Question

Captain of the first national Hockey team who was also a member of the constituent assembly was _______.
a. Baldev Singh
b. Somnath Lahiri
c. Jaipal Singh Munda
d. K.M. Munshi

Answer 1

Hint:
- This player was a multi-faceted personality, a distinguished parliamentarian, a sportsman of international repute, an educator, a politician with great vision and bravery, a versatile orator with mastery of several national and foreign languages.
- He was famously known as the “Jungli in the assembly”

Complete solution:

Jaipal Singh Munda:

- Jaipal was Chotanagpur's Munda, a forested plateau populated by many tribes.
- Sent to Oxford by missionaries to study, he did not as his sponsors no doubt wished, preach the Gospel on his return, but came to invent a kind of gospel of his own.
- This concluded that the tribals were India's "original inhabitants," hence the name adibasi or adivasi, meaning precisely that.
- In1938, Jaipal established an Adivasi Maha sabha that called for a separate 'Jharkhand' state to be carved out of Bihar.
- He was Marang Gomke, or 'Great King,' to the Chotanagpur tribesmen.
- Jaipal was chosen as an Indian Civil Service probationer in 1927-28, which required two years of Oxford training.
- During that time, he was named captain of the first Indian national hockey team at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympic Hockey Tournament, where India won gold. In all the matches, he led his team effectively.
- However, as he had to return to London for his ICS final, he did not play in the title clash with Holland.

Hence, the correct answer is option C.

Note:
- The work of Jaipal Singh to put the tribal problem to the centre stage is now largely forgotten.
- He was a talented hockey player, an Oxford Blue, and the captain of the first Indian side to win an Olympic gold medal in Amsterdam in1928, before he became a politician.