenth century. The public schools, the industrial revolution (1760), the
migration to the urban areas and the rise of the middle class- all contributed
to the rapid growth of football in the early part of the nineteenth century
England.
The acid test of the
popularity of any game is its acceptability in schools and colleges, but the
many different rules of Associations thwarted the pursuit of football in
schools and colleges. To overcome these, representatives of Harrow, Eton,
Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury met to formulate what came to be known as
Cambridge Rules of 1848. Next on leaving the Universities, these young men
founded clubs. Among them the oldest registered club in 1855 was the Sheffield
United Cricket and Football Club. In London too clubs were formed and eleven of
them, besides some unattached footballers and observers, met in Freemasons Tavern, Great Queen Street, Holborn, in
October 1863 to constitute the Football Association. The Football Association,
from a very early stage, promoted professionalism- clubs operated on profit
making from gate receipts. The growing population in both England and Scotland
led to the formation of football clubs and associations throughout Britain and
holding of matches and tournaments on a regular basis was the natural outcome
of this development leading to the FA Cup and the Football League which became
a profit generating source both for the clubs and the players.
The Football
Association, the FA Cup, professionalism and the Football League, which were
all 19th century developments in Britain, have made the game world’s
most popular sports.
The expatriate writers
and factors of the British East India Company and army personnel brought the
game to India for their exclusive enjoyment and fun in an alien soil beset with
many vicissitudes, although it has been claimed that the game was started by
the Christian Missionaries. Whatever may be the origin, it cannot be denied
that it was the British rulers in India who patronized the game as a prominent
recreational activity for their peers in India.
At the beginning of the
nineteenth century, the modern competitive football was first introduced in
Bombay and Karachi and was gradually picked up by Calcutta, which became the
capital of the British Empire in 1858. The first recorded football match was
played in India in 1802 in Bombay between two teams, ‘Military’ and ‘Island’.
The duration of the match was 30 minutes, but no record was found about the two
participating teams. The first recorded football match was played in colonial
Calcutta in 1858 between Calcutta Club of Civilians and Gentlemen’s of
Barrackpore. A number of competitive matches were played thereafter among the
British forces in the Calcutta and Barrackpore regions.
Therefore, the game of
football, at the early stage, was confined among the British of colonial
Calcutta as a part of their recreational activities. Unlike in England,
football, in colonial Calcutta, emerged as an elite sport which was often an
exclusive preserve of the ruling class.
The club system in
football in colonial Calcutta was started with the setting up of the Calcutta
Football Club in 1872. This Club, despite its name, was primarily a rugby
playing club which did not survive long. The formation of the Trades Club in
1876 introduced a new dimension in football in Calcutta. In 1884, Sir Martin
Durand revived The Calcutta Football Club and football emerged as the most
prominent discipline of sports of that club by replacing rugby. Gradually, a
number of football clubs, including the Rangers Club, Howrah United Club,
American Club, were set up which formalized the system of football among the
Europeans residing in the colonial Calcutta.
The wealthy section of Bengal gradually attracted towards the game of football initially due to the lure of
demonstration effect and later used it as an instrument of nationalism. Shri
Nagendraprasad Sharbadhikar, who discovered football as a mere spectator, and
Shri Nagendranath Mallik of Mallik family of Chorebagan, played an instrumental
role in setting up football teams at the school and college levels. A number of
amateur clubs, whose memberships were given to the students of the Presidency
College, Calcutta Medical College, Shibpur Engineering College, St. Xavier’s
College and Hare School, were gradually set up. However, the Bengali
participation was limited to the teams of the Hare School and the Presidency
College only, which shows the racial policy adopted by the British rulers in
the game of football in colonial Calcutta.
The Bengali
participation in football was not limited to the teams at the school and the
college levels, but various sports clubs were established in different
localities in order to provide playing opportunities to the youth of Bengal. Shovabazar,
Kumartuli, Town, Sporting, Chandannagar, Chinsura, Aryans and Mohun Bagan were
some of the prominent names. All these teams used to play against each other as
no competition structure was available. Even, the European teams could not take
part in any competition till the Trades Cup was introduced in 1889.
In the next part, I
shall discuss about the contributions made by Shri Nagendraprasad Sarbadhiakri,
the ‘father of Indian football’, and the competition structure introduced in
colonial India.
