From the archives of WSN, I culled out an Open Letter written in April 2008, which chronicles the damage KPS Gill did to Indian hockey. My interest in the game of hockey was kindled during my visits with my father to witness hockey matches at the Bombay Hockey Association grounds, next to the Churchgate railway station in the hub of the city. The Open Letter is reproduced here without any change.

Dear Dhyan Chand Ji.
After thirteen hours of cogitation and uneasiness, my heart was able to connect to your soul.  On 10th March, at 10 am in the morning, I learnt about India’s defeat in the hockey pre-qualifiers for the Beijing Olympics and by 11 pm at night I was able to connect and decided to write this open letter to you.  During the day, I vacillated from writing to the main villain to those who are producing such villains, but my conscience prevailed upon me and I decided to write to you.

Among those who have passed away, the one who would be saddest and angry would be you.  Perhaps no one else can feel the pain inflicted by the nadir touched by Indian hockey. 

There is no doubt that a game is a game and there will be winners and losers.  However, it is the consistency with which India has been losing which must be most disturbing to you. 

You may have noted from your high pedestal that the official lovers of the game, who are alive are also shedding tears –some real, some glycerine-oriented but a majority of them crocodile. Most of these hi-fi lovers of the game are individually and severally responsible for the present state of the game in the country.

“Dhyan Chand ji, this man KPS Gill has ‘gilled’ hockey. A person who has unabashedly gloated over killings of innocent people, a person who has been invited as a security expert by governments of Gujarat and Chattisgarh to teach their police personnel how to kill with impunity, has done what he is best at, “kill” or shall we say, “gill””

My interest in the game started when as a student I accompanied my father, Waryam Singh to the Bombay Hockey Association grounds, next to Churchgate railway station in Mumbai.  I enjoyed watching Ajit Pal Singh and his team and the Pakistani team led by Samiullah Khan during the tournaments that used to be played there in the seventies.  My father never played hockey but watching hockey games was his only ‘side-kick’ which irritated my mother a lot, but it was a habit every hockey season which he could not give up even at the cost of his earnings. In fact, living in Mumbai, it was his only connection with Punjab, the other being the ritual ‘summer-trip’ of children to homeland Punjab to meet maternal and paternal grandparents, uncles and aunties.   I was able to collect autographs of many Indian and Pakistani hockey players courtesy the only Sikh umpire -the burly Phulel Singh Sujlana, who helped me get them under the promise that I would also wield the stick. I reneged on the promise for as far as sports was concerned, I was jack of all and master of none.

 

I must tell you that June 1984 changed all that.  Though my father was a member of the Bombay Hockey Association (he still flaunts his old identity card), the storming of Darbar Sahib never saw him again in the stands.  Something snapped and his interest waned.  Today, his interest and mine is limited to watching the occasional game on television and keeping abreast of news of Indian hockey and hockey in general.  His enthusiasm for India has waned but he still loves good hockey and is acutely aware of the nuances of the game and can give a lecture on how the introduction of astroturf and the lack of adaptation to it by Indian players and organisers to the new grounds since its inception has been the key reason for India’s defeat after defeat.   

Since you are away for long, I thought it necessary to update you on the scenario.  A few decades after your departure from the game, Indian hockey has gone downhill. Those who have been the managers of the game have played everything but hockey.  After the days of Sir Kunwar Prasad, Naval Tata and Ashwini Kumar, the rule book of IHF has been continuously and mercilessly breached at the cost of the game. 

The person who presides over the demise of Indian hockey today is an ex-policeman, a convicted debauch, a self-proclaimed ‘conflict-resolution expert’, a known violator of human rights, a man who has graciously been awarded a ‘suspended sentence’ by the Indian judiciary, who was a one-time darling of the Indian media for his ‘gilling-spree’ of perceived terrorists and who also happens to be the president of the Indian Hockey Federation for the last 14 years.  

Dhyan Chand ji, this man has ‘gilled’ hockey.  A person who has unabashedly gloated over killings of innocent people, a person who has been invited as a security expert by governments of Gujarat and Chattisgarh to teach their police personnel how to kill with impunity, has done what he is best at, “kill” or shall we say, “gill”. 

In recent times, he “gilled” Dhanraj Pillai and in the last qualifying attempts at Santiago, he “gilled” Rick Charlesworth, the technical advisor, appointed at the instance of the International Hockey Federation by not making return tickets available to him from Santiago.  So in the end, he had to “gill” hockey. 

You must be wondering whether things would change and whether the “gilling-spree” would stop or not.  I don’t think so.  This is a classic occasion to understand how the Indian state’s systems work. 

Let us see the system.  KPS Gill is a Sikh.  He is a patriotic Sikh.  He has killed Sikhs for India’s integrity.  Having done that, India had “no use” for him, particularly after an “errant” Indian bureaucrat dared to take criminal proceedings against him to a logical conclusion.  The vigilant Indian judiciary awarded him a ‘suspended sentence’ when his crime of molestation of a senior bureaucrat –Rupan Deol Bajaj was proved.  Then there came the time to rehabilitate him for his ‘exemplary contribution to the country’. So he was ‘elected’ the chief of the Indian Hockey Federation.  How KPS Gill used his police powers to get elected by over-awing his opponent is another story. Had it not been hockey, it would have been something else.  Had he not been convicted, he would have been Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of a tin-pot little African nation, enjoying the fruits of serving his motherland.

So, the story goes on.  The Indian government, which does not care for sports anyway, is not going to so easily disband the IHF and make KPS Gill ‘vulnerable’.  After all he is a state asset and cannot be left in the lurch. Hockey can wait. 

Unless, Chak De spills to the streets from the celluloid, unless the state amends its policies and practices, KPSG will be very much around, IHF will be there, SM will also be there, hockey jave thathe khooh vich (hockey be damned!). 

I was conscious that not many would have written to you nor even recalled you, for had they done, things would have not come to such a pass –that is the reason I dwelt on so many peripheral aspects of Indian hockey and that is why I chose to write to you.   You need to wield your magic stick or else as Rick Charlesworth –the Australian technical adviser has said, “Indian hockey has the potential players but the future is bleak with the way in which sports is managed there”. 

“Unless, Chak De spills to the streets from the celluloid, unless the state amends its policies and practices, KPSG will be very much around, IHF will be there, SM will also be there, hockey jave thathe khooh vich (hockey be damned!).”

In case, India chooses to reprimand the ‘giller’ for the hockey debacle and send him to Timbuktu for soul-searching and repentance, or he actually undergoes training for humanitarian conflict-resolution from the United Nations or nemesis catches up with him through some daring judge’s order in the case of involuntary disappearance of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra and hundreds of other innocent Sikhs, then I will have better things to say. 

May be, then we will have Shah Rukh Khan as the new hockey chief with his vast experience of promoting hockey in films and promoting cricket in real life and perhaps his son would be a well-deserved hockey player. 

Till then, Rab Rakha. 

Jagmohan Singh 

12 March 2008