ABSTRACT
Mohun Bagan’s epochal Indian Football Association (IFA) Shield victory of 1911 is one of the most commented upon events in Indian sporting history. A good deal of literature has cropped up around Mohun Bagan’s 1911 victory, deemed to be the most glorious success of an Indian team under colonial rule. Of late, Jaydeep Basu, an eminent Indian sports journalist, has argued that the importance of the victory needs to be judged from purely a footballing angle. Nationalist significance of 1911 has indeed become an over emphasized and perhaps overburdened historical cliché in the social history of modern Indian sport. Since the inception of colonial rule in India, the British portrayed the Bengalis as a ‘non-martial’ race and continued to ridicule him as ‘feeble’ and ‘effeminate’. The 1911 victory proved to be of immense significance towards the popularization of soccer in the Indian subcontinent.
