Just A Letter To The Editor of ‘The Times’ London Gave Birth To The CWG

By D N Singh

Today the world witness the spectacular start of the Common Wealth Games which came to be so about 92 years back.

 

When the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall arrived in Birmingham, driving into the venue in an Aston Martin as part of a convoy of 72 cars which formed a Union Jack when viewed from above.

However, very few know that, the concept of this grand sporting extravaganza was the product of a Letter To The Editor, ‘The Times’ of London was back in 1891 by John Astley Cooper which, in fact, planted the seed of the idea that became the Commonwealth Games, the biggest multi-sport spectacle today after the Olympics.

Cooper, more often than not then described as ‘propagandist atheletist’ had a logic to push for a ‘Pan-Britanica-Pan-Anglican contest as a means of goodwill and understanding of the British Empire.

Cooper made a robust case for a “Pan-Britannic-Pan-Anglican Contest and Festival every four years as a means of increasing goodwill and good understanding of the British Empire”. But it was Baron Pierre de Coubertin who first acted on the idea and after of course modifying it, launched the Olympic Movement.

 

The original idea, which found a distant promoter in Richard Coombes in Australia (Cooper was born in Adelaide before his family moved to England), was brought to life as the Inter-Empire Championship in 1911 to coincide with the coronation of King George V, which Indians will remember for the Durbar that was held at the Red Fort in Delhi, which was attended by the British monarch and his wife. It was at this Durbar that the king announced the shifting of the capital of British India from Calcutta to New Delhi.

The Inter-Empire Championship was a “grievous disappointment”, as a journalist from the ‘Auckland Star’ wrote, with teams from the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and South Africa participating in a limited number of events. Then came the tumultuous World War I, and by the time the world recovered from it, Cooper’s idea was consigned to history’s footnotes.

Another Journalist Played A Role

But then came Melville Marks ‘Bobby’ Robinson, the sports editor of the Canadian newspaper, ‘The Hamilton Spectator’, who went to the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam as manager of his country’s track and field team.

At the Olympics, riled by the behaviour of the Americans and the Germans, who obviously did far better than athletes from the British Empire, Robinson lobbied for a British Empire Games to be launched in his home city in 1930.

When his idea got the green light, Cooper claimed much of the credit and said that his aim had been “to show through a festival of sport and culture that Anglo-Saxons ruled the world”.

Unfortunately, Cooper died six months before the first British Empire Games were flagged off on August 16, 1930, in Hamilton, Ontario, by the then Governor-General of Canada, Lord Willingdon, who later served as the Viceroy of British India between 1931 and 1936.

Highest Indian Origin People

Ironically, far removed Cooper’s vision, in the 2022 Commonwealth Games, the overwhelming majority of the 72 participating nations are not Anglo-Saxon; the city in which they are being held, Birmingham, has Britain’s highest population of people of Indian origin; and the host country, England, is in the middle of a contest for the Prime Minister’s office where one of the two contenders is of British African Indian origin, a devout Hindu, and is married to the daughter of one of the pioneers of India’s infotech success story.

India’s First Medal In 1934 CWG

India was not among the 11 nations and territories that participated in the 1930 British Empire Games, but it opened its account in 1934, when the Games, inaugurated by King George V, were held in London. And India also got its first medal — a Bronze for a now-forgotten wrestler, Rashid Anwar, in the welterweight division. All that we know about Anwar is that he was born in 1910 and died in 1983 in Camden, UK.

 

India also participated in the 1938 Games held at the Sydney Cricket Ground to also celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of Australia. The contingent returned home without a medal — and the Games then went into a limbo only to return after 12 years in 1950.

In 1954, the British Empire Games became the British Empire and Commonwealth Games and India was back in the fray. The Games will be remembered forever before it was there that gold medallist Roger Bannister (England) and silver medallist John Landy (Australia) became the first humans to run a mile in less than four minutes.

When Milkha Shined

The next British Empire and Commonwealth Games, held in Cardiff, Wales, in 1958 is memorable for India because of Milkha Singh’s historic gold medal in the 440 yards race (but more of that in Part II).

And When ‘Bhim’ of Mahabharat (Praveen) Own Silver

India missed the 1962 Games — obviously because of the government’s preoccupation with the border war with China — but it returned in 1966 (Kingston, Jamaica). India managed a rich haul of 10 medals, including a silver in hammer Praveen Kumar, who’ll forever be remembered for playing Bhim in the televised ‘Mahabharata’.

The Games were renamed the British Commonwealth Games in 1970. The event in Edinburgh, Scotland, saw Queen Elizabeth II attend the Games for the first time since her coronation in 1952 in her capacity as the Head of the Commonwealth of Nations. And in 1978 (Edmonton, Canada), the Games got the name that they have carried since then — Commonwealth Games.

But the biggest-ever boycott took place in 1986, when 32 African, Asian and Caribbean nations, including India, stayed away from the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh to protest against the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s stern refusal to snap sporting ties with apartheid-era South Africa.

Since, the Commonwealth Games have grown bigger and stronger, and haven’t seen political controversies on this scale, except in India, where the 2010 edition was marred by rampant mismanagement and allegations of corruption against the organising committee members. But the Games survived with their sheen intact.