Migrant Races: Empire, Identity and K.S. Ranjitsinhji

"This book deserves to be more widely known than it is. It’s probably familiar to those who work in the field of modern South Asian history, and perhaps to postcolonial theorists. But it’s a very beautifully structured and subtle attempt to understand one of the most complex and complicated characters in the history of Indian cricket: Prince Ranjitsinhji. Because it is an academic work, I suspect this book is not more widely known among those who are purely interested in the history of cricket. A general reader might not find it readily accessible, but it does repay close attention. Sen shows how Ranji negotiated the complex worlds that he had to navigate. The book is not only deeply attentive to the different contexts and constraints within which Ranji operated but also to the ways in which he exercised his agency as a cricketer and a prince. “His batting might have conveyed the impression of effortless genius, but nothing was naturally given to Ranji” The book does not really dwell on Ranji’s cricket career. It is not interested in what he did on the field. It is more concerned with how Ranji was shaped by the larger structures of empire and nation and how he forged his way through these at different times in his public career. It shows how Ranji learnt to perform the roles that he was called upon to play. His batting might have conveyed the impression of effortless genius, but nothing was naturally given to Ranji. He was quite vulnerable and had to negotiate the very different worlds of colonial India and imperial Britain. The book dwells on Ranji’s quest for his crown. It looks at the place of money in his life, the need to have resources befitting a prince. It shows his complex and ambivalent interactions both with the colonial establishment—which eventually made him the ruler of Nawanagar in 1907—and with Indian nationalism. Ranji tends to be seen in two ways. One is solely as a cricketer. He’s celebrated in this very Orientalist way by a lot of English cricket writers. It’s a tradition that goes all the way back to those who wrote about him in the early 20th century, writers like Neville Cardus. The other tradition is to focus on his politics and accuse him of being an opponent of Indian nationalism. Both perspectives are one-sided and reduce this complicated figure to a caricature. Consider the images that were used to describe Ranji’s batting—that he was a conjuror, a ‘dark’ magician, and so on. There is a famous comment about him that is often quoted in cricket literature: that ‘he never played a Christian stroke in his life’. He was regarded as a ‘strange light from the East’. In short, he was (and still continues to be) portrayed as a mysterious Oriental, very different from the stolid Anglo-Saxon cricketer. Exactly. Simon Wilde has written a very fine biography of Ranji , but it too reaffirms this idea of the ‘strange and sublime genius’ of Ranji. More recently, people have criticised Ranji’s anti-nationalism, arguing that he did not promote Indian cricket, that he did very little for Indian cricket, that he saw himself as an English cricketer, and that he was a bad ruler. So, there are these two contrasting traditions of writing about Ranji. Satadru Sen’s book shows how both of these perspectives are simplistic. The book really gets to the complexities of the man and it does so without either celebrating him in an uncritical fashion or vilifying him. It shows how Ranji negotiated the choices that he had to make and how he was shaped by the larger structures of imperial power that shaped his life. It’s a very insightful and illuminating book. Some reviewers of my book have said that I’m very critical of Ranji. I’m not. I document what he did, but I’m not judgmental about him. Following Satadru Sen, I think one needs to understand Ranji as a complex figure, shaped by his circumstances and his time. Ranji became the ruler of Nawanagar in 1907. He travelled to Britain the following year and played for Sussex. Thereafter, he returned to England from time to time. His cricket career was largely finished by 1910. He took no part in the 1911 cricket tour at all, but by that time he was well past his best. After he became the ruler of Nawanagar, Ranji left the game behind as far as India was concerned. He played cricket matches on his private estate, but he was not formally associated with any initiatives to do with Indian cricket. For instance, he had little to do with the Board of Control for Cricket in India, which was formed in 1927. After Ranji’s death in 1933, the Maharaja of Patiala donated a gold cup that was named after the great cricketer. Thus, the premier national Indian cricket tournament, which is played on zonal lines, is known as the Ranji Trophy. Satadru Sen brilliantly shows how Ranji was no longer an ardent empire loyalist by the end of the 1920s. His relationship with the British Raj grew increasingly strained over time, because of the way the local British authorities in India dealt with him. There were tensions over finances and other matters to do with princely politics. He became disillusioned with the British imperial establishment. Interestingly, he began to harbour sympathies for what the nationalists were doing, even though he was never an overt nationalist. He never came out on the side of Gandhi, but it was equally clear that he was not the unquestioning empire loyalist of the past. Funnily enough, I think the Parsis of late nineteenth century Bombay would have understood it! To begin with, the Parsis played in their traditional dress, which in the illustrations of the time look rather like pyjamas. Also, the early cricket matches on the Bombay maidan were probably limited overs matches. I reckon they would have been comfortable with T20 cricket. I suspect so. The aim would have been to a secure a result."