Ramchandra Guha
The HINDU
Sunday, January 21, 2001
A RECENT issue of India Today had a cover story on the match- fixing scandal. The same issue noted the death of the footballer Ram Bahadur, an East Bengal stalwart who played in the 1960 Rome Olympics and was also a member of the greatest of all Indian soccer sides, which won the title at the 1962 Asian Games in Jakarta. The juxtaposition, one suspects, was not accidental: the footballer's memory was being honoured to shame the players of that other (and it is now being implied) morally inferior game.