Indian Hockey Fraternity breaks out in anger just after the release of “Gold”


Sabyasachi Bagchi:
For distorting the character of the 1948 Olympic winning coach ‘Habul Mukherjee’ alias ‘N N Mukherjee’ and not to use his name, Akshay Kumar starrer “Gold” faced serious backlash just before it’s release. The news was published on 14th August at XtraTime. Now a big debate has started with some parts of the movie, which has raged in India’s hockey fraternity. Former Indian Olympian Ashok Kumar, Gurubux Singh, Mirananjan Negi, Dhanraj Pillai, along with ‘Hockey India’ President Rajinder Singh have highly condemned the directors and producers of the ‘Gold’ film.

Let’s take a look at the reasons for condemning the film:-

1) The final match of the 1936 Berlin Olympics was shown in the movie. The ‘British-India’ captain, who was a multiple-time gold medalist at the Olympics, was actually ‘hockey sorcerer’ Dhyan Chand. The team won gold in 1928, 1932 and 1936 Olympics, based on his performance. There was no mention of him in the movie as the captain let alone his name! Rather, the name of his character is changed to “Samrat”. For which the family of Dhanchand is extremely offended.

2) India won gold in 1936 final beating Germany by 8-1. History says that after the first half of the match India was 4-0 ahead. In the 52nd minute of the match, Germany scored one goal, but eventually lost the match by 8-1. The scoreline 8-1 was also shown in the movie. But a big change was made, to add more ‘masala’ to the movie. it was shown that Germany was ahead by 1 goal at the end of the first half of the match and after that India score eight goals. Which is nothing but the distortion of history.

3) India won 2-1 over Holland in the semifinal of the 1948 London Olympics. History says that in the last minute of the match, the Dutch got one goal back. The match scoreline in the movie also is 2-1. However, the difference is that in this match, just for the sake of drama it was shown that India were trailing by a goal initially. Then India scored the equalizer and later on scored the winning goal to book a place in the final.

4) Even the director changed the scoreline of the Final match! To make the climax more fractious and dramatic. According to history, England stood no chance to newly independent nation India in the final, as they went onto lose 4-0. This was the country’s first gold in the post-independence period. At that Olympics India’s only Gold came at the field hockey event. But the scoreline of the Final is shown 4-3 in the movie!

5) Even in film, late Leslie Claudius, late captain Kishan Lal, Keshab Dutt, Balbir Singh Sr. and everyone else’s name was changed. The country’s former hockey stars have been furious about it. They have slated it as an insult to the Indian hockey legends. ‘Hockey India’ President Rajinder Singh informed www.xtratime.in and made it pretty clear that the producer and the director of the movie, Rima Kagti, did not even bothered to take the clearance let alone discussing the matter. “The film crew of “Surma” took our clearance, which was a biopic of Sandeep Singh’s life, but no clearance was taken from us on this film, I have not seen the movie yet, but some of my known ones have watched Gold. They were all disappointed after watching the film. ” But was the reason behind the film crew not taking the clearance from the federation? Rajinder Singh in response to that said, “Even “Hockey India” also has to pay in order to use the names of those players. So the filmmakers they have cut down the real history and have made up on their own and glorified it in their own way by.”

The son of Dhyanchand and former captain Ashok Kumar, who is a bronze winner in the 1972 Munich Olympics burst out in anger. He said, “After hearing about the distortion of the movie from you, I went there and was very angry when I personally saw it. Dhyanchand, Kishan Lal, Balbir Singh Sr., Leslie Claudius, Keshab Dutta, they all made history, and not their real names were used in the movie. What else could be worse! ” He then rage fully added, “On winning gold in three Olympic Games, in 1956, the then President Rajendra Prasad gave Padmabhusan to Dhyan Chand, and Bollywood changed his name! This insult can not be accepted.”

Olympian Gurubaksh Singh is presently in the US. “I have not seen the film yet, but the former player and coach of our country, Habul Da has not been shown well, which is not all good,” he said over a WhatsApp voice call. As a former Olympian, this is very insulting. Another former captain Dhanraj Pillai is always known to be a straightforward person. He said, “To use the names of the players, they had to pay the family or the players of those players, so maybe they changed their names, although it is a very bad thing, but Bollywood has done a great injustice by changing the scoreline of the game. Their fight should be respected more. ”

‘Chak De India’ was created with the biography of Mirroranjan Negi, former country’s goalkeeper. What was the experience that he encountered? Negi said, “In my coaching, India’s women team won the gold in the Commonwealth Games in 2002, whereas in the movie it was shown as ‘World Championship’, there is no existence of this competition in the world hockey. The same thing happened in the Gold movie.”

“No fancy crafting was made in the “Mary Kom” and “Bhaag Milka Bhaag” movie. Even the nothing was altered in Cricket movies. All their experiments is confined to Hockey movies and there is no one to protest about it because the 90% people of our country could even name the first eleven of the Indian Hockey team.

The moral of the story is that there will be no protest as in theatres just before the starting of the movie a disclaimer is shown that it has nothing to do with real life. Just for the sake of the movie alterations is made in regard to location, characters and incidents.

That’s it end of story !