Word: kolkata
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...rankings do not lie. At Kolkata's packed derby match, the play is hapless. But it is roared on in an atmosphere of intensity and passion unparalleled anywhere else in Asia. The enmity between Mohun Bagan and East Bengal, the teams respectively of the city's West and East Bengali populations, mirrors the Catholic-Protestant sectarianism of Glasgow's Celtic versus Rangers. It stretches back before Indian independence and is embedded into the very fabric of Kolkata society. Prices for prawn and hilsa, the preferred seafood of each community, fluctuate depending on the results of the clubs' matches. An entire...
...Majumdar, India's leading sports historian and author of Goalless, a history of Indian football, describes it as "India's Lagaan moment" - referring to the 2001 Bollywood blockbuster about a fictional cricket-playing village that beat the ruling British at their own game. This was real life, however, and Kolkata erupted in cele-brations, with Hindus and Muslims, poor and rich, all united in anticolonial sentiment. The glory of the moment cemented football's place in the soul of the city...
...contingent of eastern officials and players broke away from Mohun Bagan and set up the East Bengal club in 1920. The rivalry was ramped up after 1947, when the departing British divided Bengal along religious lines, its east becoming East Pakistan. Millions of Hindu refugees fled west to Kolkata. With livelihoods and loved ones lost, many had to struggle for their place among the city's better-established West Bengalis. "East Bengal gave them a banner to fly," says Majumdar. "It was their ray of hope...
...Matches between Mohun Bagan and East Bengal dominated the Kolkata sports scene for decades thereafter. "It was hardly football; it was religion," says Kishore Bhimani, a veteran journalist who did football commentary in Kolkata in the 1970s. Though the playing squads were often mixed - eight of Mohun Bagan's 11 who famously beat the British in 1911 were from East Bengali backgrounds - supporters, for the most part, were fiercely sectarian. On both sides, they would routinely wait three days in line to collect tickets. The names of game-winning goal scorers and clumsy defenders entered city lore year after year...
...partition generation and today support for the two clubs has to do less with regional identity and more with plain club loyalty. Imported Brazilian and Nigerian players now star for both sides and routinely swap teams. The bulk of the upper and middle classes who once passionately cared about Kolkata football sit at home with Arsenal, Manchester United or Liverpool on their minds...