National Sports Day: An encounter with the Fuhrer and other tales from Dhyan Chand’s magical career
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Dhyan Chand’s birthday, India’s National Sports Day, gives us an opportunity to look into some stories about him that go beyond his magical statistics.
Swaroop Dev
File image of Major Dhyan Chand. Credits: Twitter/@JayShah
It was on his birthday in 1922, that a quiet, sinewy 17-year-old lad from Allahabad joined the Indian Army to serve the British Empire as a sepoy. Dhyan Singh didn’t have any great plans as such, it was a natural course of things. His father, already enlisted, was transferred from place to place at the Imperial army’s discretion, giving young Dhyan no scope of a formal childhood or education as he was towed along from town to town. He simply followed suit, happy to have a safe job in times of tumultuous change.