Gandhi and Football: The Mahatma's experiments with the beautiful game

The young barrister who deemed football to be an effective tool to impart non-violence

When searching for the great Mahatma Gandhi’s involvement in sport, looking for a tryst of some kind, we are condemned to snatch at meagre scraps of information. A match report, or perhaps a carving on a stadium wall here, a mention in a document there – these offer tantalizing glimpses of evidence that make it hard to put together an accurate account of the evolution of indigenous as well as modern sports in India. The result, as we are about to figure out, is an intriguing one.

While the Mahatma's struggles in South Africa have been well documented, very few of us actually know that he used football as a tool to spread Satyagraha amongst the masses there.

Gandhi let football teams practice in his farm

The initiation

By his own admission, Gandhi wasn't much of a sports aficionado. So much so that he mentioned several times that he was left clueless during the games period in school. Upon his arrival in South Africa though, he took a great interest in the beautiful game – football. He started going to matches and realised that the appeal that the game had among the less-privileged classes in South African society was immense. He thus decided to use football to spread the message of non-violence and equality in a regressive society.

Seen here with other members of the Passive Resisters

Gandhi founded 3 clubs in South Africa

While his ascent to being labeled the undisputed leader of the non-violent resistance to the apartheid regime gathered pace, Gandhi founded three football clubs at the turn of the 20th century in Durban, Pretoria and Johannesburg, and named them all “Passive Resisters”. While there are accounts of him talking to the players before and during games to impart ideals of his movement, there is little evidence about whether the clubs plied their trade in any organised league/tournament.

“The Resisters were not integrated into any kind of league structure,” said Rebecca Naidoo in an interview to FIFA a few years back. The great-granddaughter of Gandhi’s long-time collaborator G.R. Naidoo added, “Back then, football was still in its infancy, of course, and in many parts of the world, including South Africa, there was still no big interest in fixed leagues or competitions.

“Instead, they would just play friendly games in different fields. At first, Gandhi appears to have been simply seduced by the essence of the sport itself. It was only later that he realised that it could also be useful for his political ends.”

The matches, however, helped raise money for the families of the “resisters” who had been imprisoned for their non-violent struggle against local racist laws.

Return to India and a sustained legacy

By 1914, Gandhi had become a phenomenon, one whom the Congress deemed necessary to be brought back to India and integrate into the freedom struggle in a more concerted manner. Thus he returned, abruptly ending his association with the Resisters.

He didn't however abandon his interest in the game; he was present to give his blessings to the first football team from South Africa, mainly comprising people of Indian origin, called Christopher’s Contingent. Their sponsor, Albert Christopher, had collaborated with Gandhi in a 1913 labour strike, and the team toured India from November 1921 to March 1922.

The Resisters though couldn't sustain themselves and closed shop in 1935, thus ending Gandhi’s most prominent experiment with football – or rather sports in general.