My views on the growth and development of East Bengal Football Club

Dr. Santi Ranjan Dasgupta

The great German philosopher Karl Marx had once said that if a country’s
infrastructural(base) development hasn’t taken place to a requisite level, the
suprastructural (superstructure) development doesn’t happen. Games being
part of the superstructure, follows this same logic. Nowadays, when our
country participates in the Olympics, we measure our success by the number
of medals we bring back. We prepare with our meagre facilities at the local
level, but we dream of winning many medals at the main event. At the end of
the Olympics, we are left in the condition, which Sukumar Ray puts as , haatey
roilo shudhu pencil. The time has come to reflect on why we are performing
so poorly in the international arena. Through our manpower and intelligence,
we have achieved successful positions in numerous professional fields of life,
other than sports. But as I said, the superstructure of sports wont develop till
the infrastructure or base is undeveloped. Today, as part of this essay, I wish
to reflect on how, in the case of East Bengal Football Club, I have seen this
relation between superstructure and base play out over the years.
This football team was born in the year 1920. How, when, where,
and why this club was formed, these details are now known to us. But we need
to ask what was the socio-economic structure of this country when this club
was formed. At that point of time, the country was semi-feudal and semi-
colonial in character. This is how our participation as a football team began.
Another important team which acquires fame around this period of time is
Mohun Bagan Football Club. It’s said that they defeated the Goras in a game
of football and that victory was a great moment of swadeshi nationalism. We
need to be skeptical of these moments of triumph since the team was not one
of the English nation but a team from Calcutta called the East Yorkshire
Regiment. Hence, it’s clear that it’s a gross misreading of our history if we
valorise this moment as a victory against the goras or British. East Yorkshire
Regiment as a football team is comparable to the Services teams that we see
in modern India, like a Railyways team. If somebody now defeats the
Railways Football Team in a game and claims they have defeated the Indians,
then it would be a gross exaggeration.
Coincidentally, the 1911 Mohun Bagan team had 6 players from the
erstwhile east bengal or opar bangla. But it was from a rival team of Mohun
Bagan called Jorabagan, that the birth of East Bengal Football Club took
place. Suhrid Chattopadhyay reminds us of the case of Sailesh Bose-

On July 28, 1920, Mohun Bagan was scheduled to play Jorabagan in a

Coochbehar Cup tie. When the Jorabagan team dropped its star half-back
Sailesh Bose, Mohun Bagan's vice-president and noted industrialist Suresh
Chandra Chaudhuri pressed for Bose's inclusion in the Mohun Bagan squad,
a plea which the club authorities refused. Chaudhuri walked out of the club,
and set up a new team with Sailesh Bose, Ramesh Chandra Sen and Aurobindo
Ghosh. They named the club East Bengal, after the region from which they
hailed. Red and gold became the club colours, symbolising ambition, and a
flaming torch became the emblem, denoting a fiery desire to be the best. The
chief patron of the club in its early years was the Maharaja of Santosh, after
whom the Santosh Trophy is named.

There is a tendency to claim that football should be preserved as a “native

game”, but professional football/competitive sports has never allowed that
character. When you look at the La Liga or the Spanish League, you notice
that the best players from around the globe are cherry-picked to build a
formidable squad, whose performance we tend to derive pleasure from. The
same scenario has played out in our country. Even from it’s earliest days as a
football team, the East Bengal Football Club always had some of its most
important players from outside of East Bengal. This mixed bag of a team,
through it’s performance on the field, created for us an image to indentify
ourselves with, the image being East Bengal Football Club. The self-respect
of the individual player who broke away from East Yorkshire or Jorabagan to
form East Bengal Football Club, his performance with his ten other teammates
on the field creates for us the legacy of the EBFC that we identify with, as
fans. Nowadays, we are pursuing meditation as mode of relaxation, we know
how difficult it is. According to me, when a player is on the field or when a
spectator is observing him keenly, both of them are completely immersed in
the game, both are in a state of meditation. This is the state of meditation,
which is a state of heightened pleasure as well as heightened perception. With
this experience is intimately linked the contour of our passions, like the name
East Bengal Football Club triggers us. It’s still observeable that a considerable
amount of players, administrators and fans of the club had three or four
preceeding generations hailing from the geopolitical territory of East Bengal.
Nowadays, with the coming of mass media and social media, the
youth’s consciousness is constantly bombarded with content. Owing to their
changed cycles of labour, they are only able to find some time in the night to
watch a game of football. They end up watched an English Premier League or
La Liga but are unable to come to the fields to watch a game of East Bengal
FC. I don’t blame them, it’s the socio-economic structure of society that is
compelling them to make these choices. You might say that they choose the
La Liga or EPL over the ISL or i-League owing to the better standards of
football in the former. Even, I am a fan of Barcelona FC and Real Madrid but
I am not hasty to compare their play with us, since I believe that infrastructure
for such a superior game of football is not here in India yet. Just like we watch
good films from both Hollywood, Bollywood or World Cinema, I would say
fans of jogo bonito dont became disloyal to their clubs when they appreciate
football from around the club.
My personal journey as a fan of East Bengal Football Club happens
from my childhood, when I would be raised on the legacies of the club and
how they represent a sense of dignity and honour for all people from East
Bengal. I was mad about the game of football, a madness which led me to
break the rules and diktats of my parents and face a lot of restrictions. Later,
when I came to Calcutta in 1968, I witnessed for the the first time, the flesh
and blood form of the football club. That was a juncture of history, when every
section of society was bothered by the question of shaping a better future for
mankind. At that point of time, a substantial portion of youth got attracted to
the game. There was football and a handful films and theatre activities were
the only avenues of entertainment in those days. The sense of despondency,
frustration, anger that the youth was going through in the seventies in Bengal,
all of that found a safety valve in the game of football. In those days, the
matches used to be of seventy minutes and not ninety minutes. In those days,
the club used to run on the basis of the goodwill of a handful patrons who
would donate to the club, or support some of its players, out of a love for the
club and the game. This love for the club also has a historical reason in the
seventies. If the pleasure of defeating the Britishers marked the game in the
pre-independence period and the pleasure of self-determination marked the
post-independence period, for members of East Bengal club, the decade of the
seventies was tied the trauma of being separated from their homeland. The
patrons of the club in the seventies wanted to keep alive the memories of their
homeland by nurturing the talent in the football club. A so-called state of
independence had come about but at the level of interpersonal experience, the
only joy to be experienced was in the on-field successes of East Bengal
Football Club. It was on the basis of these successes, grasping the emblem
and flag of the team that people found the strength and zeal to go on with their
daily lives. For example, I am watching an East Bengal match where prior to
the Half-time, the team is lagging behind 0-2 but ends the game with a
turnaround score of 4-2, these vacillations between success and defeat made
us intimately associate with the experience of being displaced people, evicted
from their homeland. There is a saying that the Germans are people who don’t
concede defeat till the last breath. I would like to refresh the memories of my
readers that East Bengal Football Club was called the Germans of Indian
football whereas our rivals (Mohun Bagan) were called macha. For fans of
East Bengal Football Club, we are instilled with this fighting spirit, of not
giving up till all is lost and always aspiring to make a comeback. As a fan, I
am still alive holding on to this motto in all struggles of life. This motto
doesn’t let me sink into despair with individual experiences of failure, it
pushes me to keep fighting till the last minute.

As time passed, the economic character of our nation post-Independence also

started changing and we saw the coming of neo-colonisers. In the early 1990s,
with the adoption of liberalization, privatization and globalization measures,
a new era of club football was ushered in. Globalization tried to nullify all
differences amongst local practices and traditions and in its onslaught it didn’t
spare football. To survive in the competitive era of globalization, we had to
seek the sponsorship of a corporate body. In the early phase of corporatisation
of East Bengal Football Club, this was something which seemed beneficial
for the club. The corporate sponsor supported us with the necessary finances
to improve our infrastructure, which the national or state governments or fans
couldn’t support us with. In return, they capitalized on our fan base by
advertising their products to our fans through their logos on our jerseys. This
seemed a fairly easy relationship to survive in. Whereas earlier we could serve
the players and fans with very few basic food items during the game, like
soaked chhola or chilled water, now we have been able to set up a cafeteria.
We were happy with our first corporate sponsors, we didn’t have to
compromise on our passion or traditions. But the moment globalization
transformed football into a commodity for entertainment, we feared the
vicious character of the corporates would be revealed.

In this new corporate phase of football, I see a new creature in

maidan called the Manager. The manager doesn’t really solve any real
problem, he only manages them. Earlier, we had the term whole-timer to
describe the person who’d dedicate his time to the development of the club,
selflessly. Now the whole-timer figure is getting pushed out of the picture of
club football in Bengal, by the figure of the Manager. And with the Manager
figure, we are gradually sinking back into a semi-feudal structure of football
administration, that I’d mentioned was there in the pre-Independence era.
While the Whole-timer was dedicated to the growth of the club, the Manager
is contract bound to increasing the profits of the Corporate body whom he
serves.

Earlier, the organisation of football playing in India was

controlled by the All India Football Federation, which was populated with
many people from refugee origins. The moment this organisation shifted it’s
headquarters to Delhi, I believe the downfall of Indian football began. In the
halcyon days of AIFF, legends like Biswanath Dutta and Priya Ranjan Das
Munshi were passionate about the game of football and it reflected in the way
they steered the organisation. Now, the AIFF has become the chief Manager
of Indian football, it simply manages the game for the profits of Reliance.
Priya Ranjan Das Munshi had sought the help of Reliance to salvage AIFF
from the heavy debts that it had incurred in the past. But the corporate firm
which arrived as the financial support, since became the dictator of the game.
Reliance operates on the give and take policy, they understand what will sell
better in the market. They have now mandated that the Indian Sports League
will be the premier league of the country and clubs like Atlético de Kolkata
will the be the only first division clubs in India. I-League will be declared as
the second division league and subsequently all its affiliated clubs like East
Bengal Football Club will be relegated to the second division. This will
translate into a massive shortage of funds, as the corporate sponsors will not
be keen to support a club which is merely second division. What Reliance is
hell bent on doing is destroying the heritage of club football as it exists in
India and replace it with something new. As I have been trying to say, a club
like East Bengal Football Club has stood the test of time by holding on to the
fandom, tied to it’s long standing social history in Bengal. Today, Reliance is
transforming that fan base into a market by, replacing the heritage of East
Bengal with the brand value of Atlético de Kolkata. In this light, I would urge
the readers of this article to remember the fighting spirit of East Bengal and
not allow this destructive future to come true.