ABSTRACT
Historical writing on sport in the nations of South Asia is constantly developing. Currently, there is a predominant focus on cricket, particularly in post-independence India. Indeed, writings on the history of Indian sport dwarf those of the other South Asian nations of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. There has, though, been a recent attempt made by scholars in the field to address this imbalance. To date, the major focus of this revisionist writing has been India and involves the study of sports development in regions that have been mostly overlooked. Bengal was one such region of notable omission. In the last decade its profile has been raised by scholars keen to emphasize that cricket and football development in the region aided in the push for Indian nationalism during colonization and in the emergence of a vigorous and thriving Indian national sports milieu post independence. This chapter outlines the reasons for the recent reorientation of focus away from
Bombay (Mumbai) and north India by scholars arguing for stronger recognition to be given to Bengal and other regions of India. It will look at the rise of writing on football – of that mostly played in Bengal, but also in other regions – and arguments claiming that the sport compares rather favourably to that of cricket in the national imagination. There will also be mention of developing areas of sports history in India, which include sports other than cricket and football, women’s sports, and the role of traditional sport as an alternative discourse to modernist constructs deemed anathema to tradition. The chapter will conclude with an examination of Pakistani and Sri Lankan sports history to date. There is relatively little writing on either and what there is tends to relate to cricket as a vehicle for national cohesion in light of domestic political divisions, particularly among Pakistanis and Pakistani Diaspora communities in the United Kingdom.
