Egaro

Egaro, the Immortal Eleven is a 2011 Bengali sports film based on a historical event. It was directed by debutant director Arun Roy. The film is based on the historical events leading to a football match between Mohun Bagan and East Yorkshire Regiment on 29 July 1911, a time when India was under the British rule. This was the first time when Mohun Bagan, or any native team won the IFA Shield. The film commemorated that event in its centenary year, i.e., 2011.

Plot

Egaro is also the first celluloid tribute to the eleven Mohun Bagan players who won the shield, ten of them playing barefoot clad in folded dhotis with just one of them, Sudhir Chatterjee, wearing boots against a team with the right kit, boots, dress, infrastructural support and the typical bias of the White rulers against the coloured Ruled. But Egaro is not just about football. It is about the patriotic passion that drove these eleven players to unite thousands of Indians from the entire eastern regions who flocked in from Dhaka, Burdwan, Midnapore crossing barriers of caste, class, community and language to watch the players kick and beat up the British teams on the playing field without being punished by the rulers because it was all in the game. It is about the killer spirit where the killer took prominence not because it was a fight to finish, but because the final match was a battlefield where the winning could speed the movement against Imperial rule and towards freedom. It did, in a manner of speaking. After the historic win on 29 July 1911, the British felt pressured enough to shift its capital from Calcutta to Delhi on 12 December the same year.