A Corner of a Foreign Field

Ramachandra Guha

3 ideas

1. Palwankar Baloo: Dalit bowler denied captaincy

   Palwankar Baloo, born into the 'untouchable' Chamaar caste, worked first at a Parsi cricket club and then at the British-run Poona Gymkhana, where he bowled to European members in the nets. He became the leading Indian bowler of his era, starred on the 1911 All-India tour of England and for the Hindus in the Bombay Quadrangular, yet because of his caste the upper-caste Hindu selectors never made him captain. After public agitation, his younger brother Vithal was made captain of the Hindus in 1923 and led them to victory over the Europeans.

2. Bombay cricket organized along communal lines

   The Bombay tournaments pitted religious and racial teams against each other: Europeans, Parsis, Hindus and Muslims, and later 'The Rest' in the Pentangular. This made matches contests of community pride. Guha recounts Gandhi's and nationalist critics' opposition to the Pentangular by 1940, but he also shows cricket at times easing communal divisions.

3. Sport as a contest with colonizers

   Colonized groups took up the ruler's own game for two linked reasons: to win the rulers' approval, and to gain a chance to beat them by their own rules. The Parsis took up cricket first as a sign of loyalty and refinement. Hindu victories over European teams, above all a Dalit-led side beating the British, were then read as political proof of equality, so a British sport became a vehicle for Indian self-assertion.

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