There is hardly anyone who hasn't heard of Jamshedji Tata. But
few remember his elder son Dorab. To this Tata goes the credit
of starting the Olympic movement in India. Dorab Tata was mostly
educated in England and his interest in sport was a result of
his Western upbringing. In the 1880s and '90s, Dorab Tata was
active in organising school and college cricket in Bombay. He
then became involved with the Deccan Gymkhana where he was
nominated president. The committee , which ran the Gymkhana, was
not conversant with the details of managing athletic meets on
European lines and wanted to develop their sports programme more
in line with established Indian traditions. At the first
athletic meet the Gymkhana organised, Dorab Tata discovered that
the competitors were "all boys of the peasant class working in
the fields and living off poor fare" . Naturally they had no
idea of European rules or modern training of any kind. Dorab
Tata found that the competitors were proposing to run their
100-yard heats round a bend w