The broader canvas of swimming today also includes diving and water polo. Diving came into
the Olympic fold in 1904 at the St. Louis Olympic Games, while water polo as team game for
men was included in the Olympic swimming calendar in 1900.
The origins of water polo can be traced back to 1869 in England when a game was devised
with a ball in water to help young Englishmen become better swimmers. The earliest
pictorial depiction of swimming dates back to 900 B.C. - drawings on the walls of Wadi
Sari Caves in the Libyan desert. Today, swimming has also become an adventure sport with
the crossings of channels and straits becoming the prime focus of long-distance swimming.
The crossing of the English Channel, in fact, has become a favourite sport with many long
distance swimmers, including Indians, having successfully achieved this feat. Much before
swimming became an organised sport in the country, two Indians, D.D. Mulji and Nalin
Chandra Malik, had represented the country in the 1928 Amsterdam and 1932 Los Angeles
Olympic Games, respectively, under the aegis of the National Swimming Association of
Calcutta.
Even before the formation of a national federation, swimming as a competitive sport was
popular among the members of private clubs of Calcutta and Bombay. The Calcutta Swimming
Club, established in 1926, is the oldest swimming club in India. The clubs used to conduct
inter-city tournaments and there used to be a regular exchange of club teams for
competitive purposes between Calcutta and Bombay, and vice versa. The National Swimming
Association, which conducted the first National Championship in Bombay in 1944, also got
affiliated to the Federation Internationale de Natation Amateur (FINA).
The Swimming Federation of India (SFI) was formed in 1948 with P.L. Ahir as the first
general secretary. The FINA affiliation was then transferred to this apex body for the
promotion of swimming in India. The first task of the SFI was to send an official Indian
team to the 1948 London Olympic Games. The contingent included both swimmers and a water
polo team. India also took part in the swimming and water polo competitions of the 1952
Helsinki Olympic Games. Two women (Dolly Nazir and Arti Shah) were also a part of the
swimming squad. India's next participation in an Olympic Games was at the 1988 Seoul
Olympiad, where the country was represented in swimming by the one-man squad of Khazan
Singh Tokas. The onus of conducting the national championship also fell on the SFI and it
has been conducting the nationals successfully on an annual basis. Air Chief Marshal Arjan
Singh, the then president of the SFI, added a new dimension to the national championship
by introducing the junior category in 1974. The SFI also introduced the sub-junior
category in 1984 and now national swimming championships are conducted under various age
groups (beginning from eight) in the sub-junior and junior categories, apart from an open
senior nationals in which even up and coming junior swimmers can participate. Nisha
Millet, who is training in Australia, and Shikha Tandon, who became the first Indian
swimmer to get a Union government scholarship to train in the US, are the hopes of the
Indian swimmers of the new Millennium.
Though Indian swimmers have not earned much of a reputation in the international scene,
there have been significant individual performances, especially in long distance swimming.
The biggest contingent of Indian swimmers participated in the ninth Asian Games at New
Delhi, when Indian swimmers took part in swimming (men and women), diving (men and women)
and water polo (men) competitions. Before this, the country's participation in the Asian
Games swimming competitions was irregular, especially after the first two Asiad meets in
which the Indians participated. Indian swimmers won four gold medals in the first Asian
Games in 1951 at New Delhi. Subsequently India had to wait till the 1986 Seoul Asian
Games, when Khazan Singh won the silver medal in the 200 metres butterfly stroke event.
The Indians, however, have been a dominant force in the South Asian region having topped
in all the South Asian Federation Games held so far. To Khazan Singh also goes the credit
of claiming the maximum number of golds in a single international meet. Khazan won eight
gold medals including two relay golds in the first South Asian Federation Games at
Kathmandu in 1984.
The Indian juniors and sub-juniors have been participating in the Asia Pacific age group
championships on a regular basis and have been winning medals under the various age group
categories. While recording the history of Indian swimming it must be noted that Golwala
of Bombay, P.L. Ahir (West Bengal) and Nurul Hassan (Assam) played a key role in the
development of swimming as a competitive sport in the early formative years.
Among many long distance records stands out the name of Mihir Sen, who has distinguished
himself as the only swimmer in the world to have crossed several straits in a single year.
On 5 and 6 April 1966, he crossed the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka, on 24
August , the Straits of Gibraltar (Europe-Africa), on 12 September the Dardanelles
(Gallipoli to Sendulbahir, Turkey) and from 29 to 31 October, 1966, he also swam the
Panama Canal. Mihir Sen had crossed the English Channel, the first Indian to achieve the
feat, on 27 September 1958.
While Arati Saha became the first Indian woman to cross the English Channel in 1959, Arati
Pradhan at the age of 17 became the first woman in the world to swim the 30-km Straits of
Gibraltar on 29 August, 1988 with a timing of seven hours and 17 minutes. Special mention
must be made of Taranath Shenoy and K. Janaki, who overcame their own physical handicaps
and successfully crossed the English Channel. Taranath Shenoy, a deaf-mute, also became
the first such person in the world to swim across the 30-km, shark-infested Straits of
Gibraltar on 4 August 1988.
On 6 August 1988, two Maharashtra youngsters, Abhijeet Rao (then aged 12) and Naina
Mallapurkar (then aged 15) successfully swam across the 47-km English Channel, in the
process becoming the youngest Asians to achieve such a feat. On 10 August 1988, Archana
Patel at the age of 13 became the first Indian to win a gold in the international marathon
swimming meet in Switzerland. Another notable achievement is that of Swamini Kamulkar, who
also at the age of 13, covered the 36-km distance between Dharamtar to the Gateway of
India using only the backstroke style.
Other Indians to swim the English Channel are: Dr. Bimal Chandra, Nitindra Narayan Ray,
Avinash Sarang, Bijoy Jain, Shailesh Kialje, Arati Pradhan, Anita Sood, Rajeev Gadgil,
Rajesh Gadgil, Harsh Thakore, Rajaram Ghag, Anil Desai, Abhijit Datey and Bula Choudhary.
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