Every nation constructs a narrative about who it is and what it stands for.
These narratives are expressed not only through constitutions, laws, and institutions, but also through symbols — flags, anthems, animals, monuments, and, at times, sports.
In India, one such enduring narrative has been that hockey is the national game.
For decades, school textbooks, teachers, and media reinforced this belief. The image of the hockey stick and ball became shorthand for Indian sporting identity.
Yet, when a 2012 Right to Information (RTI) request was filed with the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, the official reply came as a shock: India has no national game.
Hockey, long assumed to hold that title, was never legally designated as such. This revelation sparked widespread debate.
Was it an embarrassment?
A bureaucratic technicality?
Or, more profoundly, did it reveal something about the way nations construct myths, mobilize identity, and manage symbols in both domestic and international arenas?
Hockey and the Postcolonial Identity Project
Hockey’s symbolic status cannot be understood without revisiting the decades between the late colonial era and the first years of Indian independence.
Between 1928 and 1956, India’s men’s hockey team dominated the Olympic Games, winning six consecutive gold medals. The legendary Dhyan Chand, often called the “Wizard of Hockey,” became not only a sports icon but a figure of national pride at a time when India was still under colonial rule. Beating Western teams in their own games was more than sport; it was a subtle act of anti-colonial assertion.
When India finally achieved independence in 1947, hockey victories offered proof that the nation could excel on the world stage. For a country struggling to forge unity amid vast diversity, sport became a unifier. In Benedict Anderson’s framework of “imagined communities”, hockey matches allowed millions of Indians — separated by language, caste, and region — to imagine themselves as part of a single community, waving the same tricolour flag.
The Myth and Its Institutionalization
Over time, this association of hockey with nationalism ossified into what many believed to be fact.
Textbooks printed in the 1970s and 1980s explicitly taught students that hockey was the national game. Teachers repeated it. Quiz competitions, government events, and even civil service exams carried the same claim.
It was never codified in the Constitution or in any legislative framework, but in the public imagination, popular recognition replaced legal designation. The state, whether intentionally or passively, allowed the myth to flourish because it served the project of nation-building.
The RTI Revelation and Its Fallout
The illusion collapsed in 2012 when an RTI query forced the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports to admit that no sport has ever been notified as India’s national game.
The response caused both surprise and discomfort. News outlets carried headlines like “Hockey Not India’s National Game: Government” as if something fundamental had been lost. Social media debates ensued, with some lamenting the erosion of tradition and others arguing that cricket, given its popularity, deserved the spot instead.
But this moment was more than trivia. It revealed how national identity is built on layers of myth, memory, and selective recognition — and how the withdrawal of even a symbolic affirmation by the state can trigger insecurity.
The Politics of Symbols in International Relations
Why does this matter for international relations? Because national symbols are not just for domestic consumption. They serve as tools of soft power — means by which nations project cultural distinctiveness abroad.
In the mid-20th century, India’s hockey dominance was part of its diplomatic arsenal. At the Olympic stage, a newly decolonized country could stand tall before the world. This symbolic capital reinforced India’s moral authority in the Non-Aligned Movement and the United Nations. Just as Brazil became synonymous with football, India became known for hockey.
But symbols evolve.
Today, cricket arguably plays that role. It unites the Indian diaspora, generates global visibility through the Indian Premier League (IPL), and showcases India’s economic and cultural clout. Still, hockey’s symbolic weight lingers — proving that while symbols may lose official status, they rarely vanish from collective memory.
Why India Refuses to Declare a National Game?
If hockey once held this symbolic status, why not make it official? The state’s hesitation reflects India’s pluralism.
Sport in India is highly regional:
- Football thrives in Bengal, Kerala, and the Northeast.
- Kabaddi enjoys deep roots in rural India and is now professionalized.
- Wrestling carries cultural prestige in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.
- Cricket has become the nation’s obsession.
Declaring hockey as the national game risks alienating other identities and privileging one history over another. By refusing to formalize the designation, the state avoids unnecessary controversy.
This choice reflects a larger truth in international relations: sometimes ambiguity serves diplomacy better than certainty. Just as states often rely on “strategic ambiguity” in foreign policy, India uses symbolic ambiguity at home to balance competing identities.
The Larger Lesson: Myth, Memory, and Nationhood
The hockey controversy demonstrates that national identity is not simply declared by governments; it is constructed by people, memories, and performances. A myth repeated often enough becomes truth — until it collides with bureaucratic fact.
But perhaps this is the very nature of national symbols: they work not because they are legally codified, but because they are believed in. Hockey may not be India’s official national game, but in the international imagination, it once played that role, projecting unity, pride, and excellence to the world.
Conclusion: Beyond Hockey, Toward Symbolic Diplomacy
For India, the lesson is clear: while laws and notifications matter, the deeper power of symbols lies in belief, memory, and the stories nations tell themselves and the world. Hockey remains, in this sense, a national game in spirit, if not in statute.
And for students of international relations, the controversy offers a case study in how symbols — whether in sport, culture, or politics — serve as vehicles of soft power, tools of diplomacy, and markers of identity in a fragmented world.
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