Manipur is the exact origin of Modern Polo-III How Sagol Kangjei became Polo for the first time?

Imphal, the capital of Manipur, was a very peaceful and safe place before World War II. There were hardly any policemen on sight. The Battalion of the 4th Assam Rifles was only a reserve to be used on rare occasions when there seemed to be a likelihood of very serious trouble. Their peacetime role was, from time to time, to go out on column to show the British flag to the hill tribes.

Meiteis never felt that they were under the British rule. The maharaja and his Durbar ruled with only the rarest interference from the British authorities. They continued to live as their forefathers used to live and ‘better’, as no man had to be called up for military service and other duties known as ‘lallup kaba’. It was in lieu of taxation as all the land belonged to the maharaja. Whoever wrote that it was forced labour was missing the point.

The Pana polo matches on chilly Sunday afternoons, known as Hafta Kangjei (weekly polo), was a respite to the humdrum life of the Imphalites. The matches were keenly contested with one or two Sahibs on each side, wearing solar hats, breeches and long riding boots. The horses too had shin guards.

There were only half a dozen British officers that we could see at these polo matches. Rarely, there were a few Mem-sahibs and sometimes children. They used to come in a small black car. They all sat in chairs in the small pavilion located on the west side. It was built of timber on a raised brick platform and roofed with corrugated iron sheets. It was open on three sides with only the wood railings, but walled up at the back (west).

A group of horses stood in the front left-hand side of the pavilion for changeover during the chukkas. The saddles were made of leather. A small brass gong was used to time the chukkas instead of a conch shell.

There was a slip road surfaced with broken bricks and soil, leading from the main central tarmac road to the pavilion and behind it. It joined the dirt narrow road on the southern side of the polo ground.

Though we saw 2 or 3 Sahibs every Sunday, Mems were very exotic items, until I married one, years later.

By the entrance of the slip road and in the west, there were two big ponds that belonged to rich Marwari families living in large buildings on their western bank. The first building was called Thakurbari.

On the days of Krishna Janma (Krishna’s birthday) we children after a bath early in the morning dressed in pheijom (dhoti) and a shirt, with chandol on the forehead, used to visit the deities inside the building to offer a few pennies, usually on the way back from visiting to offer flowers to a big Hanuman statue (Mahabali) in a monkey-infested woodland in the southwest of the maharaja’s palace and on the banks of the Imphal River.

One thing I never knew was the connection between Krishna and Hanuman except that both were south Indians (Krishna mean black in proto-Tamil).

Just after the War, the ground floor of Thakurbari building with the temple, which escaped the Japanese bombs, turned into a Marwari restaurant, selling big parathas with potato shabzi for one rupee a piece. My cousin Irengbam Bijoy and I were often taken to eat them by an older friend, whenever he made a few bucks from selling scrap metals from the War leftovers.

During the off-polo season and on some Sundays we could see Mr Gimson practising his golf in the Outer Polo ground. The ground was well maintained with a good turf, from grass seeds brought from the UK and well watered and rolled over with a large reinforced-concrete roller by the inmates of the Imphal jail, in their striped white uniforms.

The Lamphel pat in Imphal used to have many ponies grazing along with the cows. Like my young father, any big boy could go with a length of rope and have a ride on any pony there. So, even in Imphal in those days, many men knew how to ride a horse without a saddle in the Red Indian style.

Because of the War, the Sagol Kangjei disappeared from Manipur, until revived in 1955 as mentioned earlier. Maharaja Bodh Chandra introduced cycle hockey, but it did not catch on.

Historically, for centuries the infant Sagol kangjei was nurtured in the soft belly of Manipur Sana Leibak, cloistered by the protective nine mountain ranges, unknown to the world, until the British pioneers adopted it in 1859 at the British town of Silchar in the Cachar district of Assam, India. Thereafter, SAGOOL KANGJEI as POLO grew in popularity and spread its wings all over the world.

History records that shortly after the Indian Sepoy Mutiny in 1857, Joseph Sherer, a British Lieutenant in the Bengal Army (later Maj. General), was posted as Assistant District Superintendent to Cachar. Manipur was then an independent country and Cachar had many Manipuris living there, mostly as exiles.

At Silchar, Sherer experienced his first taste of the mounted game along with Superintendent, Capt Robert Stewart, who played the game, which they called “hockey on ponies” with the fugitive Manipuri princes and the Manipuri diaspora in Cachar.

Sherer visited Manipur and played sagol kangjei in the Mapal Kangjei Bung in the 1850s. When he approached Maharaja Chandrakirty (1850-1886) about his intention to adopt the game, the maharaja was constrained to draw his attention to the fact that the Manipuris had been playing the sport for more than 2,000 years.

Back home at Silchar, Sherer proposed to Stewart that they form a club of this mounted game. Thus it came to be that in 1859 Sherer, Stewart and seven British tea planters - James Davidson, Julius Sandermom, James Abemety, Arthur Brownlow, Earnest Echart, W Walker and A Stewart set up the first polo club of the MODERN GAME – the “Silchar Kangjei Club’, later, the Silchar Polo Club (Laffaye, Profiles in polo). Sherer is now rightly dubbed the father of English polo (John Watson, The World of Polo).

In 1861 polo was played for the first time in Dacca, introduced by Captain Eustace Hill who saw the game on a trip to Silchar. Sherer and Stewart soon introduced the game to their peers in Calcutta and founded the Calcutta Polo Club in 1862, which still exists, situated in the centre of the Calcutta race course, overlooking the Victoria Memorial.

In 1862 during Christmas Race week in Calcutta, polo was played in public for the first time.

The game was usually played in December. The club was defunct for many years until it was revived in 2006.

The name “Polo” was coined at the Calcutta Polo Club for the first time by one of the gentlemen (name unknown) playing one fine Sunday. It originated from the Tibetan word “pulu” meaning ball (Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame). The club organised the format of the game, and set “the first book of modern polo”. Polo then quickly spread throughout England. The sport also became popular amongst Europeans.

It is now played in about 80 countries including the novice South Korea. Argentina where British cattlemen introduced the game in the Argentine pampas and organised the first formal polo game in 1875, has for many years dominated this professional sport since 1949 and is today the source of most of the world’s 10 goal (ie top-rated) players.

In the United States, James Gordon Bennett Jr first introduced polo in New York in 1876 and in the same year a group of polo players established the Westchester Polo Club in New York.

Harry Payne Whitney changed the rules to provide for high-speed play. This included long downfield passes and full gallop speeds.

In 1888, handicaps and player ratings were added to polo in the United States so that teams could be more evenly matched in games. Ratings were determined by a single handicapper named HL Herbert. In 1910, England and India also added handicaps and player ratings. The highest handicap is the 10 goal rating.

Polo was played as an Olympic game only from 1900 to 1939 until the International Olympic recognised it as a sport in 1998 with a bona fide international governing body - The Federation of International Polo. Polo was played at the 2007 Southeast Asian Games.

Polo is played professionally in 16 countries including the USA, where there is also a professional women’s league tournament run by the United States Women’s Polo Federation.

Following its formal launch in the UK in April 1997, the International Women’s Polo Association now has representatives in 33 countries worldwide and is involved in the organisation of 10 international tournaments.

Manipur also has a few women polo players. The First Governor’s Cup - the Invitation Polo Tournament (women) was held in February 1996 at the Imphal polo ground. The tournament has been discontinued after running it for a few years.

Apart from Manipur, where polo is everybody’s game, it is played elsewhere in the world, by wealthy people. Many members of polo clubs, particularly social and non-playing members, are attracted to the sport precisely because of an air of opulence, detached from the common people.

It is very refresjing for the Manipuris to see the sport grow in its popularity since the 1980s, and its future is rosy because of its introduction as a popular sport in universities across the world, such as Oxford University, Cambridge University, Warwick University, Nottingham University Polo Clubs.
The writer is based in the UK
Email: imsingh@onetel.com
Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk

26-Aug-2012 / 01:43 AM / Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh / 0 Comments