The flame that Tata lit

Olympics: The India Story by Boria Majumdar and Nalin Mehta. Published in 2008 by Harper- Collins Publishers India, A-53, Sector 57, NOIDA, Uttar Pradesh, 201301. Pp: 379. Price: Rs 695.

Sir Dorab Tata’s role in establishing Tata Steel in Jamshedpur and furthering his father Jamsetji Tata’s dream is well known. What is not as well known is that the credit for starting systematic Olympic activity on Indian soil in 1920 also goes to Sir Dorab. Boria Majumdar and Nalin Mehta in their book Olympics: The India Story write about Sir Dorab’s contribution in some detail.

Sir Dorab was largely educated in England and his interest in sport was a product of his western upbringing. According to Majumdar and Mehta "the appropriated virtues of athleticism, as taught in the British Public School were in turn reformulated by the educated colonial middle classes and subsequently imposed upon the masses.” Sport became the playing field where tradition and modernity met.

Sir Dorab Tata: forerunner for the Olympic cause

Before taking an interest in the Olympic movement Sir Dorab had already played a key role in the establishment of school and college cricket in Bombay in the 1880s. It was under his initiative that the move to form the Bombay High School Athletic Association gathered steam. At first its success seemed doubtful. No one thought that the European schools would join such a union but when the elite Cathedral School joined hands with Sir Dorab, the Association became a reality in 1893. It was instrumental in starting the famous Harris Shield tournament in 1896, now the oldest surviving inter-school cricket match in India. This tournament has served as a nursery for many Indian cricketers and it was at a Harris Shield game that Sachin Tendulkar first hit the headlines when he shared a world record partnership of 664 runs with Vinod Kambli. The Association also gave an impetus to the formation of cricket clubs in schools.

After the successful start of the Harris Shield the idea was modified in Poona with the creation of the Deccan Gymkhana. The committee which ran the Gymkhana was ignorant of the details of managing athletic meets on European lines. Sir Dorab who was nominated the president of the Gymkhana played a central role in the fusion of foreign and indigenous culture. He found that the competitors were all boys from the peasant class, working in the fields and living off poor fare. They ran bare foot and lacked training yet the timings of the first three or four men who ran in the marathon compared well with those in Europe and elsewhere. In 1919 some of their timing was close to the Olympics record. Much impressed Sir Dorab decided to send three of the runners, at his own expense to the Antwerp Games of 1920. That nationalist sentiment was at the core of Sir Dorab’s altruism is born out in a personal letter which Sir Dorab wrote to the International Olympic Committee president Count Baillet Latour in 1929: "I therefore offered to arrange for the sending of three of the best runners to Antwerp to run the Olympic Marathon at the next meeting, when I hoped that with proper training and food under English trainers and coaches they might do credit to India. This proposal fired the ambition of the nationalist element in that city to try and send a complete Olympic team.”

The peasant athletes had little knowledge of what was required to participate in the Olympics, or of the standards of performance essential for qualification. But despite this ignorance of the rules of modern sport the Deccan Gymkhana members were fired by a strong nationalist sentiment to send a team to Antwerp. They started raising subscriptions to finance a team to the Olympics and set up an Indian Olympic Association (IOA). But money was not easily forthcoming and only Rs 18,000 had been collected of the estimated Rs 35,000 required for the trip. The Government of India had contributed Rs 6,000 apart from helping to secure passage for the touring party. The secretary of the Bombay branch of the proposed IOA sent an appeal letter to the editor of The Statesman. The letter mentioned that a batch of six amateur athletes had been selected and was soon to set sail for Antwerp under the supervision of Dr Fyzee, India’s national tennis champion. In the end Sir Dorab personally bore a great deal of the expense apart from taking a keen personal interest in selecting the participants. Unsur­prisingly, he was asked to become president of the proposed IOA and head the Indian cause at the meeting of the International Olympic Committee in Europe.

India’s first Olympic contingent hardly created an impression at Antwerp and barely merited a mention in Indian newspapers. What is more, there was discord among the athletes which led to a series of unpleasant incidents. Sir Dorab who was not in good health (he was highly diabetic) only visited Antwerp briefly to meet his colleagues at the International Olympic Committee and could not find time to witness the Games or meet the Indian contingent. The Antwerp adventure was a sporting failure but India’s Olympic journey had begun.

Four of the Indian hockey team who won the Olympic gold medal at Berlin in 1936

India once again entered a team at the Olympic Games in Paris. This time the nine-man contingent was the result of a truly national effort. The organized planning for the Indian participation at the Paris games was driven by the formation of a permanent All India Olympic Association. Sir Dorab was invited to assume the presidency of the new body but it did not survive for more than three years. In 1927, the body which continues to administer Indian sport till the present day, the IOA, was formed and once again Sir Dorab was invited to become its president.

There is also an interesting connection between the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and the Olympic movement. The Olympic movement needed an organization in every new country targeted. The YMCA, a global body with many branches in underdeveloped countries, provided a ready option. Sir Dorab’s association with both the YMCA and IOA proved to be pivotal in the growth of the Olympic movement in India. Count De Coubertin, the founder of the Olympic movement, was deeply concerned about the impact the First World War could have on his newly formed movement. In his anxiety he sought newer pastures for his Olympic ideology in the hope that if the Olympic gospel spread to areas unaffected by the War, the Games would at least continue in other parts of the world. Another source of concern was the Inter-Allied Games being organized in the US in collaboration with the YMCA.

Coubertin wrote to Elwood S. Brown, the international director of the YMCA, in January 1919 expressing his fears about the rival movement. Brown wrote back declaring that the Inter-Allied Games were in no way a rival to the Olympic Games in any sense. This started a long association between the two and transformed the fundamental nature of the Olympic movement. Assured of Coubertin’s support Brown officially presented his proposal in August 1920 at Antwerp to utilize the wide reach of the YMCA to spread the Olympic message across Latin America. Sir Dorab representing British India was present at this session and followed the deliberation with keen interest. Soon after his return to India he enlisted the support of Dr A. G. Noehren of the Madras YMCA for India’s Olympic cause. Noehren became the secretary of the IOA. While Sir Dorab acted as a bridge, the International Olympic Committee was also independently in touch with the Indian YMCA.

While the Tata-Noehren combination successfully created the IOA in 1927, both president and secretary resigned within months of its establishment. Noehren resigned because he was immigrating to England, while Sir Dorab cited ill health. The IOA accepted Sir Dorab’s resignation with great reluctance.

The issue of deciding successors for Sir Dorab and Noehren had become politicized right from the start. At the heart of it was the battle between the Indian princes for control over Indian sport which was seen as an avenue for social mobility. In fact earlier Sir Dorab’s own presidency had created problems from a rival section which wanted the famous cricketer Ranji to lead the Olympic movement. It was only Sir Dorab’s friendship with Ranji and the latter’s declaration that he did not want anything to do with the IOA at that stage, which averted a crisis.

The IOA, worried about the vacuum in leadership, requested Sir Dorab to reconsider his resignation but he refused. By the end of 1927 the Maharaja of Patiala was the lone candidate left in the race for the presidency after the Maharajas of Kapurthala and Burdwan decided to withdraw their candidature. Soon after assuming that charge the Maharaja of Patiala appointed Sir Dorab as honorary life president of the IOA in recognition of his efforts to promote Olympism in India. Sir Dorab passed away in 1932 but the flame he lit has been kept alive by the Tatas whose support of sport is too well known to bear repetition.