Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the representations of the sporting events in the print media for a wider understanding of the process of transformation of sport from an orally transmitted popular culture to a mass culture with mass spectatorship and its effect in the socio-political ambience of colonial Bengal.

Paper long abstract:

Since the early part of the twentieth century sporting culture in South Asia began to feature as an aspect of mass culture. Different branches of sporting activity particularly team sports which blended with mass participation started attracting the notice of contemporary press of Colonial Bengal to an extent that newspaper coverage of such sport became more extensive from this period. It is unquestionable that mass communications have transformed sport from an orally transmitted popular culture to a mass culture with mass spectatorship. The content analysis of the newspaper accounts helped to decode the nature of journalism practiced by contemporary European as well the vernacular journals. Apart from the elite English sports, indigenous sports reporting also came to maturity. The Bengali intelligentsia also made a concerted move to establish sports journalism on a strong footing to install among Indians a sense of pride in their own achievements. The rise and proliferation of vernacular, in the Bengali sports writing can only be meaningful if viewed against the wider political canvas of the colonial state. This is not to say that one can read a straight forward narrative of the rise, spread and flowering of anti European sentiment into this body of literature. The games emerged as a mirror where in an Indian identity started to assess itself, and in that sense Bengali sports journalism can certainly be looked upon as a nationalist enterprise. The paper analyses the different aspects of sports reporting which were influenced by the sports ethos of colonial Bengal.