RTI Query - Is hockey the national game of India?
6 Aug, 2012
In reply to a query under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the Sports Ministry has informed no sport has been declared as the national game in India.
The official portal of the Government, 'www.india.gov.in' which is designed, developed and hosted by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) under the Ministry of Information Technology has a page about the national game with the link http://india.gov.in/knowindia/national_symbols.php/national_symbols.php?id=14. The website is based on a collaborative effort of various Indian Government Ministries and Departments, at the Central/State/District level presents different information and carries an article which is reproduced below:
“Thus began the history of Indian Hockey Federation as India entered the Olympics to begin its golden saga. The tour was a huge success with India winning 18 out of the 21 matches and the legendary Dhyan Chand was the cynosure of all the eyes scoring over 100 goals of the 192 Indian accounted for. The match began in Amsterdam in 1928 and India went on a winning spree in Los Angeles in 1932 and Berlin in 1936 and thus bagged a hat-trick of gold medals at the Olympics.
Post Indian Independence; the Indian team achieved another hat-trick of gold medals at the 1948 London Olympics, 1952 Helsinki Games and the Melbourne Olympics.
During the Golden Era, India played 24 Olympic matches, won all 24, scored 178 goals (at an average of 7.43 goals per match) and conceded only 7 goals. The two other gold medals for India came in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the 1980 Moscow Olympics”.
After the news of the discrepancy was reported by the media, a note has now been added to the website page "content under review". Certainly, the poor state of affairs in the sports arena does point out that we are yet to evolve into a sporting nation.