A participant wades through a watery stretch in the BMSC-organised Calcutta-Jamshedpur Monsoon Rally

What do Tagore and motor rallying have in common? Nothing really, apart from an annual rally that is named after the bard — the Kaviguru Rally, running as it does from Calcutta and Santiniketan. It is organised by the lone motor sports club in eastern India, the Bengal Motor Sports Club (BMSC).

When the rally was first held on May 9, 1998, to coincide with the poet’s birthday, Visva Bharati and Santiniketan were divided over whether the bard’s name could be lent to a sport that had nothing to do with Tagore. But the matter was resolved favourably, with the late Santideb Ghosh presiding over the closure and prize distribution ceremony where he even rendered a Rabindrasangeet. In fact, Visva Bharati has now entrusted BMSC with restoring Tagore’s vintage car.

Since then, BMSC has been organising a host of rallies and motor sport events in this part of the country, trying to popularise motor sports and “break the myth that motor sport is only for the elite”. To this end, it has spotted and nurtured a number of new talents like Sanjay Arya, Prashanta Pal, Joginder Jaiswal and Amritajit Ghosh (who won the prestigious Karnataka 1000). Among the young, Subir Ray, Subir Dutta, Sourav Chatterjee and Ajgar Ali have been inducted into the sport by BMSC.

The club is affiliated to the Federation of Motor Sports Clubs of India (FMSCI), an umbrella organisation recognised by the Indian government and the Olympic Association of India that controls all motor sports in the country. BMSC chairperson Rajat Majumdar has also been president of FMSCI since 2005.

BMSC, now in its tenth year, has organised a number of events, the biggest being the first and only Asean-India Car Rally in 2004 that started from Guwahati and ended in Batam Island in Indonesia. “At the Asean meet in Bali in 2003, India was an Asean invitee. And there, the then Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee had mooted the proposal of an Indo-Asean motor rally,” recalled BMSC secretary Kunal Banerjee, also an FMSCI-approved rally steward. In 2004, the UPA government was in power and the rally was flagged off from Guwahati by PM Manmohan Singh.

Rallyists negotiate a rough patch in a Calcutta-Digha rally organised by BMSC;

Traversing through the foreign terrain of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, the rally covered 8,000 km with 250 participants, including the crown prince of Brunei. There were 62 vehicles including a Land Cruiser, Ford Forrester, Tata Safaris and Marinas. “The rally had a Rs 5 crore budget with medical units and service teams accompanying the rallyists,” said Banerjee.

While there hasn’t been another Asean rally, the BMSC has continued with more modest endeavours. The Calcutta-Santiniketan Kaviguru Rally and the Calcutta-Jamshedpur Monsoon Rally are annual events, and it also organised the Kalinga Rally quite regularly till recently. “And we conduct both types of rally — the time-speed-distance rally and the stagerally,”explained Banerjee.

The Calcutta round of the JK Tyres National Go-Karting Championship was held at a specially laid track in Patuli, also under the aegis of BMSC. “It was held for three years and then stopped,” says Banerjee.

BMSC now plans to hold a national championship for two-wheelers this November. The Kaviguru Rally 2008 will be flagged off from Nicco Park on August 30.

So all you rally enthusiasts, brace yourselves for some action-packed, back-breaking rallying

Anasuya Basu

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