Mohun Bagan Villa Gone, But Not Forgotten

Anindita Mazumder

Mohun Bagan Villa was a magnificent palatial building in North Calcutta, made entirely of white marble. The villa was built by Kirti Mitra – one of the few leading Bengalis who had acquired immense wealth by trading in jute. However, he died within a short time and the new house passed into the hands of his son, Priyanath Mitra who was more popularly known as P Mitra.

Mohun Bagan Villa had high walls around it. Surrounded by huge expansive grounds all around it had quite a few ponds. It was bounded by Phariapukur Street in the north, Upper Circular Road (Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy Road) in the east, Kirti Mitra Lane in the west while the present Mohun Bagan Lane was on the south. The 135-year-old national club – Mohun Bagan owed its name to this palatial house as its members played on these grounds. The portion of the vast ground which lay near the intersection of the Upper Circular Road and Phariapukur was used by the club to practice and hold matches.

According to historian and chronicler of Calcutta, Radharaman Mitra, the villa had quite a few marble courtyards which were used by club members for skating. “However, the house was so large that club members seldom ventured inside, apprehensive that they would get lost in the maze,” he wrote.

Actually, it was Sir Dukhiram Mazumder who had helped a group of students to form Students’ Union Club which practised at the Mohun Bagan Villa. But later on he left the students “for some inexplicable reason” who then met for an emergency meeting at the villa in order to form a new club. Thus Mohun Bagan Sporting Club was formed with its office at Mohun Bagan Villa. The club was born on August 15, 1889 and it is no strange coincidence that 58 years later India also gained independence on the same day.

However, according to another account, the formation of Mohun Bagan Sporting Club took place at Bhupendranath Basu’s residence with him as the first president and Jitendranath Basu as the first secretary. In 1891, the term “Sporting” was dropped to be replaced by “Athletic” after it was pointed out to the authorities by a grammatologist from Presidency College, Prof FJ Rhow that the club did not indulge in either angling or rifle shooting which come under sporting activities.

Radharaman Mitra dismisses this popular version about the club being formed at Bhupendranath Basu’s residence. According to him the club was founded in 1889 at Mohun Bagan Villa and hence it was named after the famous garden-house of the Mitra family. By then Kirti Mitra had died and Priyanath Mitra had inherited the house. He was one of the founders and sponsors of the club along with barrister, HD Bose. P Mitra had even got jerseys stitched for the 11 players of the club.

In any case it is apparent that the club gained a few wealthy patrons who showed a lot of enthusiasm in its activities. It was at the premises of Mohun Bagan Villa that the club played its first game with Eden Hindu Hostel and was defeated (1-0) by them. The skipper was Manilal Sen.

So long natives were not allowed to participate in the sports played by the British; but by the end of 19th Century a section of the Bengali elite who sought to associate themselves with the rulers by adopting English ‘virtues’, introduced football to Bengal. Soon it was adopted by the commoners due to the game’s simplicity yet competitive appeal. The game’s immense popularity can be gauged from the fact that by 1885 four of the native clubs were invited to play at the Maidan with English clubs. Fledgling display of national pride was evident as the barefooted boys took on the English clubs despite being branded as a non-martial and cowardly race by the Colonial masters.

It was Mohun Bagan among the Indian clubs that came to symbolize the true nationalist response to the injured self-esteem against the British. Truly, from its very inception it was more than a club. It was an institution with an avowed objective of not only producing excellent sportsmen but also imbuing them with impeccable moral and social values and emphasizing on the development of the mind along with the body. Except for a limited few at the top it mostly accepted only students as members. Each applicant had to produce his guardian’s permission to be a member of the club. JN Basu would sometime line up younger members and test their educational progress in schools and colleges. A young member was even expelled for smoking.

Meanwhile, P Mitra wanted to sell off Mohun Bagan Villa and three people including Bhupendranath Basu and Nimai Basu bought the property for Rs 1.5 lakh in 1890. In the same year the Congress’ annual session was held at Tivoli Park and the delegates from other provinces were housed at the Mohun Bagan Villa. The very next year the house was demolished and a number of smaller houses came up on the plot of the magnificent villa.

Despite the sad fate of the house the club which derived it s name from it showed a spirit of resilience.  At the first official tournament –Coochbehar Cup – that it played it lost to ‘C’ Company Sussex in 1893. It also lost early on in the Indian Football Association Shield in 1909 and 1910 and faced ridicule from other native clubs including Sovabazar but under Major Subedar Shailendranath Basu, Mohun Bagan followed European methods of training and players spent hours in rigorous physical training. Basu recruited his footballers from Manmatha Ganguly’s National Athletic Club who trained his members to play with boots and Reverend Sudhir Chatterjee, the only one to play the IFA shield final in 1911 wearing boots was initially trained by National Athletic Club. Mohun Bagan won Coochbehar Cup four times in 1904, 1905, 1907 and 1908 and Trades Cup four times between 1906-1909, Laxmibilas Club 1909-1910 and Gladstone Cup 1909-1910 and defeated several army teams and English clubs like Dalhousie.

But its moment of glory was definitely the final of IFA Shield in 1911, en route to which Mohun Bagan defeated St Xaviers’ College (3-0), Rangers (2-1), Rifle Brigade (2-0) and Middlesex Regiment (3-0), the last one in a replay. Such was the enthusiasm that people came from other districts of Bengal as well as from neighbouring Bihar and Assam to watch the final. The East Indian Railway ran a special train and additional steamer services were pressed into service to ferry spectators to Calcutta from the mofussil areas.  Tickets for the match, originally priced at Rs 1 and 2, were sold for as much as Rs 15.

Despite heavy odds stacked against them the team under Shibdas Bhaduri won 2-1 against East Yorkshire Regiment to clinch the IFA Shield. Captain Shibdas Bhaduri, first scored the equaliser and then set up Abhilash Ghosh to score the winner with just two minutes of the match remaining. Reuters in its cablegram to English newspapers mentioned: ‘For the first time in the history of Indian football an Indian team, the Mohun Bagan, consisting purely of Bengalees, has won the Indian Football Association Shield beating crack teams of English regiments’. The mood can be gauged by what Achintya Kumar Sengupta wrote in Kallol Jug: “Mohun Bagan is not a football team. It is a tortured country, rolling in the dust, which has just started to raise its head.”

Mohun Bagan supporters and the public at large went berserk. Even supporters of Moslem Sporting Club rolled on the ground in joyous excitement while Muslims from Dharmatollah joined the victory procession near Thanthania Kali Temple.

At the end of play an old man, pointing to the Union Jack fluttering atop Fort William asked the players, “when will that come down?” Those who had gathered around had apparently replied that it would happen when Mohun Bagan will regain the shield. True enough, since it was only in 1947 that Mohun Bagan won the shield again. And though demolished a century ago the beautiful (mohun) garden-house of Kirti Mitra lives on in the national institution it fostered.