The other " Prakash " who " LIT " Indian Badminton, at Harringay Arena in 1947 : A " TRIBUTE " to him on this Pre Independence day ,August 14th

Pics - :: Prakashnath and  Conny Jepson :: All England Badminton Championship,1947 

Remembering the other Prakash who shone at Harringay Arena in 1947

No sooner that it boils down to Badminton the first name that comes readily to our mind is Prakash Padukone who was undoubtedly a very different kind of a world class Badminton player. He was the first who played in two All- England finals winning one by beating Liem Swie King of Indonesia in 1979 ,  and losing him in the next final encounter at All England

However we as Indian we do not know and we have never heard about another Prakash, PRAKASHNATH who was the first Indian to make it to the quarter-finals of the All England in 1939 and then playing a finals at All England of August 14^th 1947, losing to the Denmark, ie, the Danes Conny Jepson in two straight sets . None knows about that Badminton player who ruled and waived like a Kind and the flow of the Ocean to make Badminton and India’s Badminton a name to conjure with in the era between 1938 to 1947.

August :: A MONTH to conjure with In Indian Sports.

You name the month AUGUST and you first get an impression about our nation gaining Independence. That happened on August 15^th 1947. However the month August has some other great deeds and achievement and the two falls in sports.

It was August 15^th 1936 when Indian beat Germany by 8-1 in the Olympics Hockey at Berlin to create a HATTRICK of winning the Olympic title.

It was August 1^st 1920 when the glamorous East Bengal football team was formed and it has many a history attached to it. The GREATEST  in terms of achievement is that the club has celebrated it’s ONE-HUNDREDTH year of football existence and has completed it’s century in terms of it’s age.

You come back to August 12^th 1948, and it was on that date when India after Independence won the 1948 Olympics Gold after being an Independent nation by beating Great Britain by 4-0 . The month of August holds very far distance effect in terms of finding the achievement that India achieved in that month .

Infact it was It was on August 11, 2008, when Abhinav Bindra became the first Indian to win an individual Olympic gold medal. Bindra had achieved the feat during 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 10 metre air rifle shooter was seen at the top of his craft .

Can you ever forget August 24th 1971.That was the day when India peaked it's scale of the counts to POUND-AND-OUST the English Lions at the Oval by FOUR wickets to win their FIRST ever cricket series at England and to UNOFFICIALLY  become the WORLD NUMBER ONE of cricket . So I stop here but if you have to see and find out the fact you would see and notice that the month of August irrespective of the year has brought in and brought about the EGYPTIAN- SILT , that it brings in the River Nile for harvest,  of the River though the River Maa Ganges flows here, for a BUMPER HARVEST.

It was the date August 14^th 1947 when the All England  Badminton arena the HARRINGWAY on that day saw a Badminton player from India, so unheard of in this country creating a news for the World over to take notice of the Indian Badminton , though from that date it took another 31 years for India to win that crown on an individual manner with Prakash Padukone doing the impossible and translating it into a possible.

It was the year 1938 when Prakashnath hit the headline in the arena of Indian Badminton .That year was also famous because a lady by the name of Ms Ameena Bi, a Muslim won the national Indian Badminton championship. This lady Ms Ameena Bi later went on to become the mother of FOUR Pakistani International cricketers, Hanif, Mushtaq, Wazir and Sadiq who between played from 1951-52 to 1978 played and represented their country,  for twenty seven years, for the family of Mohammed’s,  to field atleast ONE brother to play for Pakistan in the Test match . This is a WORLD RECORD of a family having atleast ONE of it’s BLOOD to play Test match for their country and that too for twenty seven years. The sequence was broken in 1978 when Mustaq Mohammed went to play for the Packer's series, and Sadiq was dropped from the Pakistan team to play England in 1978 , the series which saw Ian Botham taking it over to inch toward becoming a WORLD CLASS ALLROUNDER. 

Very few would know anything about the GREAT DEEDS of Ms Ameena Bi, the GREAT lady ,  who later was to become a Pakistani national and to give birth to FIVE  sons, Saeed, Wazir, Hanif, Mustaq and Sadiq  of which FOUR wore the blazer of Pakistan cricket National team and FOUR went on to play for Pakistan against India and the three went on to play against all the cricketing nation that played cricket then. Haneef, Saeed and Wazir were born at India before they migrated to Pakistan. 

Now I come back to my main subject and that is Mr Prakashnath from Lahore, and a Badminton player of India.

At the first post-World War II All England Championships in 1947, Prakash Nath, then 27 years of age, fought his way into the final after the kind of drama that made headlines in even the staid and stodgy London newspapers .

In that tournament there were two Indian playing and representing India in the Badminton at All-England. The other one was Devender Mohan . The draw of the tournamemnt was such that these two were to meet and play each other in the quarters if they won their respective  matches from the word go in that tourney at All England.

Now here in the home both Prakashnath and Devendra Mohan were a fierce competitor to each other . Their imptressive competition and their off the court relationship made them a complete friend and a friend who were as good as and as comparable as being so very THIEF, THIN - AND- THICK.  That they were a fierce competitor on the court but off it they were two soul into one.

They first played against each other in 1938 where Prakashnath beat him. Then in 1939, 1941, 1943 and in 1945 Devendra Mohan defeated him and in the year 1940, 1942, 1944 and 1946 Prakashnath beat him. That was the kind of the competition that these two had in between them and the badminton areana of India was completely under them and these two made the competition  fierce and blood sucking to see it.

However that year in 1947 sw them the draws of the All England taking them in the quarters and this DID NOT MEET THE EYE of the two. They approached the All England authority, requested, lodged the protest and did everything to change the draw which was unaccepted to the All England authority. Lest making it and deciding it off the court that planned to TOSS the coin between themselves and decide who would oust himself in the quarters off the court and it was Devender Mohan who lost out

The entire story could be gulfed in the manner as I describe it over here- :

·         Prakash Nath and compatriot Devinder Mohan, who were to play each other in a quarter-final, decided not to play, and spun a coin, instead.

·         India had two entries in the tournament – the 1946 national champion Prakash Nath and his toughest rival and good friend, Devinder Mohan

·         The British press went overboard with the story; and one particular newspaper hinted that it was an Indian gold coin that they had used for the toss.

The word ' Prakash ' in the vernacular denotes light or brightness; and Indian badminton has been particularly fortunate to have actually had two men of that name scaling the peak of the sport at the international level.

Few people today know that, thirty-three years before Prakash Padukone set the Wembley Arena alight in March 1980 with his magnificent victory over Indonesian speed and power merchant, Liem Swie King, another Prakash had reached the men’s singles final of the All-England Championships, considered the world’s premier badminton tournament before the official World Championships were launched.

At the first post-World War II All England Championships in 1947, Prakash Nath, then 27 years of age, fought his way into the final after the kind of drama that made headlines in even the staid and stodgy London newspapers. He and compatriot Devinder Mohan, who were to play each other in a quarter-final, decided not to play, and spun a coin, instead. Prakash called right, Mohan was “tossed” out; and Prakash went on to the semi-final, which he won with aplomb, to make the title round.

The background to this strange way of determining a winner needs to be set down in golden letters in the annals of Indian badminton. The 1947 Championships were the first to be played after the cessation of World War II; and, in the absence of any records that could indicate the form of the moment, seedings were allotted in an arbitrary manner, based on performance in the pre-War years.

India had two entries in the tournament – the 1946 national champion Prakash Nath and his toughest rival and good friend, Devinder Mohan. Since they were far too good for the others in the fray in India, the Indian Badminton Federation decided in 1947 that it would send them to London to get the experience of play at the topmost level.

Nath came from a wealthy Lahore-based family, which was fortunate to own property that had a badminton court, a tennis court and a small ground for playing hockey and cricket attached to it. Prakash’s father, Alok Nath, a hockey player, encouraged his son to play all these sports, but his mother was particularly fond of playing badminton with him.

Prakash, who first held a racket at the age of eight, had decided within a couple of years that badminton would be his chosen sport. Agility was his forte; and so flexible was he that, when he bent his back backwards to hit a shot, the racket was reputed to touch the back of his heel. He was also a master of deception, with a rich repertoire of strokes, especially at the net.

The junior doubles title at the 1936 Punjab State Championships, when he was a mere 16 years old, gave him a taste for trophies; and from that year until 1940, he won at least one event every year in the State Championships.

By the time he was 22, he was so good that he bagged the men’s singles and doubles in the 1942 Nationals. Nath was to be a finalist in at least two national events every year between 1943 and ’45, before taking the coveted singles and doubles tandem again in 1946.

It is a strange coincidence that, nearly three decades later, Prakash Padukone was also just 17 when he won three titles at the 1971-72 Madras Nationals – the men’s singles, the junior boys’ singles and boys’ doubles in tandem with his elder brother, Pradeep.

Another coincidence is that Prakash Nath won the 1946 Indian Nationals at the expense of Devinder Mohan, while Prakash’s  ie , Padukone’s victim in the men’s final of the 1971-72 Nationals was another Devinder – Ahuja! What was more if that Devendra came from a wealthy family, this Devendra Ahuja came from a family whose business was GOLD SMITH.  This ie Prakash padukone then beat Padukone pipped the Amritsar-based jeweller’s son 18-17 in the third and deciding game of their epic final to win the national title for the first time.

Jabalpur at it again-::

Jabalpur had and has it’s own history to give and afford to give to india. Partho Ganguly who was th National Badminton Double’s champion was from this place and he represented India in the time between 1972 to 1978 in the Thomas Cup event. This was thr place where Captain Roop Singh was born and he made his name in Hockey. There have been as many as five Hockey Olympians who were born at Jabalpur and who went on to play for India to win the Olympic Hockey Gold from the era from 1928 to 1936. This was the place where Prakashnath won his National title in 1946.

Writes Prakashnath about the incident after the Jabalpur Open Badminton National Championship that - :

“ Shortly after I won the national singles at Jabalpur in 1946, I got a telegram from my elder brother, asking me to rush to Lahore, since Devinder and I had been selected to represent India at the All-England,” Nath reminisced. “It was a huge and pleasant surprise, but I was dubious as to how I would fare because I had dislocated my knee shortly after the final.”

Unfortunately, with there being no indication of how good they really were, the All-England authorities put them in the same quarter of the draw. Both the  Indians were furious, upon landing in London, to see that only one of them had a chance of making the final.

Prakash had the toughest conceivable opening match – against defending champion Tage Madsen of Denmark – at the spacious Harringay Arena. A record crowd of 25,000 turned up to watch the contest, since Madsen was a popular past winner of the event.

The more experienced man took the first game at 15-7, as the limping Indian took time to warm up. But, as the match progressed, and the rallies got longer and fiercer, young legs carried the day. Nath won the closely contested second game at 15-12; and simply ran away with the decider at 15-3.

Both Indians progressed smoothly until they came up against each other in the quarter-finals. Both realised that they knew each other’s game so well that they would end up playing a long, exhausting match, and would probably be too stiff for whoever came up against the winner in the semi-final. So they decided to toss for it.

Stories Fabricated By The British Press

The British press went overboard with the story; and one particular newspaper hinted that it was an Indian gold coin that they had used for the toss. Nath insists it was nothing of the kind; just a 50-paise coin that one of them had carried from Bombay to London, but it certainly added spice to the legend. He was lucky to call correctly; and received a warm, albeit rueful, embrace from his unlucky friend and compatriot.

“I beat an Englishman named Redford in the semi-finals on August 12^th, , and felt pretty good about my chances in the final against Denmark’s Conny Jepsen,” Nath said, nearly 64 years later, when he was interviewed by a British TV channel .That compere of that channel who interviewed him, goes to write that ,  I ie , he that channel compere,  interviewed him for my book  ‘ Courting Success – Icons of Indian badminton ’ in 2011. However says and said Prakashnath that  “ But when I saw `The Times’ on the morning of August 13<sup>th</sup>, , it all blew up in my face. All I could see was a screaming headline ` Lahore in flames ! ’

 Adding further he says “I read that riots had broken out in the city and the entire area around my house – Nesbitt Road, Abbot Road and Gwaal Mandi – had been set on fire. I did not know whether my family was alive or dead. Against these odds I had to play the finals which I infact had decided to concede a walk over but at the last moment I decided to take on the opponent. Adding further he said,  I don’t even remember how I went to the court to play my match. I can’t remember anything of the match – it was all like a bad dream in which I just went through the motions.”

There were many who felt that, had the aggressive, but that aggressiveness was reduced with my mind and the body not at all in the game. Had the  hard-hitting Mohan won the toss  against me, that would have been and had been better Atleast, he would have stood an outstanding chance of beating Jepsen in the All England final. But fate deemed otherwise.

 It was NOT that easy to go to London.Cash was the hindrance even though we both came from a well to do business family but the cash was still the hindrance. Prakash Nath and Devinder Mohan, who alternately won the national men’s singles titles from 1942 to 1946, wanted a shot at the unofficial world championship. They had even convinced citizens in Lahore to raise a decent sum of money for their journey to London.

But their dream of facing each other in the final suffered a setback when they learnt they had to compete against one another in the quarter finals. The friends decided to settle the result outside the court. They tossed a coin to settle on the winner. Nath won the toss — and went on to win the subsequent semi final, the first Indian ever to do. Nath, who lost the finals to Denmark Conny Jepsen, was followed by Prakash Padukone 33 years later.

Life Of Nightmare : He gave up Badminton once for all

For Prakash Nath, the return from England marked the start of a living nightmare. When the Partition of India took place on August 15, 1947, Northern India was a churning cauldron of violence. Rampaging mobs roamed the streets, murdering people at will, and without provocation.

In this kind of  a scenario when he reached his home he found out that the entire big sprawling house that belonged to him and his family was reduced to ash. Whatever remained were the smoke emitting out of it. He made a frantic effort to find where his parents were but he could not. Some Muslims in the locality who were his family friends told him that everybody in that house were lynched or killed and were lynched. That completely BROKE him by all the means and his jest to live afterwards simply strolled off.

“ If the answer to a simple question like `Where were you born?’ was a town that had gone to Pakistan, the results were unpredictable,” recalled Nath. “ Since I was born in Lahore, I could have been a prime target. Many people in the area knew it “.

His FIVE POUNDS that he had won in the All – England were the only remains and with that he moved to India and finally found himself at Delhi. Nothing was there in my mind- NO SENSE AT ALL FOR ANYTHING, he adds, nothing was there in my sight as I could not see anything at all. It was like I had become BLIND.

“ As it is, I almost lost my life on several occasions during those dreadful days, and they gave me nightmares for years thereafter. Badminton went far away from my mind; my priority became survival. I vowed not to touch a badminton racket again until my thriving family business had been rejuvenated.” And he stood firm to his vow.

For years after his solitary foray to the All England, Nath helmed a thriving business of electronic machine tools in Delhi first, later moving to Mumbai , but led a reclusive, semi-retired life, indulging his passion of reading, watching sports on television, and playing golf – far from the badminton courts which he had graced with so much excellence in the pre-1947 days.

It is sad to think that circumstances forced Nath to give up badminton at the young age of 27, else there is no knowing what more he might have achieved with his tremendous talent.

Certainly, he would have had a career every bit as long and illustrious as his latter-day namesake, but for the cruel twist that history took, “ sundering ” a nation into two, and igniting base passions among people who had lived together in harmony for centuries.

What a CRACK and what a CROUCH. The THREE political leaders, one of whom and  which was a SPIRITUAL , and , who ONCE was remarked as SPIRIT " U " AL by that QUAID - E - AZAM , if ,  one and sundry ,  if ,  I take into account, they ,  just failed to get into the schemes of the thing wisely to completely control the situation , and to  put and throw the humanity, and  the human being into disarray 

" So many human lives were lost and many likes of  the “ Prakash ”  ie the LIGHT were lost " .

Pics::

 Mr Shyamal Bhattacharjee, the author was born at West Chirimiri Colliery at District Surguja, Chattisgarh on July 6th 1959 He received his early education at Carmel Convent School Bishrampur and later at Christ Church Boys' Higher Secondary School at Jabalpur. He later joined Hislop College at Nagpur and completed his graduation in Science and he also added a degree in    B A thereafter. He joined the HITAVADA, a leading dailies of Central India at Nagpur as a      Sub-Editor ( Sports ) but gave up to complete his MBA in 1984 He thereafter added a Diploma In Export Management. He has authored THREE books namely Notable Quotes and Noble Thought published by Pustak Mahal in 2001 Indian Cricket : Faces That Changed It  published by Manas Publications in 2009 and Essential Of Office Management published by NBCA, Kolkatta  in 2012. He has a experience of about 35 years in Marketing .

 

Signature of Shyamal Bhattacharjee