" ROBBED " AND "PLUNDERED " Of It's Existence by "POLITICS "- Thy Name Is " OBAIDULLAH - GOLD - CUP - HOCKEY "
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Has the whistle died?
The Obaidullah Khan Gold Cup, once a symbol of India’s hockey glory and cultural haRavi Teja Mandapaka
There are junctures in the dosser of a nation’s athletic heritage when absence resounds with greater force than applause. The quiet disappearance of the Obaidullah Khan Gold Cup does not simply mark the erasure of a date from India’s hockey calendar. But it signifies, in the words of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, nafrat ke andheron mein mohabbat ke chiragh the extinguishing of a lamp of love in a growing darkness of division.
Once a radiant lighthouse in the mosaic of Indian syncretism, the tournament stood as a parable of coexistence as a bridge between identities. Its demise and collapse is an administrative lapse, a rupture in cultural continuity, and a fading hymn in the anthem of collective memory. As the whistle fell silent, so too did a narrative passed hand to hand like a sacred baton between generations woven from sinew and soil, valor and vision. The Obaidullah Khan Gold Cup was, as one old coach once said, “our Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb draped in shin guards and laced boots.” Its loss is the stillness that follows from the absence of what once animated a people.
And if they kill the tournament entirely, or say, strip it of its name, it will be more than just a lament and reckoning. For, history does not take kindly to those who rewrite the playbook mid-game. And memory, once driven out of the D, circles back both as nostalgia and as a drag flick of fury aimed straight at the heart.
Begun in the year 1931 under the patronage of the Nawab of Bhopal, the Obaidullah Khan Gold Cup was no ordinary affair. It was born not in vanity but in vision. A vision to elevate the India’s national game to a pedestal of honour and to bind the fissures of a fragile society through sport.
In an age when Bhopal was a princely state yet untouched by the fanatical winds of division, this tournament emerged as a grand gesture of sport as diplomacy, and hockey as an emblem of shared dreams. Initially funded by the Nawab’s coffers and sustained by the humble gate money from townsfolk, it was a tournament both regal and rooted.
It marked its silver jubilee in 1955 and its golden jubilee in 1981 as living testaments to resilience, brilliance, and a homegrown passion that refused to fade. These jubilees in many ways were chapters in an unfolding epic, where time did not just pass, it bore witness.
The fields of Bhopal bore witness to the wizardry of sticks and the poetry of passes and became the crucible in which champions were forged. Men like K. Ahmed Sher Khan and Ahsan Muhammad Khan laid down the early markers as full-backs whose defensive solidity mirrored the fortitude of Bhopal itself.
From these ranks arose stalwarts such as Anwar Ahmed Khan, who anchored the midfield with the poise of a conductor, and Inam-ur Rahman, whose playmaking vision made him the silent architect behind many a glorious goal.
And Shahid Noor, one of field hockey’s most luminous presences on the left wing? Forgive me, for words falter at the very thought of him and the 1968 Mexico Olympics. I find myself suspended between awe and silence as if language itself recoils, and remain humbled by the grace he carried on the turf as a hockey player.
His name belongs to something more ineffable. An elegy in motion, a stanza of artistry that history has half-forgotten and yet refuses to let die.
Wingers like Habibur Rehman and forwards like Jalaluddin Rizvi brought flair and ferocity tore down the flanks and dismantling opposition formations with artistry and audacity. In later years, strikers like Sameer Dad and Affan Yousuf would inherit this legacy by playing as inside forwards and centre strikers. Positions, that demanded precision, courage, and flair.
Each of them, in his own way, was a position on the chessboard of destiny that works in cohesion to tell a story larger than any individual match.
Yet, as with all things noble, politics found a way to muddy the waters.
The internecine infighting between the Madhya Pradesh Hockey Association and the Bhopal Hockey Association petty in cause and catastrophic in consequence led to the slow decay of this once-proud event. And when the tournament faded into oblivion, so too did the region’s hockey ecosystem.
What was once a fountainhead of talent slowly turned into a barren land where no new stars rose. The turf, once alive with dribbles and drag-flicks, grew silent. The air, once electric, hung limp with neglect.
Bhopal, the capital city of Madhya Pradesh and once nursery of Indian hockey, saw its cradle lie empty. No more did it produce in abundance those like Rizvi, Dad, or Affan Yousuf, who bore the flame forward.
The loss of the Obaidullah Khan Gold Cup in many ways is the erosion of an identity. The game had been more than a sport here. It was a shared inheritance, a language spoken across lanes and fields, regardless of one’s last name or prayer.
To his credit, Mr. Shivraj Singh Chouhan made an attempt to breathe life into this dying ember. He resurrected the tournament within Bhopal’s precincts, and for a while, hope flared. But just as it had returned, it froze to death again. This time for five years, a period of eerie silence. As Mr. Chouhan moved to the national stage and ceded the Chief Minister’s chair, the tournament too lost its patronage and with it, its pulse.
It was then that a son of the soil, Mr. Aslam Sher Khan, former Olympian , World Cup Champion, 1975, and a true son of Bhopal, stepped forward. Not for political gain or personal glory, but for posterity and prosperity.
A man who had once defended India’s goalpost with valour now sought to defend its heritage with the same vigour. Like a last line of defence, he blocked the tide of erasure with conviction, mobilised support, arranged logistics, and sought to bring back what history had carelessly cast aside.
But fate, ever the cruel trickster, was not yet done. The unfortunate comments made against Madam Qureshi—a distinguished spokesperson during Operation Sindoor by certain political elements stirred a hornet’s nest. What ought to have been addressed with civility instead spiralled into communal posturing. The matter, already sensitive, became volatile. In the resulting mêlée, the tournament was once again shelved, this time not by logistical hurdles but by ideological barricades.
What came next is perhaps the gravest wound yet.
A senior member of the present Madhya Pradesh administration, reportedly and unashamedly, declared that no tournament bearing a Muslim name shall receive the state’s blessing. It was not simply a decision, but a decree. A symbolic guillotine severing the past from the present. The tournament was not merely paused, it was condemned.
Hockey India, recognising the historic and cultural weight of the Obaidullah Khan Gold Cup, has made attempts to revive it. But they find themselves stonewalled by a political climate that refuses to distinguish between a name and a narrative, between religion and remembrance. When sports fall prey to prejudice, when memory is moulded to fit a majoritarian mold, the very spirit of India’s sporting legacy stands imperilled.
What is in a name, they may ask those untouched by the blistering embrace of Bhopal’s summer dust, who have never gripped a hockey stick like a lifeline under a sun that scorches and sanctifies, who have never stood in the stone-shadowed amphitheatre of the stadium and heard the raw chorus of schoolboys untrained, unprompted rise like a hymn.
They ask, perhaps, because they have never felt that electric hush before an underdog’s surge, that communal gasp when giants fell and the improbable became real, nor, have witnessed by television and by the beating hearts of a gathered crowd, barefoot and breathless. A name, for them, is just a word. For those who were there, it was everything.
But to us, the name “Obaidullah” is a memory, a promise, and a prayer. It carries the sweat of a generation that played for love of the game, of the ground, of each other.
To strike it off the calendar is to strike at our collective heart.
As Shyamal Bhattacharjee, a devoted chronicler of Indian hockey, poignantly observes: “Let every act of violence and injustice regardless of who commits it be unequivocally condemned. Yet, in doing so, let us not lose sight of the enduring contributions made by individuals from all communities including those from the Indian Muslim tradition who have shaped the cultural and architectural landscape of this nation. Their legacy, from minarets to modern landmarks, deserves to be remembered as a dignified part of our shared historical narrative.”
It is with this spirit of historical discernment and cultural fairness that we must now turn our attention to the uncertain fate of the Obaidullah Gold Cup.
And, if this tournament is to be buried, disguised as forgotten, punished for the poetry in its name, what then of our children who never saw it live? What of those boys who still dream behind broken goalposts, chasing balls on parched earth, waiting for someone to notice their hunger? Who will tell them they belong? That their history matters? That their dreams are not too fragile to survive this era of calculated silence?
Let the conscience of a nation rise. Not for politics, not even for the love of hockey alone, but for the sake of truth. Let it rise for Aslam Sher Khan, who once swept away danger with the vigilance of a half-back guarding more than just a goal; for Jalaluddin Rizvi, who sliced through defences with the grace of an inside forward in full flight; for Sameer Dad and Affan Yousuf, who carried the weight of legacy like valiant centre-forwards born to the task; for Shahid Noor, whose artistry on the left wing reminded us that elegance, too, can be a form of resistance; and for every nameless boy in Bhopal who lit up the dusk with a hopeful dribble, dreaming through the dust.
Let it rise for the whistle, now fallen silent, that once called a city to life. And, before that whistle becomes an elegy, let it become a rallying cry. Let it become a heartbeat again.
That Is It and that speaks all about it
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 SEVEN 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, GOLDEN QUOTES on INSPIRATION , SORROW , PEACE and LIFE published by B.F.C Publications, Lucknow, , and QUOTES:: Evolution and Origin of Management Electives by Clever Fox Publishing, Chennai ,From Dhyan To Dhan :: Indian Hockey - Sudden Death Or Extra Time published by BOOKS CLINIC Publishing House , Bilaspur , Chattisgarh and his FIRST book on Hindi poem, which reads as " BHED HAI GEHRA - BAAT JARA SI " and MIDAS TOUCH AND MIRACLES OF INDIAN SPORTS , published by Books Clinics , Bilaspur , Chhattisgarh,
He has a experience of about 35 years in Marketing , and Business Analytics .
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