It has been hundred years of heartbreaks and happiness, but in its centenary year, East Bengal is
The rst 50 years brought in a sizeable amount of laurels for East Bengal, but the latter half of the century gave the club its true position in the pantheon of great football clubs in the continent.
perhaps faced with its most dicult challenge. Can the club draw inspiration from its history to reinvent itself and stay relevant in the changing landscape of Indian football?
Acentury of toil, a century lled with heartbreaks and euphoria has forged an intimate bond between East Bengal and its faithful while enshrining its place in the annals of Indian football.
One of the most successful clubs in the continent, however, is in turmoil in its 100th year, with plans of starstudded centenary celebrations — that included a muchpublicised preseason game against Manchester United — put to rest because of the COVID19 pandemic and the general uncertainty over the club’s future. While archrival Mohun Bagan has made the transition to the new big league of Indian football, East Bengal — still without a backer with deep pockets — is left looking for ways to stay relevant and make the step up.
Facing the biggest challenge since its birth, East Bengal will need to draw inspiration from its unique history to reinvent itself as it has on many occasions in the 100 years past.
The club was formed to give voice to the Bengali diaspora hailing from the other side of the River Padma during the peak of India’s freedom struggle in 1920. As the entire nation rose in unison to Mahatma Gandhi’s call for “noncooperation” against the British rule, there was a demographical displacement and a resultant angst in the people travelling away from their native land. Books and literature available on East Bengal broached a divide based on the dialect and culture of the two regions of the same State situated on either side of the river. And this chasm has perpetuated one of the oldest football rivalries in the world.
As its inception lay in the reaction of the people looking to reinvent their bearings, East Bengal always was the rebellious scion to Mohun Bagan. The latter became the representative of the natives of the western part of Bengal, which merged with India after Independence. This formed the basis of the ideological clash. Older by a little over three decades, Mohun Bagan had the early advantage, but East Bengal rose rapidly on the grit of its players and supporters to be a competent challenger.
East Bengal won the rst meeting between the two clubs in the Calcutta Football League on May 2■, 1925. Mohun Bagan supporters, always extolling their team’s momentous IFA Shield victory in 1911, are now training their research on nding out meetings between the two prior to that period. The debate over which team is better
resurfaces every time the two meet to revive the rivalry in the Kolkata Derby.
Similar to its sensational inception, East Bengal is said to have received its crest in equally dramatic fashion. “It was 1930 and East Bengal was assured of making it to the rst division of the CFL (Calcutta Football League) after winning eight consecutive matches in the second division. The Indian Football Association, then the preserve of British rulers, decided to abandon the tournament. The growing political turmoil following the announcement of the Civil Disobedience Movement and later arrests of our national leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Sarojini Naidu brought great unrest in Calcutta,” recounts Kushal Chakraborty, who has been chronicling East Bengal’s history.
“The IFA’S decision to abandon the CFL that season robbed East Bengal’s chances of making it to the rst division. East Bengal supporters and club ocials decided to march to the IFA oce in protest. It was already dark. They decided to light torches, which, while lighting up their path, came to symbolise their protest. The club adopted a lighted torch as its emblem.”
East Bengal returned to the rst division in 1932 and narrowly missed out to become the rst Indian team to win the CFL. A positive result against British regimental side Durham Light Infantry would have brought it the crown, but East Bengal was held to a 33 draw. It played with a man short for a great part of the second half in the absence of the substitution rule as fullback Paritosh Majumdar left the eld with an injury. East Bengal eventually won the title in 1942, but Mohammedan Sporting in 1934 had won the race to become the rst Indian club to do so (and won it for ve consecutive seasons). Despite the late start, East Bengal is the most successful team in the CFL with 39 titles.
East Bengal’s success can be essentially divided into two parts. The rst 50 years brought in a sizeable amount of laurels, but the latter half of the century gave the club its true position in the pantheon of great football clubs in the continent. The 1940s were the decade of Fred Pugsley, the AngloBurmese refugee who ed Japanese bombings in 1942. He travelled hundreds of kilometres on foot though the treacherous terrains of northeastern India to reach East Bengal, the only address he knew in India. East Bengal’s renowned secretary Jyotish Chandra Guha could not believe his eyes when he saw Pugsley standing at the club gate, battered and bruised, the arduous journey from Rangoon (now Yangon) taking