K. Arumugam’s Profiles of Indian Hockey Olympians: An Indian Story Like No Other

Mr. K. Arumugam did everything in his considerable munificent powers to produce an encyclopedia and a laudable addition to the Indian hockey and Indian sports library. 

---

Between the 1900 Paris games and the 2020 Tokyo games, excluding the years between 1904 – 1912, India won a total of 35 medals at the Olympics. 16 of them were bronze, nine were silver, and 10 were gold. In Paris 1900, Norman Pritchard won India’s first medal at the Olympics in the 200 meters and the 200 meters hurdles.

Fifty years from then, Khashaba Jadhav became Independent India’s first individual medallist in the Olympics – a bronze in men’s freestyle bantamweight wrestling. Very sadly, he remains the only Indian Olympic medallist who never received a Padma Award from the central government. It took another fifty years from then for India to produce its first individual woman medallist. Karnam Malleswari, Bronze Medal, Sydney, 2000.

But it took India more than 100 years to win its first individual gold medal. Abhinav Bindra, Shooting, Beijing, 2008. In Tokyo 2020, India produced its second individual gold medal. Neeraj Chopra, Javelin Throw.

When Abhinav Bindra won his gold medal at the Beijing games, modern-day independent India woke up to a new dawn. But, for the generation that grew up before 1980, it was a new beginning of their old reality. A forgotten reality of nostalgic emoticons. Strange it may seem, an Indian contingent returning home without a podium finish at the quadrennial event was considered shambolic and appalling on many levels.

Yes!! I am talking about India’s national sport and its unexampled heroics at the games – Field Hockey. Out of thirty-five medals India won at the Olympics, twelve of them came in field hockey. Eight of them were gold, one was silver, and three were bronze.

Indian Men’s Field Hockey Team played a total of 134 matches at the Olympics. They won on 83 occasions and scored 458 goals. Between the 1928 Amsterdam games and the 2004 Athens games, the Indian Men’s hockey team participated in 18 consecutive Olympics. A record that speaks for itself.

In 1985, India won the Benson & Hedges World Series Cricket in Australia; in 1987, more than 90,000 cricket fans watched Australia beat England in the Reliance Cricket World Cup final in Calcutta, India. Los Angeles 1984, Seoul 1988, Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996 and beyond. Cricket in India started finding its public and corporate mound and slowly dislodged and deranged field hockey as the most followed sport by Indians in India.

Ever since then, field hockey has played second, third, and fourth fiddle in Indian sports in all its humility. It is never in the perceptions and thoughts of its loyal faithful, but certainly, to a vast majority. It is evident and transparent that the impact of globalization on this ongoing pandemic has stammered and spluttered food and emotional security systems across our planet. And Indian Hockey’s deafening abstinence from national, continental and Olympic glory in the new millennium added many a type of salt to boiling water.

Profiles of Hockey Olympians by Mr. K. Arumugam tell an Indian story like no other and never before. An engineer turned demi-god (for a few like me), Arumugam is an annalist, diarist, chronicler, historian, and antiquarian of the highest order in India’s national game, field hockey.

The blurb on the front page has the photograph of legends and legions of India’s national game and their famous panoply, a field hockey stick. The back page blurb connotes a rewarding journey through the history of Indian hockey and documents the career profiles of all the players who have represented India in Olympic hockey since 1928.

Mr. K. Arumugam founded One Thousand Hockey Legs in 2008, a program foreseen by the Hockey Citizen Group which works towards providing a chance for school children to play hockey. It remains the only NGO for field hockey in India that introduced hockey teams in at least 80 schools across the country India. He also runs Stick2Hockey, a very rare website for everything about field hockey and Indian history in it.

The author says this in the preface. “Even for those who love and follow the sport, getting useful information about India’s Olympics achievements and hockey Olympians is a tough task and rarely possible successfully.” The encyclopedia we call Mr. Arumugam documented the lives of heroes with rare insights, images, interesting facts, and heart-rending tales of boys who became men in Indian colors but remain unnoticed, uncelebrated.

The book has five sections. The author discusses the Indian hockey contingent in London Olympics first. Then, as scarce as hen’s teeth, he researched put the complete list of Indian Hockey Olympians and Indian Hockey Olympic Teams from the 1928 Amsterdam games to the 2004 Athens games. He subtly moves on to the Golden Era in Indian Hockey (1928 Amsterdam – 1936 Berlin). Then, the author talks about Independent India’s first heroes (1948 London – 1972 Munich) and last to the Stars of the Synthetic Era (1976 Montreal – 2004 Athens).

A ‘god’ in Dhyan Chand, a ‘legion’ in Leslie Claudius, a ‘devotion’ in Balbir Singh Sr, a ‘doyen’ in K D Singh Babu, a ‘rock’ in Keshav Datt, a ‘titan between the posts’ in R S Gentle, a ‘magician’ in Mohammed Shahid, ‘The heart of Harendra Singh,” ‘The devotion of Dilip Tirkey,” ‘The tears of Rajiv Misra,” ‘The regret of Dhanraj Pillay,” and ‘The talent of Sardar Singh” to name a few, Mr. Arumugam weaves the formative, inimical, summative and cataclysmic times of Indian hockey to perfection.

Life kept dancing to its hullabaloo, and I kept falling and falling into my emotions and delusions. But field hockey remained a favorite constant. As a necessary consequence, this book remains a celebration of Indian hockey’s favorite students and its important moments.

They say, “Champions, like gladiators of yore, they fight their demons. Like the proverbial phoenix, they rise when hopes subside. And quite like they alone can do, underneath the bruises, despite the gashes, battling through blood, gore and creaking bones, they define courage.” And so did Indian hockey.

A day I never thought I would ever live. I became numb when Sreejesh sat on the goal post after an important hooter in Tokyo. I couldn’t control my tears for a few hours. Mr. Arumugam and the Indian media witnessed a piece of history with their naked eyes. Yes, it might just be a bronze medal, but it is more than enough and heavier than we can take at this moment. Today, in many ways, my life remains complete. They say it’s just a sport. But, to a few like me, field hockey is everything.

Bravo!