Mahatma Gandhi, the reluctant batsman

About a furlong from the house in which Moniya lived there used to be a chowk known as Shitala Chowk On moonlit nights parties of Hindu and Muslim boys assembled there from different quarters of the city and played games for an hour or so after dinner Moniya also used to go there he did not participate in them but loved to officiate as umpire and saw to it that the rules of the game were strictly observed by those who engaged in them If anyone played foul he would politely but firmly put him out of the field He had a reputation for strict impartiality and everybody respected his awardWhen Pyarelal Nayyar recounts this event from Mahatma Gandhis childhood its done with little intent to boast about Moniyas cricketing aspirations In fact Nayyar who served as personal secretary to the nationalist leader doesnt hold back from pointing out how Gandhis temperamental dislike for boisterous games kept him away from all sportAn ambitious new book Mahatma on the Pitch Rupa Publications by Kausik Bandyopadhyay professor of history at the West Bengal State University once again puts the spotlight on Gandhis association with the game of bat and ballThe first time Gandhi indirectly affected the sport was in 1930 when he launched the Civil Disobedience Movement with the famous Dandi Salt March Cricket in India and particularly the Quadrangular cricket of Bombay were inevitably affected since the tournament was suspended for the next three years Even Vijay Merchant stayed away from the trials for the selection of the Indian team for its first official Test tour to England in 1932 to show his solidarity with the movement PICGETTY IMAGESAt the outset the connection seems bizarre yet for decades the thought of Gandhi wielding a cricket bat and walking down the pitch has piqued the curiosity of many This interest first began in 1958 when Gujarati journalist Harish Booch met Ratilal Ghelabhai Mehta a classmate of Gandhi at Alfred High School Rajkot who remembered his friend as a dashing cricketer who was good both at batting and bowling That claim may have landed Booch a fresh angle to the story he was chasing but it wasnt until 2001 that the flame was fanned again when historian Ramachandra Guha wrote in a column Cricket might not have affected Gandhi but Gandhi certainly affected cricket Its the potent nature of this statement that drove Bandyopadhyays researchTo say that the task at hand was arduous would be undermining the rawness of his subject That there was zero pictorial evidence to support the claim didnt help Once I got on with the work I found my studies on Gandhi and cricket inadequate to pull off what I thought I intended to write says the Kolkatabased writer who has previously explored the impact of Gandhian nationalism on football in colonial Bengal Hence collecting reading and rereading new and old sources began at a hectic pace The toughest challenge was to go through 98 volumes of Gandhis collected works he addsThe result however is yet another fascinating addition to the vast tome on the leader whose 148th birth anniversary we celebrate tomorrowMoniya and his batIf one picks up Bandyopadhyays book with the expectation of finding answers to whether the Father of the Nation ever played cricket theyd be disappointed The writer makes sincere arguments but Gandhis connections if any with the sport have always appeared vagueWhile Mehta and even Louis Fischer one of the most renowned western biographers of Gandhi wrote of how Mohandas played cricket and also gilli danda as a child Nayyars account reflects otherwise In fact in his autobiography Gandhi wrote I never took part in any exercise cricket or football before they were made compulsory My shyness was one of the reasons for this aloofnessTushar Gandhi the great grandson of the Mahatma says that this shyness later translated into regret One more reason he could not participate in sports at school was because he had to rush home to nurse his ailing father The fact that he wasnt athletic as a kid rankled in his mind says Tushar adding that Gandhi made amends by taking to walking which he described as the king of exercisesHowever in the Wisden Cricketers Almanack 2008 Guha recounts how one of Gandhis surviving sisters had told Fischer He used to have such great interest for those games cricket and tennis that he would not remember even his mealshellip He would not stay at home in the evenings as he would get engrossed in playingThe contradictions are stark But I think it is this contradictory nature of evidences along with differing readings of his writings that make Gandhis link with cricket so intriguing says Bandyopadhyay in an email interviewHis indifference towards the game probably began following his fight against racial persecution of Indians in South Africa but his resentment for cricket only came to the fore in his later years when the nationalist struggle began gaining traction in India In 1917 during an address to students in Bihar Gandhi said I think games like cricket have no place in a poor country like IndiaWe have a number of inexpensive games of our own which afford innocent joyEven before Gandhi had entered the Indian political scenario the puritanism and austerity of Gandhian ethos along with his adversity towards modern civilization probably made modern entertainment practices an anathema to him In the context of his nonviolent battle against imperialism and social inequality sports like cricket could simply have been distractions adversely affecting the quest for freedom Bandyopadhyay says of the possible reasons for his aversion to the gameScoring off the fieldGandhis changing sentiment for the game apart the first time he indirectly affected the sport was in 1930 when he launched the Civil Disobedience Movement with the famous Dandi Salt March Cricket in India and particularly the Quadrangular cricket of Bombay were inevitably affected since the tournament was suspended for the next three years Even Vijay Merchant stayed away from the trials for the selection of the Indian team for its first official Test tour to England in 1932 to show his solidarity with the movement Bandyopadhyay writesWhile cricket in India came to a brief standstill Tushar cites an interesting anecdote which took place in 193334 when Douglas Jardines Marylebone Cricket Club MCC team visited India for the first time Gandhi was invited to bowl the first ball he says There may be little evidence to support this claim but Gandhi did put his name down as 17 in the 16member team when he gave an autograph to Merchants sister LaxmiHowever the Mahatmas greatest role was to influence the abolition of Pentangular cricket one of the most prominent tournaments in the sports history Cricket historian Vasant Naisadrai Raiji 97 the oldest surviving Mumbai firstclass cricketer says that tournament saw teams being formed on communal lines with Hindus Parsis Muslims and Christians battling each other on fieldWalkeshwar resident Raiji himself played in the tournament as 12th man for the Hindu team I fielded as a reserve but I never got a chance to bat or bowl for the tournament the Ranji player reminiscencesAccording to Raiji in 1940 Gandhi while hinting at the nature of tournament said I am against communalism in all aspects of life The declaration he says became a clarion call to ban the tournament for good It was eventually abolished in 1946Pentangular cricket was very popular but its existence only seemed to be a deterrent to Indias freedom struggle There may have been no communal tensions while the games were on but with Partition looming large it had to end Raiji maintainsWhether Gandhi was a reluctant admirer of cricket or not remains a puzzle But both cricket and the Mahatma are integral to reimagining the Indian nation in the new century Had Gandhi been alive he might have been the happiest person to see cricket becoming of a great unifier of hearts in independent India irrespective of class caste religion ethnicity or region Bandyopadhyay ends