East Bengal: The Club Born Out of Contempt

A club that takes twenty-two years to win its country’s top-flight championship again often describes that wait as a journey through the wilderness, a period that can only be explained by everything that went wrong in the meantime. East Bengal is one such example.

However, at East Bengal, that drought never cast doubt on who the club was. Identity came first, and it didn’t depend on titles: it stemmed from an expulsion, 106 years ago, in a minor tournament in Calcutta.

Today, in a new chapter of the “Soccer from Asia” series: East Bengal.

A Dismissal and a New Club

The Jorabagan Incident.** On July 28, 1920, the Jorabagan Club was preparing to face Mohun Bagan in the Cooch Behar Cup** when it removed defender Sailesh Bose from the lineup without offering any explanation. The club’s vice president, Suresh Chandra Chaudhuri, saw the move for what it was: a humiliation directed at a player of East Bengali origin in an institution run by the West Bengali elite.

That same week, Chaudhuri left Jorabagan along with three other executives, including Raja Manmatha Nath Chaudhuri, and founded a new club on August 1, 1920. Ten days later, on August 11, that club made its debut with a 4-0 rout of Metropolitan College. It was called East Bengal.

Which side of the river? For decades,** Calcutta had been divided into two Bengali identities that did not correspond to any administrative boundary, but only to family origins**. The Ghoti, Bengalis from the western half, dominated the city’s sports and social institutions. The Bangals, Bengalis from the east (the region that is now Bangladesh), arrived as merchants, civil servants, or students and found the highest doors closed to them. Bose’s dismissal was not an isolated incident. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, giving a name to a grievance that already existed.

The Partition That Filled the Stands

1947 and the city that changed. The Partition of India in 1947 split Bengal in two and drove millions of people toward Kolkata from the east, the region that became East Pakistan and later Bangladesh. For much of that displaced population, without land or prior connections in the city, East Bengal ceased to be just a soccer club and became the place where a newly arrived Bengali could find their own kind. The club did not choose that role; it inherited it from a migration that continued to grow throughout the decade.

India’s most-attended derby. That origin made every match against Mohun Bagan about more than just three points. The first match between the two teams took place on August 8, 1921, a Cooch Behar Cup friendly that ended 0–0. The first official derby didn’t happen until May 28, 1925, in the Calcutta league: a 1–0 win for East Bengal, with a goal by Nepal Chakravarty. Since then, the two teams have faced off 410 times, with a slight edge for East Bengal: 145 wins to Mohun Bagan’s 135, with 130 draws. In 1997, the Federation Cup semifinal drew a crowd of 131,781 spectators to Salt Lake Stadium, the largest crowd ever to attend a sporting event in India. That figure needs no comparison outside Asia to be impressive.

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A Century of Glory

The Golden Decade. Between 1970 and 1975, East Bengal won six consecutive Calcutta leagues, a run that fans dubbed “Shonali Doshok,” or the Golden Decade. It remains the club’s longest streak of consecutive dominance in the tournament that for decades served as the country’s premier championship.

The Only Title Won Abroad. In July 2003, East Bengal defeated BEC Tero Sasana 3-1 in the final of the ASEAN Club Championship, held in Thailand. Bhaichung Bhutia finished as the tournament’s top scorer. It was, and remains, the only international title an Indian club has ever won outside its borders.

A Challenge to Asia. In 2004, East Bengal became the first Indian club to advance past the group stage of the AFC Cup. In 2013, they reached the semifinals, where they were eliminated by Al-Kuwait after topping their group with four wins and two draws. In between, there were seasons where they failed to earn a single point, but those two results are enough to establish the club’s true ceiling in continental competition.

The Era of Franchises

Left Out of the Loop. When the Indian Super League launched in 2014 as the new pinnacle of Indian soccer, it did so with city-based franchises designed to attract sponsorships and television deals, not with the historic clubs of Kolkata. East Bengal and Mohun Bagan were left out of the initial lineup, relegated to an I-League that was losing prestige year after year in the face of the new tournament.

Shree Cement, the Partner Who Left. Entry into the ISL came in 2020, thanks to Shree Cement, which acquired a 76% stake and renamed the team SC East Bengal. The on-field results were disappointing: the team finished ninth out of ten in its first season. On April 12, 2022, Shree Cement returned the club’s sporting rights.

Emami Takes the Helm. The Emami Group took over as the new investor on May 25, 2022. The first success came in January 2024: the Kalinga Super Cup, the club’s first title in twelve years, with a 3-2 victory over Odisha that also secured a spot in the AFC Champions League Two.

The Crossroads of Tomorrow

On May 21, 2026, East Bengal was crowned champion of the Indian Super League. Twenty-two years after its last title in the top tier of Indian soccer, the championship came with Antonio López Habas at the helm and the red-and-gold stripes back at the top of the table.

It remains to be seen whether that title is a starting point or a one-off. The club’s century-old identity remains intact among the Bangals, but the franchise model that governs the ISL rewards sustained investment, not a club’s legacy. The group stage of the 2026–27 AFC Champions League Two, already underway, is the first real test of whether May’s title will lead to sustained success or remain just another exception in a century full of them.

Cover photo: IA generated