The recently launched Indian Super league is attempting to revolutionise the way football is perceived in our country. It promotes the tagline ‘the birth of a footballing nation’. But, of all things, it’s definitely not that, says ANIKET MISHRA
Despite a vibrant sporting culture, the relevance of sports to the understanding of society has only recently been explored by people around us. Football in India, especially in Bengal, in my opinion, provided the masses a unique answer to the imperial charge of abhors held against them in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The texts written on football in India too, are elaborate — from the moment in 1877 when a young Indian boy kicked a football back to a group of British soldiers at the Maidan in Calcutta, through the ups and downs of football administration and match management, to an analysis of the game as it is played in far off places today in a difficult atmosphere. There are stories from the length and breadth of the footballing nation that India is — from the country’s first footballer to play in Europe, Mohammed Salim, a Calcutta man who played for Celtic FC in 1936 to the Ghati-Bangal conflict that found its echoes on the football field, amongst others.
Mohun Bagan won the IFA Shield in 1911 by defeating East Yorkshire Regiment in Kolkata, thereby establishing the sport as a major and widely reported pastime. Consequently, various promotional activities took place as football’s popularity and commercialisation widened in India. Mohammedan Sporting’s Durand Cup win in 1940 and the emergence of a handful of talented players like Md Salim drove the Asian establishment to take Indian football seriously. The sport thus expanded rapidly within the realms of popular culture and entwined with other leisure industries.
The World Cup qualification and the subsequent non-participation in 1950 increased football’s popularity, so much so that it became a signifier of the country and a component of the global network of sports. Subsequent growth of football as a cultural force in the country added new dimensions to the game and the position was consolidated by the fourth place finish by our footballers at the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956. All of these events were instrumental in creating euphoria around the game and its widespread coverage in literature and popular culture.
The pre-eminence of football in the public imagination meant that it came to project the sentiments of the different ethnic groups. India’s affinity with football, however, has a lengthier history that should inform this analysis. The biggest watershed moment in this regard was the triumph of Mohun Bagan Athletic Club, which as aforementioned won the Indian Football Association Challenge Shield beating the British East Yorkshire Regiment in 1911. The victory over a team of our British rulers was an accomplishment that became synonymous with the ongoing struggle for freedom and reverberated in all corners of the country.
The aforementioned success thus initiated football into having the most captive audiences in our country. As noted by historians and researchers recently, in the nineteenth century football was the most followed sport in our country via the newspaper and through physical presence in stadiums. The followership, in fact, gained further strength as the national team managed by the legendary Syed Rahim won the gold medal at the 1962 Jakarta Asian Games. Players such as PK Banerjee, Chuni Goswami, Peter Thangaraj and Tulsidas Balaram, who were instrumental in the triumph, have been immortalised over the years and continue to be household names.
The changing economic scenario post the 1970s and the rising standards of our cricket team (triumphs abroad in England, West Indies and later the World Cup in 1983) vested new interests for the Indian middle class and thus football took the backseat. As its popularity waned, it still provided the occasional spur which epitomised the spirit and vigour people had for the beautiful game in our country. From the euphoria in the Kolkata maidan which surrounded the presence of foreigners such as Majid Baskar, Jamshid Nassiri and Chima Okorie to the initiation of the NFl in 1996 and subsequently the I league in 2007, football did manage to sustain the interest it had generated.
The recently launched Indian Super league is attempting to revolutioniSe the way the game is perceived in our country, but as has often been the case with franchisee based leagues, the focus seemingly is on creating a set-up which is more marketable than focusing on the game’s development at the grassroots. The concept, similar to what MlS and the J league did in 1990s or Australia’s A-league attempted in the mid-noughties, is to get international superstars to dazzle the masses. What it seems to be missing out on is the fact that this, unlike the aforementioned competitions, is a two month tourney which does not even involve the best of our national players (most prominently national team captain — Sunil Chhetri).
While on one hand, it is indeed getting in more people to watch the game (average attendance of 23781, as on Match Day 23), but hasn’t the Kolkata Derby been doing the same, and perhaps on a much larger magnitude, for years nowIJ Perhaps with a more planned approach, a way could have been worked out where the I league could have had this influx of foreign talent and capital. The investors too, would have been more interested in a system which seemingly is more sustainable and prone to growth.
The boon is undeniable but it’s kind of unnerving and seems a little unfair when it is touted and promoted with the tagline “The birth of a footballing nation”. Because, of all things, it’s definitely not that.