Writ­ten in March 2008, this is an in­dict­ment of the role of KPS Gill as the chief of the In­dian Hockey Fed­er­a­tion, a post given by the gov­ern­ment of In­dia, to keep him in cir­cu­la­tion. Deeply an­guished at the com­ments made by IHF chief KPS Gill against for­mer hockey Olympians, Jag­mo­han Singh writes this open let­ter to vet­eran hockey player Ashok Ku­mar. He pleads the case for a new hockey set-up and a new for­mat for the game in In­dia

Dear Ashok Ku­mar,You may have no­ticed that hockey has dis­ap­peared from the sports pages of In­dian news­pa­pers al­to­gether. Con­cerned, I am writ­ing an­other open let­ter on the sta­tus of In­dian hockey. Two weeks back I wrote to your il­lus­tri­ous fa­ther. The dis­gust­ing com­ments of the IHF chief, KPS Gill against you and oth­ers, has prompted me to write to you.

I can un­der­stand the agony be­ing suf­fered by you, Aslam Sher Khan, Bal­bir Singh and oth­ers. I am a lit­tle per­turbed at your help­less­ness and de­sire that you take the bull by its horns.

As a player and a cit­i­zen of In­dia, you must have un­der­stood by now that while deal­ing with sports ad­min­is­tra­tors and politi­cians, one has to go the whole hog. An in­nocu­ous state­ment here and there is not go­ing to make any dif­fer­ence. These peo­ple are so pachy­der­mous that fail­ures and losses have no ef­fect on them. If there were to be an ef­fect, leave hockey, don’t you think the Olympic tally would have been dif­fer­ent?

“Any­one who wants to suc­ceed against KPS Gill will have to ac­quire the hon­esty and tenac­ity of Ru­pan Deol Ba­jaj, the IAS of­fi­cer hu­mil­i­ated by the for­mer sav­iour of In­di­a’s unity -KPS Gill and the in­tegrity and de­ter­mi­na­tion of hu­man rights ac­tivist Jaswant Singh Khalra. Short of that, KPS Gill will con­tinue to rule the roost.”

Lis­ten­ing to the other point of view does not come eas­ily in this coun­try. “If you are not with me, you are against me” is prac­ticed pretty widely in In­dia and if you hap­pen to be ‘not with me’ then you are ei­ther “an en­emy of the state” or “a pro­fes­sional mourner.” KPS Gill knows no other lan­guage. He has seen so much death and de­struc­tion that he can only talk in lan­guage of the grave­yard.

At the risk of pop­u­lar­is­ing his stu­pid­ity, I am re­peat­ing his com­ment. Re­fer­ring to you and other hockey stal­warts of In­dia, he has said, “There is a co­terie of five or six for­mer Olympians who are just pro­fes­sional mourn­ers. They just know how to do breast beat­ing, howl­ing and cry­ing when­ever they get the chance. That is their choice, I can­not do any­thing.” I have read your re­ply to this call. It is shame­ful that no In­dian news­pa­per nor the sports min­istry and nei­ther the gov­ern­ment of In­dia have had the courage to de­nounce this state­ment.

Your com­ment that “the pre­sent IHF es­tab­lish­ment has sent teams to three Olympics, four World Cups and sev­eral Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy games. We come sev­enth or eighth in Olympics, 11th in World Cup and sixth in Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy. Is­n’t it a rea­son to mourn? Does he want us to cheer him for all this?” should have made KPS Gill see the writ­ing on the wall.

You must un­der­stand two things about this IHF chief.  As I wrote to your fa­ther last week, he has been a “giller” all his life and he is best at that and that is what he has done to hockey. He has “gilled” it. Two, as the for­mer di­rec­tor gen­eral of Pun­jab po­lice, he has seen many a wail­ing widow breast beat at his door at the in­vol­un­tary dis­ap­pear­ance of her son or hus­band or fa­ther with­out even bat­ting an eye­lid. Tears have al­ways been a far cry for him.  If the shrill cries of a mother whose son was ex­tra­ju­di­cially killed by the po­lice force of KPS Gill could not re­sult in a change of heart or even a mo­men­tary re­morse, do you think that “howl­ing and cry­ing of a few Olympians” is go­ing to make a ma­jor dif­fer­ence to the way the sport of hockey is go­ing to be gov­erned in In­dia?

 To call his func­tion­ing merely au­to­cratic is an un­der­state­ment.  He is the epit­ome of bu­reau­cracy-politi­cian ad­just­ment syn­drome.  He has many a skele­ton in his huge cup­board of which the gov­ern­ment is afraid and will there­fore not do any­thing to harm him.   

I have been skep­ti­cal of the sig­na­ture cam­paign of Aslam Sher Khan and the si­lence on this is­sue over the last two weeks makes me be­lieve that the cam­paign did not take off.   The IHF pan­elists who give pow­ers to KPS Gill have sheep­ishly ac­qui­esced with his tantrums and that too with­out an of­fi­cial state­ment on the state of hockey; every­thing is back to nor­mal, Rahul Gand­hi’s new­found in­ter­est in hockey notwith­stand­ing.  

Any­one who wants to suc­ceed against KPS Gill will have to ac­quire the hon­esty and tenac­ity of Ru­pan Deol Ba­jaj, the IAS of­fi­cer hu­mil­i­ated by the for­mer sav­iour of In­di­a’s unity -KPS Gill and the in­tegrity and de­ter­mi­na­tion of hu­man rights ac­tivist Jaswant Singh Khalra. Short of that, KPS Gill will con­tinue to rule the roost.

“Mr. KPS Gill, when Rudalis (pro­fes­sional mourn­ers) are at your doorstep un­in­vited, it is time to re­al­ize that your time is up. It is a rare oc­ca­sion which comes in the lives of few men and women on this planet. It is one of the few oc­ca­sions when mourn­ers come be­fore the eter­nal call. So, give up and give way.”

Aslam Sher Khan, Sukhbir Singh Gre­wal, Par­gat Singh and you are few who have dared to you’re your mouths.  It re­minds me of the state­ments is­sued by hu­man rights de­fend­ers when a bru­tal and gross abuse of hu­man rights took place in Pun­jab or any­where else in the coun­try.  Just as you have spo­ken, only a few would speak up, but clearly, we need to do more. 

No se­nior func­tionary of the hockey ad­min­is­tra­tion, least of all KPS Gill was ex­pected to re­ceive the In­dian team when they ar­rived from San­ti­ago in Mum­bai; I think it is time for the likes of you and those se­ri­ous lovers of the game to fill the gap.  You will have to be seen mak­ing the dif­fer­ence to the team.   

I am par­tic­u­larly im­pressed by the of­fi­cial doc­tor of the In­dian team -Dr. P. M. S. Chan­dran, who on ar­rival in Mum­bai had the courage to call a spade a spade. Every­body else has spo­ken and shame­lessly back­tracked.  The mal­treat­ment by the air­lines, Jet Air­ways and the mis­man­age­ment by the travel agents -Balmer and Lawrie needs to be con­demned and fur­ther ex­posed.   The way in which Ric Charlesworth has “ac­cepted” to be the Tech­ni­cal Ad­vi­sor of the se­niors’ hockey team sounds fishy and con­vo­luted.  

As I said at the out­set, hockey is no longer on the sports page!  In any case, the cricket in­dus­try -not the game, for there is hardly any­thing left called the gen­tle­man’s game of cricket, is likely to over­shadow and as­sim­i­late every­thing other sport in the coun­try.  The man­ner in which Wankhede sta­dium au­thor­i­ties with the bless­ings of Maratha man, Sharad Pawar, are con­spir­ing to take over the his­toric Bom­bay Hockey As­so­ci­a­tion grounds to ex­tend the cricket stands is an­other area of con­cern for which you will have to do some­thing.  Though old, my fa­ther, Waryam Singh, a for­mer mem­ber of the Bom­bay Hockey As­so­ci­a­tion, is still will­ing to par­tic­i­pate in any protest ac­tion against the move that you may ini­ti­ate and anx­iously awaits your re­sponse to this note. 

You should also file a re­quest with the BCCI chief and Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter of the coun­try, Sharad Pawar ask­ing him to lend the dress­ing room of the Fer­oze­shah Kotla cricket grounds in Delhi oth­er­wise poor KPS Gill and his deputy Jothiku­maran will be con­strained to have the IHF meet­ings at Mr. Gill’s res­i­dence. 

In my mis­sive to your fa­ther, I had men­tioned that as­tro­turf is one of the key rea­sons for In­di­a’s hockey fail­ure.  I have been pon­der­ing on this for a long time. If the game of lawn ten­nis is played on var­i­ous grounds –Wim­ble­don on grass, the French Open on clay and the US open on hard courts, why can’t we force the In­ter­na­tional Hockey Fed­er­a­tion to have dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the game –field hockey and turf hockey? Think about it.  

As dif­fi­cult as it may be, it is time to wear your shoes again.  For­get the In­dian Hockey Fed­er­a­tion, the In­dian Olympic As­so­ci­a­tion and even the sports min­istry.  Set up a new hockey body. Call it “Field Hockey Re­vival Pro­gramme” Go to the peo­ple.  Per­haps some spon­sor­ship may also come your way.  Who knows, the In­ter­na­tional Hockey Fed­er­a­tion, al­ready tired of as­so­ci­at­ing with KPS Gill’s IHF, may be will­ing to work with a new body in­stead.  Des­per­ate to see In­dia back on the hockey scene, I do not rule out this pos­si­bil­ity. New chal­lenges re­quire newer paths and un­tir­ing dy­namism.  It is a now or never sit­u­a­tion.

“If the shrill cries of a mother whose son was ex­tra­ju­di­cially killed by the po­lice force of KPS Gill could not re­sult in a change of heart or even a mo­men­tary re­morse, do you think that “howl­ing and cry­ing of a few Olympians” is go­ing to make a ma­jor dif­fer­ence to the way the sport of hockey is go­ing to be gov­erned in In­dia? He is the epit­ome of bu­reau­cracy-politi­cian ad­just­ment syn­drome. He has many a skele­ton in his huge cup­board of which the gov­ern­ment is afraid and will there­fore not do any­thing to harm him. ”

I am sure that with deft han­dling and a vi­sion­ary ap­proach, you can take hockey deep into the “penalty area” and then log the win­ning goal just as you did in the 1975 World Cup.

An­gry at KPS Gill’s state­ment call­ing you pro­fes­sional mourn­ers, it has been re­ported that you re­torted back by say­ing, “Yes, the IHF has died and we are all mourn­ing it. It’s in­deed an oc­ca­sion to mourn.” Per­haps you should have told him, “Mr. KPS Gill, when Rudalis (pro­fes­sional mourn­ers) are at your doorstep un­in­vited, it is time to re­al­ize that your time is up.  It is a rare oc­ca­sion which comes in the lives of few men and women on this planet.  It is one of the few oc­ca­sions when mourn­ers come be­fore the eter­nal call. So, give up and give way.”

With hopes of a scoop, 

Yours truly, 

Jag­mo­han Singh 

26 March 2008