“The brilliant Jakarta sun shone fiercely on the arena in the Senajan stadium here this afternoon but it could not dim India’s great moment of triumph in the Asian Games football championship with India’s ascending football star long in eclipse after the success in New Delhi in 1951 reaching its zenith with a victory over Korea that was as surprising as it was welcome. And to think that the footballers were almost offloaded as expendable cargo from the contingent to Jakarta.”
That’s how The Times of India reported on the 1962 Asian Games football final.
The architect of this triumph was Syed Abdul Rahim, a figure now largely forgotten in the history of Indian sport. In that context, the newly released biopic ‘Maidaan’, featuring Ajay Devgn’s stellar portrayal of beloved coach and mentor Rahim saab, is a poignant tribute to his legacy.
To understand Rahim’s story, one needs to go back to the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, where India suffered a humiliating 1-10 defeat against Yugoslavia. It was the lowest moment in India’s football history and Rahim attributed this to India’s insistence on playing bare feet, putting them at a big disadvantage against opponents playing in modern boots.
Determined to completely revamp Indian football, Rahim urged the All India Football Federation (AIFF) to mandate boots for players and went on to put together a team with himself acting as scout. To Rahim’s advantage there was serious talent available with PK Banerjee, Chuni Goswami, Tulsidas Balaram and others emerging on the scene at the time.
The AIFF, acting on Rahim’s suggestion, enforced the use of boots, which yielded immediate dividends. India had their best-ever result in the next Olympics at Melbourne in 1956 and became the first Asian nation to reach the semi-finals, and eventually finished fourth. A standout moment was the 4-2 victory over Australia, thanks to a Neville D’Souza hat-trick, propelling India to new heights.
(D’Souza finished as the joint highest-scorer of the tournament with four goals in three games.) But as has often been the case in Indian sport, Rahim fell out of favour with the AIFF, leading to a decline in India’s fortunes. However, he was reinstated just before the 1962 Asian Games in Jakarta and that marked a turning point in India’s football history.
However, the context of this victory can’t be fully understood without looking into the geopolitics of the times.
The Asian Games is organised under the larger umbrella of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). They are Asia’s mini-Olympics and as in the story of the Olympics itself, the Asiad is the playground of international power play and diplomatic one-upmanship.
If the 1951 Delhi Asiad was about India staking a claim to Asian leadership, the fourth Asian Games at Jakarta in 1962 were about Indonesia laying claim to that legacy. India was central to this fascinating interlude in the global Olympic movement.
When Indonesia refused to allow Taiwanese and Israeli athletes to participate, it was India who led the efforts that culminated in Indonesia’s expulsion from the IOC. On the morning of 3 September 1962, an irate mob ‘stormed’ the Indian embassy in Jakarta, forcing most of the members of the Indian delegation to leave the country.
The day after this attack, India were playing in the football finals. Anti-India passions were so high that the Indian team was treated virtually like an enemy nation. As the official Indian report put it, “Unfortunately, it was worse than the worst for when we…looked like winning, a very large section of the crowd of a hundred thousand persistently booed the team.
Not satisfied, it continued to boo when the victory ceremony to present the gold medals to our team was performed. The national anthem was drowned in the booing”.
Rahim was instrumental in keeping the team focussed, despite battling with cancer. The disease tragically claimed his life just nine months later. Winning the gold against all odds by beating South Korea was proof of his tactical nous and acumen.
Ironically, India’s greatest success in international football was eclipsed by a diplomatic crisis and overshadowed Rahim’s contribution. The 1962 triumph could have been the 1983 moment for Indian football, but it got relegated to the dusty shelves of archives only to be resuscitated by the recent biopic.
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(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com.)
