Prioritise sports to spur Punjabi resurgence

THE more I see the events unfolding in Punjab, the more I tend to go into the cocoon of the past. I look at the field of sports and find it has also become a part of the wasteland. I remember when Punjab dominated hockey and there used to be the Aga Khan hockey tournament in Bombay (now Mumbai). The Punjab Police hockey team always participated and invariably reached the finals.

Punjabis from the southern and western parts of the country would flock to watch the match (there was no TV). It was an event in the calendar one looked forward to with pride due to Punjab’s dominance. Then there was the Beighton Cup in Calcutta (now Kolkata), which also drew Punjabis from all around to watch the Punjab Police in action. Sansarpur, a small village on the outskirts of Jalandhar, alone had produced 14 Olympians.

Balbir Singh Sr, Udham Singh and Ajit Pal Singh are all legendary names in Indian hockey and they won many laurels for India. The country bagged three Olympic gold medals (1948, 1952 and 1956) in a row after Independence, besides the 1975 World Cup. Even today, there is good representation of Punjabis in the Indian team, but hockey in Punjab and India is a shadow of its former glory. The game that has replaced hockey as the national sport is, of course, cricket. It has not caught the fancy of Punjab’s youth as it has done in other states. Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj Singh, Arshdeep Singh and Shubman Gill are the few exceptions. The interesting fact is that players like MS Dhoni, Hardik Pandya, Mohammed Shami and Mohammed Siraj have come from the mofussil towns and not metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Kolkata or Delhi. The mofussil youth are hungry for success, glory and the accompanying laurels and they possess the guts, the grit and the strength to succeed.

Punjab used to produce great wrestlers — Gama Pehalwan of Jabbowal, Amritsar district, commonly known as Rustam-e-Hind, Dara Singh (also Rustam-e-Hind) and Kartar Singh, gold medallist in the Asian Games. Wrestling was the prestigious rural sport of the state. Rural Punjab had a great tradition of sports which were like cultural events. There were wrestling competitions called Chhinj which drew local wrestlers and massive crowds. There were kabaddi matches between village teams that attracted large crowds; the leading players became household names. There were other sports like gatka and lifting weights — heavy stones or sacks of sand. The Kila Raipur Sports Festival, started by the Grewal Sports Association 90 years ago, is a great representation of this facet of rural life.

With the development of schools and colleges, these became the nurseries of sportsmen. I remember the annual match between DAV College, Jalandhar, and Khalsa College, Amritsar, that was a much-anticipated event in the state calendar and it drew thousands of students.

Many decades ago, football saw a brief renaissance with the arrival of the Punjab Police team, Leaders Club of Jalandhar patronised by industrialist Dwarka Das Sehgal and the JCT Club of Phagwara, patronised by Samir Thapar. The period produced players of national level like Jarnail Singh, Inder Singh and Sukhwinder Singh. Clubs such as East Bengal and Mohun Bagan came scouting to Punjab for players. Punjab did quite well in athletics too — there were Asian Games gold medallists Ajmer Singh (400 m), Parduman Singh (shot put and discus throw), Gurbachan Singh (decathlon) and, of course, Milkha Singh (400 m and 200 m) — but where is Punjab today? The only sport in which Punjab has produced an individual Olympic gold medallist is shooting — Abhinav Bindra. In golf, Jeev Milkha Singh has won many major trophies on the European and Asian circuits and brought laurels to the country. The state had set up an extensive system of sports schools and colleges. What have these produced? What has the army of coaches produced?

Today, it’s Haryana that is among the states producing top wrestlers, boxers and even athletes. The akharas of Haryana and Delhi are full of Haryanvi boys and girls grinding their way to national and international glory. The boxing rings, athletic tracks and stadiums in Haryana, Delhi, North-East, Maharashtra and Kerala are brimming with activity. I remember a stadium in Imphal where every morning 2,000 to 3,000 boys and girls would train. Annually, trainers from the US would impart skills in baseball and basketball. The results can be seen in the multiple medals won in boxing and weightlifting and the footballers who are excelling at the national level.

The state government, industry and private educationists have to take the lead in ushering in a renaissance in sports. There should be no event management, but work at the ground level to bring back children to the sports field. Industry and government leaders should sponsor clubs and tournaments. Punjab needs to institute a system of scholarships at the high school and university levels. Prestigious tournaments have to be sponsored by the industry and the government which would bring national clubs to Punjab. Patronage is all the more important today as the state seems to be careening towards the abyss of chaos once again.

The Punjab Police teams in hockey, football, basketball and athletics excelled because of the passionate patronage of leaders like late Ashwini Kumar who took personal interest at every level. This is also necessary to stop the exodus of our youth to foreign shores and engage them in meaningful activity. Sports should be at the vanguard of resurgence of the Punjabi spirit — that is to excel, to be number one, to once again be the sword arm of the nation, the Gama Pehalwans, the Daras and Milkhas of India and to be the leading entrepreneurs in all fields. The playgrounds will teach us individual excellence and the miracle of teamwork as the Duke of Wellington famously remarked that “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”

The Punjabi youth are no longer attracted to sports as in the past and that is the malaise that I wish to focus on. Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, summed it up: “The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part; the important thing in life is not triumph, but the struggle; the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. To spread these principles is to build up a strong and more valiant and, above all, more scrupulous and more generous humanity.”