Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SPORTDIPL (Postcolonial Diplomacy and the Public Culture of Sport: Britain and India, 1946-1996)
Reporting period: 2019-10-01 to 2021-09-30
The SPORTDIPL project examined the importance of sport to postcolonial international relations in the second half of the twentieth century through a case study of Indo-British sporting relations. Since the mid-Victorian era, competitive sport has been a tool of diplomacy and cultural imperialism within the British Empire. The significance of sporting relations increased after the Second World War as Britain sought to maintain close ties with its former colonies and dominions, especially through the game of cricket and events like the Olympic and Empire Games (later renamed as Commonwealth Games). The project explored the history of cricket between England and India as a specific form of diplomatic and cultural encounter between the two countries.
The chief social importance of this project was its critical engagement with post-war race relations, gender, and migration. It has the potential to help policymakers understand the social relationships formed in the context of integration of immigrants through sport, women’s long term problems in sport pertaining to the question of their legitimacy and authenticity as stakeholders, and how racial attitudes shape sports. The findings offer a plan for countering discrimination and other systemic problems in sport.
The project’s objective to deepen the historical understanding of the notions of imperialism, national identity, diplomacy, and sporting nationalism in Britain and India was carried out through three plans of action. First, it studied the extent to which sporting events between Britain and India counted as public diplomacy. Second, through postcolonial literary analysis, with its emphasis on studying the formation of identity and questioning existing power structures from multiple perspectives, it reflected on the interaction between British and Indian cultures and ideologies. Third, the project examined the interpenetration of cultures by analysing official reports and press narratives.
The chief social importance of this project was its critical engagement with post-war race relations, gender, and migration. It has the potential to help policymakers understand the social relationships formed in the context of integration of immigrants through sport, women’s long term problems in sport pertaining to the question of their legitimacy and authenticity as stakeholders, and how racial attitudes shape sports. The findings offer a plan for countering discrimination and other systemic problems in sport.
The project’s objective to deepen the historical understanding of the notions of imperialism, national identity, diplomacy, and sporting nationalism in Britain and India was carried out through three plans of action. First, it studied the extent to which sporting events between Britain and India counted as public diplomacy. Second, through postcolonial literary analysis, with its emphasis on studying the formation of identity and questioning existing power structures from multiple perspectives, it reflected on the interaction between British and Indian cultures and ideologies. Third, the project examined the interpenetration of cultures by analysing official reports and press narratives.
SPORTDIPL drew on British and Indian sources from India’s cricket tour of England in 1946 to the 1996 cricket World Cup held in the Indian subcontinent.
Oct 2019 - Mar 2020: The researcher reviewed the existing literature and carried out archival research at the MCC Archives in London, which helped him identify three main themes of for academic publication: (i) what the synergy between national governments and non-state actors such as sport associations revealed about sport as a tool of public diplomacy; (ii) the extent to which the British and India media produced colonial hierarchies of race, ethnicity, gender and class in their representation of sportspersons and spectators; and (iii) how nationalism and national identity was mobilised as a postcolonial strategy of building spectator support for sport teams.
Apr 2020 - Sep 2020: The researcher consulted online repositories such as the British Newspaper Archives, Gale Historical Newspapers, Hathi Trust and Google News Archive as all physical archives were closed due to Covid.
Oct 2020 - Jul 2021: The researched relocated to India and accessed materials at the National Library and various newspaper offices in Kolkata and the National Archives and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi. He made two academic presentations based on this research through online talks hosted by St John's College Anchal and the Society for Understanding Culture & History in India.
Aug 2021 - Sep 2021: The researcher returned to UK and completed writing two journal articles for English Historical Review and Modern Asian Studies.
Oct 2019 - Mar 2020: The researcher reviewed the existing literature and carried out archival research at the MCC Archives in London, which helped him identify three main themes of for academic publication: (i) what the synergy between national governments and non-state actors such as sport associations revealed about sport as a tool of public diplomacy; (ii) the extent to which the British and India media produced colonial hierarchies of race, ethnicity, gender and class in their representation of sportspersons and spectators; and (iii) how nationalism and national identity was mobilised as a postcolonial strategy of building spectator support for sport teams.
Apr 2020 - Sep 2020: The researcher consulted online repositories such as the British Newspaper Archives, Gale Historical Newspapers, Hathi Trust and Google News Archive as all physical archives were closed due to Covid.
Oct 2020 - Jul 2021: The researched relocated to India and accessed materials at the National Library and various newspaper offices in Kolkata and the National Archives and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi. He made two academic presentations based on this research through online talks hosted by St John's College Anchal and the Society for Understanding Culture & History in India.
Aug 2021 - Sep 2021: The researcher returned to UK and completed writing two journal articles for English Historical Review and Modern Asian Studies.
The first journal article helps rethink the history of Britain’s postcolonial political intervention in South Asia by arguing that Britain made a strong effort to pursue diplomacy through sport. It contends that cricket facilitated a dialogue between British and Indian political establishments and sport federations, and a study of their interaction deepens our understanding of the end of the British Empire in South Asia. Seeking to analyse cricket’s significance as a state-led policy, it makes two important contributions to the study of imperial and Commonwealth history. First, it suggests culture was an important arena of diplomatic negotiation between Britain and India that historians have largely overlooked, having been preoccupied with narratives to cooperation and conflict in politics and economy. It this provides fresh insights into late imperial and postimperial diplomacy in the context of South Asian decolonisation and Commonwealth politics. Second, it enhances our understanding of the importance of sport in Commonwealth relations and postcolonial cooperation. As the nucleus of the symbolic construction of postcolonial British and South Asian bilateral politics, cricket offers insights into post-war East-West international collaboration and the creation of a British sphere of influence. It also helps reconsider the process of decolonisation in a manner generalisable to the Commonwealth and the postcolonial world in the 1940s and 1950s. In this regard, the article discusses the use of cultural diplomacy as a means to shape a country’s international perception and enriches the historiography of state-led cultural missions, showing that far-reaching cultural institutions were not limited to, for example, the British Council or BBC World Service. In doing so, the article contributes to the still relatively under-researched domain of how imperial powers reshaped an old symbol of empire into a shared culture while seeking closer unions with decolonised territories.
The second journal article studies cricket writings to explore how colonial metanarratives of the Indian nature continue to inform representations of the country and generate symbolic meanings of Indianness. A rich historiography with a critical eye on the intrusive role of colonialism, science, anthropology and so on in the making of India as a discourse as well as the development of complex Indian self-identities has formed around contradictory assessments of Indian history. The Western perception of India’s environment and people as adverse to the health and long term inhabitation of Europeans in India has been one of the principal themes in this literature. This article responds to this literature through a study of cricket writings that were less imaginative, innovative, and sophisticated than ethnographic and literary works on India but powerful and unpretentious in their display of the visceral consequences of the orientalising process that had tremendous implications for British colonial power in India. It is based on a study of books and press articles by cricketers and cricket correspondents from Australia, England, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, and West Indies that were published in the twentieth century, mostly after 1945. Produced by people of various races, religions, and nationalities, including the formerly colonised and marginalised, these narratives go beyond neat coloniser-colonised, East-West, North-South dichotomies. The spatial metaphors and ideological burdens of these texts are invaluable registers for examining how non-Indian people questioned or sublimated the colonial representations of India’s difference in late colonial and postcolonial times. The evaluation of difference by a multiracial group of actors helps analyse outsider perception and belief as a historical problem.
The second journal article studies cricket writings to explore how colonial metanarratives of the Indian nature continue to inform representations of the country and generate symbolic meanings of Indianness. A rich historiography with a critical eye on the intrusive role of colonialism, science, anthropology and so on in the making of India as a discourse as well as the development of complex Indian self-identities has formed around contradictory assessments of Indian history. The Western perception of India’s environment and people as adverse to the health and long term inhabitation of Europeans in India has been one of the principal themes in this literature. This article responds to this literature through a study of cricket writings that were less imaginative, innovative, and sophisticated than ethnographic and literary works on India but powerful and unpretentious in their display of the visceral consequences of the orientalising process that had tremendous implications for British colonial power in India. It is based on a study of books and press articles by cricketers and cricket correspondents from Australia, England, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, and West Indies that were published in the twentieth century, mostly after 1945. Produced by people of various races, religions, and nationalities, including the formerly colonised and marginalised, these narratives go beyond neat coloniser-colonised, East-West, North-South dichotomies. The spatial metaphors and ideological burdens of these texts are invaluable registers for examining how non-Indian people questioned or sublimated the colonial representations of India’s difference in late colonial and postcolonial times. The evaluation of difference by a multiracial group of actors helps analyse outsider perception and belief as a historical problem.