ABSTRACT
The British colonisers brought a number of sport to India that have since become very popular across the country. Some Indians learned these games from British missionaries at educational institutions, but most of them picked them up by watching the British play. Sport was not an official mechanism for imperialism, but it helped strengthen the Empire’s cultural bond and later provided a platform for interaction for the countries that had emerged from the Empire. The appropriation of sport by Indians contained elements of imitation and subversion. Sport often became a tool for resisting imperial dominance and engineering national, regional, ethnic, class and gender identities. It has divided as well as united Indians, and in the process has acquired various meanings.
