A Social History of Indian Football covers the period 1850-2004. It considers soccer as a derivative sport, creatively and imaginatively adapted to suit modern Indian socio-cultural needs - designed to fulfil political imperatives and satisfy economic aspirations. The book is concerned with the appropriation, assimilation and subversion of sporting ideals in colonial and post-colonial India for nationalist needs. Soccer, to put it simply, is much more than a 'game' for Indians, despite India's poor performance on the international stage. This social history reveals an intense engagement with soccer which stretches back more than a century. Rather than being a straightforward narrative of Indian soccer - one far removed from colonial and post-colonial India's socio-economic and political experience. It is concerned with much more: with the beginning of the end of soccer as a mere sport, with ideals and idealism and their relative unimportance, with the death of morals for reasons of realpolitik and with the denunciation, once and for all, of the view that sports and politics do not mix.
The book assesses the role of soccer in colonial Indian life, to delineate the inter-relationship between those who patronised, promoted, played and viewed the game, to analyse the impact of the colonial context on the games evolution and development and shed light on the diverse nature of trysts with the sport across the country. Throughout this book, soccer is the lens that illuminates India's colonial and post-colonial encounter. This volume was previously published as a special issue of the journal Soccer and Society .