[This premature obituary of the Bombay I loved and its cricket I watched was published in Business Standard of 10 and 17 June 2003.]
Chronicle of a spreading cancer
I met Ram
Guha four years ago in Wissenschaftskolleg, that elite college in Berlin where
forty of the world’s brightest spend ten months wining, dining, talking,
reading and writing in that order. Then he had told me that he was writing a
book on the Quadrangular. I thought it was going to be a book on cricket, and
looked forward to it because news of the Pentangular (as the Quadrangular
became in 1937) was amongst my earliest memories; I must have read about the
1946 Pentangular – the last one – at the age of ten.
Apart from the well-known greats like C K Nayudu and
Vijay Merchant, I had memories of Abdul Hafeez Kardar, who played in the 1944
Pentangular and, after Partition, went on to build the first Pakistan team. I
had looked forward to seeing how Ram would handle the subject. I do not quite
know what he is; I wonder if he does. Although he has a degree in economics, he
will vehemently deny that he is an economist. I guess he feels the closest
affinity to historians, but he does not stick to history. The closest one could
get would be to call him a sociologist, but that would be a bit of an insult
for such an intellect. I think one day he will be a great polymath or savant;
for the moment, he is best called a card-carrying author. And his book – A
Corner of A Foreign Field (Picador) – comes closest to being a political
tract.
I had once written about Shapurjee Sorabjee Bengallee,
that fascinating 19th-century Parsee gentleman who was sitting in
the garden of a friend on the bank of Hooghlee when a thunderstorm struck and
set a tree on fire. He ran, lighted a faggot from the tree, and used the fire
to set up the Calcutta fire temple, since such temples must have fires that are
not the handiwork of humans.
Earlier Shapurjee used to live in Bombay. In the evenings
he used to go to the Esplanade with friends. There they would hire a mat and a
lantern (sadri-fanas), sit down on the ground and gossip (Ram says the ground
was used by dyers to spread out fabrics to dry). Shapurjee figures in Ram’s
book as author of A Chronicle of Cricket. For Ram’s Bengallee is the
chronicler of Parsee cricket, which began on the Esplanade – or on Kennedy
Ground – the matter requires further scholarly research. For those uncivilized
masses who have never lived in Bombay, Esplanade is now called Azad Maidan;
initially it was used by the British troops to parade, and was called Brigade
Parade. Kennedy Grounds are the triangular piece of ground between Victoria
Terminus (the Shiv Sainiks would like it to be called Chhatrapati Shivaji
Terminus, but everyone finds it too much of a mouthful and calls it CST), Dhobi
Talao and Church Gate station (it is only a matter of time before it becomes
Shrimant Dattopant Dhondopant Dhekne Agnirath Apeksha Agaar – SDDDAAA for those
in a hurry).
Soon after Bombay began its life as a British outpost in
1668, it divided itself, like all British Indian towns, into a white town and a
black town. The white town grew up around the fort, which was just to the north
of the present Gateway of India. The black town rose north of Dhobi Talao and
Crawford market. The railway to Thana was built along the east coast, and ended
in Victoria Terminus. Hornby Road started from Victoria Terminus and went south
towards Flora Fountain; this was the main street of Bombay, with all the great
banks, insurance companies and shops.
Just to its west, the Europeans set up Bombay Gymkhana
(Ram thinks the word comes from Gend Khana, where you ate balls, but I doubt
it). In those days before electric fans, a broad veranda was the best antidote
to heat and humidity (I wonder how they used to deal with mosquitos in the days
before Odomos); a gymkhana was a pavilion with a veranda set on the edge of a
large ground. The ground was used for cricket or polo; the Bombay Gymkhana was
for cricket.
The hirers of sadri-fanas used to watch the British play
cricket with wonder, curiosity and finally envy; the leisurely sport was just
energetic enough for Bombay’s sultry climate. Finally some Parsees got hold of
a bat, a ball and wickets and started playing cricket “in their strange
accoutrements of Bandis and pyjamas”. In 1848 they formed the Orient Cricket
Club; then, two years later, they converted it into the Young Zoroastrian Club,
which still exists according to Ram. Soon there were over 30 Parsee cricket
clubs with names like Jupiter, Mars, Gladstone and Ripon. Other communities
followed; in the evenings, the Esplanade and the Kennedy ground were full of
Indians running between wickets and shouting, “Howzzat?”
But these Indians could not set up Gymkhanas; they had to
share the common grounds – amongst others with the army. And army officers used
to play polo on the grounds. The horses dug up the grounds and covered them
with a thick layer of dust. Cricket is not very demanding, but it does require
22 yards of fairly firm, level ground; the polo players did not let any pitch
survive. The Indian subjects kept beseeching successive governors to take the
polo players of the grounds, but it was decades before they finally succeeded.
The story of their struggle is one of those that figure in Ram’s book.
One day in 1877, in a fit of insouciance, the Parsees
challenged the British of Bombay Gymkhana to a match. The match was a draw. In
a few years, Hindus wanted to join in, then Mohamedans, and finally the
excluded ones formed the Rest. The resulting annual Pentangular treatment used
to attract huge crowds. As national politics was besmirched with communal hues
in the 1930s, the Pentangular also excited communal loyalties. A zonal cricket
tournament was started to compete with the Pentangular, but could never compete
with it in popularity. The Pentangular was abolished after independence.
But communal cricket was not really abolished; it was
transformed into Indo-Pakistan cricket rivalry. The second half of Ram’s book
is a history of this rivalry. And not just of the rivalry, but also of the
decline in civility between the leaders of the two countries, of sportsmanship
amongst the spectators, and of ever uglier manifestations of partisanship. Ram
says that Bal Thackeray campaigns against cricket matches with Pakistan because
he fears Pakistan would win. I think it is something worse than cowardliness.
The disorderly behaviour of crowds, especially in Calcutta, is surely due to a
conviction that it is better to win unfairly than lose fairly. It manifests
itself in so many things like how parents bribe teachers to manipulate
children’s marks, judges get chairmen of public service commissions to favour
their children, and the determination of Indians to board a train, bus or plane
first. The British thought that cricket moulded the character of a nation.
Actually, the character of a nation moulds cricket, as it does so many other
things.
II The changing colour of prejudice
To continue my story of last
week, the Parsees challenged Bombay Gymkhana to a match in 1877, and the
British agreed; Ram Guha suggests uncharitably that a large donation to Bombay
Gymkhana by Sir Cowasji Jehangir, the Parsee tycoon whom the Gymkhana would not
admit, might have made it amenable. The outcome of the match was not worth
reporting, so the Parsees must have lost. But near their tent, “the Parsees
were packed as closely as herrings in a barrel, the front rank being composed
of an interesting collection of small boys dressed in their best-coloured silk
trousers, and the second and other ranks of the crowd in which the white
head-dress of a Parsee priest was as conspicuous as a white man among a lot of
black men.” Black and white was a very prominent distinction at that time – and
for another 70 years. It is remarkable how little one thinks of skin colour
India today, save perhaps for prospective mothers-in-law when they choose
brides. Other obsessions have risen to the top now.
By this time, the polo players
from the British army were running amuck over the esplanade, digging it up with
the hooves of their horses and making it impossible for natives to play
cricket. One humble petition to the Governor of Bombay followed another.
Finally in 1887, the government of Bombay gave a piece of land on Kennedy Sea
Face, now known as Marine Drive, to the Parsees to set up a Gymkhana. With the
practice they got on the new ground, they defeated a visiting English team
under G F Vernon in 1889. They were rewarded by being admitted into the army –
not yet as soldiers, since they were not considered a martial race, but as
volunteers.
There soon followed demands for
land from Muslim Cricket Club, set up in 1883 with the financial help of the
Tyabjis. It was given an identical piece of land, 425 feet square, next to the
Parsee Gymkhana, in 1891. The day this news was published, the Hindu Cricket
Club met in the evening and decided to ask for a piece of land. Thus did the
three Gymkhanas, Parsee, Islam and Hindu, come to be set up cheek by jowl on
Marine Drive. I always wondered what PJ in the name of Hindus Gymkhana stood
for; now I know it stands for Parmanand Jeevandas.
But they would not play each
other. For over a quarter century, the Parsees played Bombay Gymkhana almost
every year. In 1905, the Hindus challenged the Parsees, who disdainfully
refused. So in 1906 the Hindus challenged the Europeans, and defeated a team
drawn from the entire Presidency. They repeated their feat next year. After
that the Parsees could hardly turn up their noses at the Hindus. Thus started
an annual Triangular tournament. In the 1912 tournament, the Mohammedans were
allowed to play, thus making it Quadrangular.
In 1930, Gandhi marched with his
79 volunteers, who included my father, to Dandi and picked up a fistful of
salt, and was arrested; 60,000 were jailed in the satyagraha that followed. PJ
Hindu Gymkhana refused to play in the quadrangular that year, and the
tournament was cancelled. Next year, the British government proposed separate
seats in legislatures for the untouchables; Gandhi went to jail in protest.
Amidst the red-hot emotions that politics generated, the Quadrangular was not
held for four years from 1930 till 1933. Then in 1933, Cricket Club of India
was set up in Delhi; in 1934 it started the Ranji Trophy tournament, for which
teams were drawn from provinces and princely states, and mixed up religions and
races. That spurred the Bombayites to resume the Quadrangular.
In 1933, Learie Constantine
toured India at the invitation of various cricketing Maharajas. The Europeans
were asked to include him in their team; but he was black, so they left him
out. The fourfold classification was proving to be a straitjacket. So in 1937 a
fifth team was added to cover Christians, Buddhists, Jews and others. It was
called the Rest. The tournament became a Pentangular. And it was played in the
brand new Brabourne Stadium, the home of Cricket Club of India at Church Gate,
down the road from the three Gymkhanas on Marine Drive. Later in the 1960s, a
Maharashtra minister did not get what he wanted from the CCI; so he built
another stadium – Wankhede stadium – just a couple of furlongs away. Today the
Cricket Club of India is just a club for food, drink and playing cards.
By that time, India was getting
communalized, and secularists were opposing the Pentangular for its religious
and racial overtones. They were joined by backwoodsmen who resented the primacy
of Bombay. The Bombay teams generally whipped all others in the annual Ranji
Trophy; so there was much jealousy of them and of the Pentangular under the
surface. Its patrons and participants supported it saying that the tournament
had never caused racial or religious tension. And because the Hindus had to
choose the best to compete in the tournament, they put aside their caste
prejudices. Thus the foremost Hindu bowler was Baloo Palwankar, a chamaar. He
was probably one of two greatest Indian cricketers ever; only C K Nayudu, the
sixer addict, could compare with him. His brother Vithal was a distinguished
batsman. The Hindus even patted themselves on the back for having admitted
Sikhs to their team.
In 1937, dyarchy was introduced
and elected governments came to power in the provinces, including a Congress
government in Bombay. The days of the Pentangular seemed numbered. But luckily
for it, Congress governments resigned two years later when Lord Linlithgow, the
Viceroy, declared war on Germany without taking their consent. The Pentangular
lasted through the War. But independence sounded its death knell; it ceased to
be staged in 1947.
But, as Ram points out, the
communalization of cricket has continued in the Indo-Pak cricket ties. The
tetchy political relationship between the two countries keeps polluting the
cricket matches just as it did in united India. The Quadrangular was not held
for four years in the 1930s because the relations between the British and the
Indians were rocky. For the past four years, the Indian government has not
allowed Indians to play Pakistan in either country. Bal Thackeray, in his
earlier occupation, published a brochure of cartoons of the Pakistani touring
side in 1957. His description of Hanif Mohammad was “Little Master.” Today he
does not allow cricket matches with Pakistan because he fears India would lose;
today Pakistanis want to begin the détente with resumption of cricket ties
because cricket, unlike war and diplomacy, is one field in which they have a
fair chance of winning.
Cricket is a part of public life;
politics impacts on it as on everything else. It is impossible to divorce
cricket from communalism, hatred of Muslims, Muslim nostalgia for their
glorious history, obsession with a long-dead past. The idea that cricket can
improve relations and encourage virtue is chimerical. There is much in Ram’s
book besides communal and racial contention; but as I share his sadness, this
is the aspect that struck me most.
