Hockey is not our national game, the response from the ministry has come on an RTI query from a ten-year-old girl, Aishwarya Parashar, who has grown to learn in school books that hockey is the national game of the country and was the first non-European team to be a part of the Indian Hockey Federation.
“I wanted to know when the government issued an order to announce the country’s national game,” Aishwarya told TOI. “I learned it from my textbooks that hockey is our national game,” she added. The ministry, on the other hand, said it had not found any official order or notification which calls hockey the national game. “I haven’t come across any order or notification in the ministry saying hockey is the national game,” said SPS Tomar, under-secretary, Union ministry of youth affairs and sports, while responding to the query. “It’s known to be a national game in general parlance,” Tomar had added. Info collected from TOI.
A provisional Indian Olympic Association (IOA) came about by 1924, and the Indian Olympic Games were held in Feb 1924 in Delhi to select Indian competitors for the 1924 Antwerp Olympics. IOA Secretary Dr. Noehren wrote about these games as follows: “The All India Athletic Carnival, the greatest and most representative gathering of its kind ever to be held in India, was recently celebrated in Delhi…Seventy athletes, representing practically every province and State in the Empire, comprising Hindus, Muslims, Anglo-Indians, and Sinhalese, ate their food around the same table and mingled intimately in the cramped and uncomfortable quarters provided”.
The games were then held every two years and were renamed as National Games during the 9th Games in Bombay in 1940. The Indian Olympic Association, the sport’s organising body of the nation, mooted the concept of the National Games to promote the development of sports and the Olympic movement in India and was responsible for host city selection.
Now, India government announced hockey as not our national game. They not even able to respect our history then what about our future? Now India doesn’t have any national game.
India’s respected citizens, please let us know your opinion about this.
National game should be choice of nation: that is Cricket