Did You Know Rabindranath Tagore Brought Judo To India?

He is India's first Nobel prize winner. The man relinquished his knighthood to protest the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and his best work Gitanjali has been translated into numerous languages. Yet, there is more to Rabindranath Tagore.

Believe it or not, the fact that today judo is relatively popular in India is due to that man.

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Yes, it was Tagore who brought this Japanese martial art to our land in the previous century.

But the story starts elsewhere. In 1934, Subimal Ray, the youngest uncle of renowned director Satyajit Ray, wanted to take up judo. He took the young Satyajit to visit Shinzo Takagaki, who is known as the father of Judo in Asia.

Now the question that obviously arises is what was Takagaki doing in Kolkata, then Calcutta in the 1930s? The answer is again Tagore. The Nobel laureate invited him to Santiniketan in 1929.

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Jigoro Kano, who founded Judo, was somebody Tagore admired so it is no surprise that he had an interest in the sport. Jinnosuke Sano, a jiu-jitsu teacher, taught students in Santiniketan as far back as 1905. Jiu-jitsu is from where judo originated.

Tagore went to Japan many times, and his interest in judo was part of his fascination of Japanese culture.

Judo is now among the Olympic sports in which we have participated. It has gained popularity over the years, but the credit goes to our very own Gurudev for bringing a master of the martial art to Indian soil.

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If one visits his residence in Jorasanko in the northern part of Kolkata, one can see relics which prove how obsessed he was with judo and why his interest reached such a high level, that he invited people to teach it.

Judo requires a lot of skill and it is a little-known fact that our National Poet was the one who introduced the sport to India. One can thank him for the popularity it has today. One hopes India continues to make strides in the sport as we have got a lot of international success as well.

Judoka Shushila Devi Likmabam clinched India's seventh medal and the first outside weightlifting at the Commonwealth Games 2022 in Birmingham after losing to Michaela Whitebooi of South Africa in the women's 48kg final in Judo.

It was her second medal at the Commonwealth Games after winning silver at Glasgow in 2014.

Vijay Kumar bagged a waza-ari after just 5 seconds of the bell and held on to claim the Ippon to take home the bronze medal in the men's 60 kg judo event.

Vijay made quick work of Cyprus' Petros Christodoulides in the opening minute of the bronze medal match to claim a medal for India.