Priests, Bearers, Schoolboys, Sailors: Pioneering Indian Field Hockey Players from Bengal in the 1890s

Abstract

The largely unknown story of the first primarily tribal team to take part in organized field hockey in the Indian subcontinent reveals some of the origins of Indian field hockey. In this case, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) Mission, Ranchi, comprising players drawn from the marginalized tribal population of the Chota Nagpur plateau under the province of Bengal, made its debut in the inaugural edition of what is arguably the oldest field hockey tournament in the world, the Beighton Cup in Calcutta. Although the team’s journey began with a defeat, over the next 13 years, SPG Mission won the competition five times. The progress of the team through the first three years of the journey, from debut to the first title, is examined here with the help of fresh evidence unearthed from contemporary newspaper accounts, government reports and books on a variety of subjects, from ethnography of Indian tribes to church histories and player autobiographies. The aim is to use Ranchi Mission and its opponents as a window to explore the diversity inherent in the practice of hockey in India in the 1890s, which ultimately led to unparalleled success for subcontinental teams on the world stage in the twentieth century.