Mario Rodrigues

NEW DELHI: By now, many Indian football fans will be aware of Mahatma Gandhiji’s links with football and his pioneering role in setting up three teams of the Passive Resisters Football Club during his sojourn in South Africa from 1893 to 1915.  

As the story that has been well publicised in recent times goes, the Passive Resisters football clubs, based in Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Durban, were founded by the ‘Father of the Nation’ who was also one of the founding members of the Transvaal Indian Football Association in 1896.

The clubs were formed to promote his newly-minted philosophy of non-violent passive resistance to injustice and racial discrimination that Indians faced in South Africa. What triggered Gandhiji’s entry into this realm of political activism was his eviction from a whites-only train compartment at Pietermaritzburg station despite holding a valid ticket due to the segregationist laws prevalent in the racist republic at that time.

Gandhiji and his associates often turned up at his club games and impressed upon his players in half-time or post-match speeches, the imperatives of peaceful resistance to oppression and the fight for social change. “Competition between passive resisters does not exhaust them; on the contrary, it ennobles them,” he is reputed to have said.

The fact that football was an extremely popular game among the struggling Indian emigrants in South Africa might have prompted Gandhiji to tap into the ‘beautiful game’ to promote his radical philosophy.

But it is more likely that ‘Bapuji’ may have inherited his love for the game from his earlier association with his mentor and close friend Arnold Hills, the founder of Thames Ironworks FC in 1895 which was renamed West Ham United FC shortly thereafter. The Arnold Hills Hospitality Lounge at the David Moyes-managed side at the club’s current stadium commemorates the memory of its founder.

Despite the Hills hospitality lounge now ironically serving alcohol and non-vegetarian delicacies for its esteemed patrons, Hills was an avowed vegetarian and teetotaller. The all-round sportsperson who excelled in athletics, cricket, and football (he once trooped out for Oxford University as a forward in a losing cause in the 1877 FA Cup final against the Wanderers), befriended a young M K Gandhi who had come to London in 1888 to study law and jurisprudence.

Based on their shared beliefs, Hills inducted Gandhiji into the executive committee of the London Vegetarian Society of which he was president as well as its chief financier. They bonded well. Hills was also managing director of the Thames Iron Works shipbuilding firm. A committed philanthropist, Hills launched the football team as a welfare measure after copping flak following a workers’ strike due to poor wages and working conditions. Acknowledged as a pioneer for his innovation of floodlight football, Hills funded the relatively successful football team from his own pocket, but stepped back from active involvement after the club decided to turn professional and was renamed West Ham United. He however remained its largest shareholder.

When Gandhiji visited London for the Round Table Conference in 1931 (Hills had died a few years earlier), he stayed in East London and is reported to have visited the now-refurbished Boleyn Tavern, situated near the club’s old stadium. It used to be a favourite haunt of the Hammers’ supporters in the old days. According to Wikipedia, it is said that Gandhiji attended several West Ham games (though there is no proof to back this claim) and drank cream soda during his visit to the pub while discussing football and radical politics with local people.

Benjamin Roberts claims as much in his book Bottled: English Football’s Boozy Story (2019). We will leave it at that.

While West Ham United are still alive and kicking in the Premier League, the Passive Resisters gradually faded out after Gandhiji departed South African shores to kickstart his political career in his native country. But Hills and Gandhiji will continue to awe and inspire football fans for their pioneering efforts -- one to promote the welfare of his workers, the other to bring about political and moral change.

(Mario Rodrigues is a senior journalist and reputed author)