It has become commonplace and perhaps fashionable too, to interpret the Mohun
Bagan football victory in terms of anti-colonial nationalism in the backdrop of
political nationalist upsurge against British rule. Football in Bengal since the 1880s
had already become a worthwhile medium of social intercourse between the rulers
and the ruled. The Bengalis, however, began to appreciate success in the game
as a proof of their revitalized physical prowess. However, it was the change in
the political climate of Bengal at the turn of the century that effected a change in
Bengali perception of, and attitude towards, the game. In the context of
Swadeshi movement, it soon took the form of a cultural weapon to reassert hurt
Bengali masculinity and fight British imperialism. It was in this particular historical
context that Mohun Bagan’s epochal victory over in the IFA Shield final was hailed
as a blow struck not only by Indian football but also by Indian nationalism.
Football, thenceforth, came to represent a unique cultural nationalism in colonial
Bengal. The Empire noted: ‘All honours to Mohun Bagan! Those eleven players are
not only a glory to themselves and to their club but the great nation that they
belong.’
The nationalist significance of the 1911 victory has indeed become an over
emphasized and perhaps somewhat overburdened historical cliché in the social
history of twentieth century Bengal. Yet some very interesting questions regarding
this sporting nationalism remain unanswered by the scholars concerned. None
have tried to clarify whether the ‘nation’ appealed to was Bengal or India. Most of
the press reports, in celebrating the victory, used the terms ‘Bengali’ and ‘Indian’
interchangeably, at times almost as synonyms. This only points to the ambiguous
nature of footballing nationalism in colonial Bengal. However, it becomes clear from
those reports that when Mohun Bagan actually entered the final of the IFA shield,
signs of a great mass awakening were quite visible. People irrespective of class,
caste or community became attracted by the dream of beating the ruling British at
their own game. Nothing could be greater than the fact that the racially proud
whites would be defeated by the so-called inferior natives in direct physical/
masculine confrontation.
Bengali emotion rose high at the sight of Bengalis being repressed, humiliated
and branded as inferiors in all spheres of life. Defeating the best European civil and
military teams in their game of soccer placed Mohun Bagan like a colossal
nationalist Himalaya on the sporting horizon. The Indians were mentally prepared
and desirous to see the British Raj humiliated and brought to its knees. That is
the measure of what Mohun Bagan achieved on the football field. For a brief
moment, the subconscious longing of the Indian people to come out winner in the
struggle for self-assertion leading to independence was made a tangible reality.
The status of Mohun Bagan as the national soccer team made them a major
fighting unit in India’s wider battle against the imperialists. Mohun Bagan had
become almost synonymous with the national battle cry of Vande Mataram
(‘worshipping the mother’). Its matches against European teams were perceived
as campaigns to defeat the Raj, and the match between Mohun Bagan and
Calcutta Football Club came to be seen in that light. Thus, Bengali nationalist
instincts in the wake of a perceived Indian national victory converged with the
broader stream of Indian nationalism. That it created a tremendous stir among
nationalists all over India lends strength to this argument.
A few years before this victory, Ranji’s extraordinary success in a cricket in
England had provided Indian political leaders with a ‘hero’. Dadabhai Naoraji
commented that a ‘rediscovery of India’ had taken place through Ranji’s
performance. Mohun Bagan’s victory was greeted in the same spirit. It destroyed
the myth of British invincibility in the eyes of not only the Bengalis but also of
Indians. People all over began to appreciate the victory in the new light of anti-
British resentment and rally behind the club as an emblem of nationalist pride.
In the aftermath of Mohun Bagan’s success, football as an outlet for
aggression gradually came to reflect the ‘pent-up nationalism’ of Bengali
professionals and students. A large section of the Bengali community were
affluent, educated and practical, but hesitated to take part actively in the
freedom struggle. The football field was their safe haven, which could also be
used to confront the British. Even though the political events of the first decade
of the twentieth century had a stirring effect on the Bengali youth, many of them
were still reluctant to participate in the politics of direct confrontation. Hence
football assumed importance as a potent nationalist weapon and beating the
British produced an immense emotional satisfaction. The urban and suburban
middle-class Bengalis, who served the British as officials, clerks or professionals,
could not show their anti-British resentment in public, while the working classes,
who were not drawn into the fold of nationalist politics until the late 1920s, could
express their nationalist instincts freely at the maidan. The ‘pent-up’ nationalism
of the Bengali middle and working classes thus found expression only through
emotional outbursts during playing or watching a match when a Bengali team got
the better of a British side. Thus, what the nationalist politicians and native
representatives in the British Indian administration could not do, the footballers
were expected to accomplish. They were required to be ideal cultural nationalists
and freedom fighters, who would get the success that eluded others in politics
and economy, the more crucial spheres of national life. Football heroes like the
Bhaduris and Abhilash Ghosh, became, for disorientated Bengalis, the ultimate
remedy for all failures – moral, economic and political. If India, according to these
sporting Bengalis, was constantly losing to its imperial rulers in politics and
economics, football was to ameliorate the nation’s feelings of inefficacy and
emasculation.
That the spectator culture in colonial Calcutta was moulded and given a
unique dimension by nationalist sentiments becomes most discernible in the
context of Mohun Bagan’s winning run against British teams in 1911. Nationalist
sentiments found spontaneous and prolific expression in specific forms of cultural
behaviour: pitch-side language, jokes and doggerel, erratic vocal outbursts,
peculiar physical gestures, ‘skying’ umbrellas, tearing shirts, throwing sandals and
stones onto the pitch, torching papers and clothes, and spectator-violence.
These forms of nationalist spectator culture may be said to have their concrete
beginnings in the 1911 Shield finals. The press reports of the final match seem
to confirm this fact. A pen picture of the spectators’ behaviour at the maidan on
29 July 1911 – the day of final – was vividly depicted two years later by the
correspondent of a renowned Bengali periodical. A few decades later, Achintya
Kumar sengupta, the famous Bengali litterateur, narrated his memorable
recollections of maidan spectatorship as a Mohun Bagan supporter during 1920s
and 1930s in his autobiographical Kallol Yug.
