Wednesday, September 27, marks 65 years of a feat that seemed impossible in its time.
Mihir Sen, the legendary swimmer, became the first Indian, and Asian, to cross the mighty English Channel on September 27, 1958.
Sen, a barrister-turned -swimmer, was all of 28 then. He crossed the Channel in 14 hours 45 minutes, in the fourth-fastest time.
The conquest was all the more special because Sen had taken to serious swimming only after reaching England a few years ago.
A young lawyer training to be a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, Sen spent hours at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) pool in London.
Mihir Sen meeting with Queen Elizabeth, Prince Phillip and Padmaja Naidu after conquering the English Channel
After the English Channel, Sen would go on to conquer the Palk Strait, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Dardenelles Strait, the Bosphorous Strait and the Panama Canal.
In an India barely into the second decade of Independence, Sen’s conquests went beyond the realms of just sports or adventure.
“His motive for swimming the seven seas was primarily political. Being a young nationalist of uncommonly strong views and unorthodox ambition, he wanted to show the world what Indians are made of, to set for young Indians an example of courage and to tell them that one of the best things to do with life is to risk it. In this way, he hoped to prepare them for what he saw as their destiny,” Supriya Sen, his daughter, wrote in an article in The Telegraph on November 16, 2013.
In 1966, he earned the rare distinction of swimming the oceans of the five continents in one calendar year.
A report on Sen's feat that appeared in The Stateman on September 29, 1958
Sen swam the Palk Strait in 25 hours and 36 minutes, the Straits of Gibraltar in eight hours and one minute, the Dardenelles in 13 hours and 55 minutes, the Bosphorus in four hours and the length of the Panama Canal in 34 hours and 15 minutes. This feat earned him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
His daughter Supriya shared with this newspaper Sen’s own account of his English Channel triumph, published in the Indian government journal Yojana on January 26, 1959.
“In the early hours of September 27 last year, on the bleak wastes of the French shores, two wet and shivering young men held up a soggy Tricolour, sung rapturously a few lines of a rousing Anthem, ignoring the deafening roar of the English Channel and by their frenzied bewildering antics must have made the heavens smile! The song was not French, the flag was Indian and they were not mad! I happen to know because I was one of the young men,” wrote Sen.
He had just crossed the Channel. The other man was Manik Mitra, his manager.
“Many people have conquered the Channel and will in future do so. But my swim will not be lost in the crowd for the simple reason that I was neither a swimmer, until very recently, nor do I intend pursuing swimming as a career,” wrote Mihir Sen.
The conquest was all the more sweet because it followed multiple failed attempts.
Sen was born in Purulia on November 16, 1930, but he spent his early life in Cuttack (Odisha). The son of a doctor, Sen was the eldest of five siblings.
He returned to India shortly after conquering the Channel. He practised in Calcutta High Court in the 1960s.
Enraged at the bar on Indians in colonial clubs in India, Sen led an aggressive campaign against the practice.
He was “incensed when he was denied entry into the Breach Candy Club in Bombay because of their “whites-only” policy,” Supriya wrote in the 2013 article.
“This compelled him to lead an aggressive media campaign to abolish this preposterous rule and, as a result, clubs all over India were forced to open their doors to all Indians,” she wrote.
Sen’s family included his English wife Bella and their daughters Chandra, Supriya, Debika and Sumantha.
Sen passed away in 1997, aged 66.