Srinagar: Frequent civil unrest and poor infrastructure have foiled attempts by the J&K tourism department since 2008 to revive the royal lifestyle sport polo in the Valley.
The aim, officials said, was to perk up tourism and increase tourist footfall in the state. A tourism official said the proposal was aimed to elevate the status of Srinagar as far as polo was concerned. In fact, the department began by organising a polo event, the first one to be held after a gap six decades, in Srinagar on November 2 in the same year, but failed to hold the tempo.
Elucidating on the reasons, tourism director Mahmood A. Shah said, “For starters, we don’t have adequate ground in Srinagar where we can hold big polo events. Also, one has to get horses from Kargil, Leh and Dras (in Ladakh).” He admitted, “We couldn’t do much towards reviving the game in the Valley after holding that one event in Srinagar’s SP College grounds.”
Some other officials attribute the failure to frequent civil unrest in the Valley in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Though the years from 2011 to 2015 were comparatively peaceful, the Valley erupted again in July 2016 after the killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahedin commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani. The turbulence continued for more than six months, resulting in a drastic fall in tourism footfall. The lean period left many stakeholders almost penniless. They continue to be a worried lot and keep their fingers crossed though they are organising road shows and other promotional events across India and abroad to make 2018 a different story.
Mr Shah, however, said that the law and order situation on the ground had nothing to do with it. He said 2017 was not a bleak year as far as tourist arrivals in the Valley are concerned. “Though tourist arrivals from Gujarat and Maharashtra were down, but, fortunately, those from the South India picked up. Also, the numbers from Thailand, Malaysia and Bangladesh increased. The total arrivals were close to one million that year,” he said.
Asked about the chances of reviving polo in the Valley in the near future, Mr Shah said, “If we think it is going to be beneficial to tourism, we will do it.
In 2008, a Delhi-based sports promotion company, Equisport, was asked to hold polo events in Srinagar. The tourism officials had announced that not only will the sport return to Srinagar, events will be held at other places too, particularly J&K’s premier resorts of Pahalgam and Gulmarg. Apart from bringing trained horses from Delhi and Jaipur, they had said that the revival of the sport is part of a concerted effort “to revitalise J&K after years of bloodshed and obliteration.”
The royal game was probably introduced into the landlocked region in the mid-17th century by King Sengge Namgyal. Polo in Ladakh has not been an exclusive sport of the rich. Traditionally, almost every village in the region had its own polo ground, but the game played there differed with the royal version in many respects from the international game, which was adapted from what British travellers saw in the western Himalayas and Manipur in the 19th century. Polo and archery festivals are competitive events frequently held in Ladakh every year. In Srinagar, the sport thrived under the patronage of autocratic Dogra rulers (1846-1947).
Polo used to be played with verve in Srinagar prior to 1947 when its benefactor — Maharaja Hari Singh — had to flee the place with the outbreak of first Kashmir war. In fact, the game had been institutionalised with regular tournaments and occasional exhibition matches played at the town’s polo grounds along the Residency Road, which have since been bifurcated into a public park, a football ground and a car parking area.
