SPORTDIPL · Postcolonial Diplomacy and the Public Culture of Sport: Britain and India, 1946-1996

The project seeks to examine the importance of sport to the cultural politics of postcolonial international relations in the second half of the twentieth century through a case study of Indo-British sporting relations. Since the mid-Victorian era, competitive sport has been a tool of diplomacy and cultural imperialism within the British Empire. The significance of sporting relations increased after the Second World War as Britain sought to maintain close ties with its former colonies and dominions, especially through the game of cricket and events like the Olympic and Empire Games (later renamed as Commonwealth Games). This project intends to explore the organisation and the public's response to sport between England (Britain for some sports) and India in bilateral and multinational tournaments as a specific form of diplomatic and cultural encounter between the two countries. Two of its main objectives are to examine: (i) what the synergy between national governments and non-state actors such as sport associations reveals about sport as a tool of public diplomacy; (ii) the extent to which the British and India media produced colonial hierarchies of race, ethnicity, gender and class in their representation of sportspersons and spectators; and (iii) how nationalism and national identity was mobilised as a postcolonial strategy of building spectator support for sport teams. It will draw upon archival sources from the UK and India related to cricket, hockey, tennis, badminton, and the Olympic and Commonwealth Games.