“I am fighting for the future generation of wrestlers. Not for myself. My career is done and this is my last Olympics. I want to fight for the young woman wrestlers so they can wrestle safely. That is why I was in Jantar Mantar, and that is why I am here.”
This was Vinesh Phogat speaking to the ESPN at the Paris Olympics. A little later she beat the leading Olympic and world champion and stepped into an area no Indian female wrestler had gone before her — the Olympic final.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
The tale of this feisty 29-year-old begins with a tough childhood with early loss of a wrestler father who chose to mentor her and her two sisters. By recognising her obvious feisty spirit and encouraging her indomitable will, her father and after him her mother handed her a difficult gift — a near impossible identity of a successful female wrestler for a teenager from the macho state of Haryana.
As she won one match after another, she had to deal increasingly with politically powerful males of India’s wrestling establishment that controlled funding and selection of wrestlers for prestigious matches. Many misused their power to molest young and scared girls whose future they felt they owned. Then as Vinesh came into her own she chose to go public about the routine vilification and sexual exploitation most female wrestlers including Olympic medal winners, had suffered at the hands of top officials of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) for years.
Once she opened up, her sisters and other spirited supporters joined her. They were abused and manhandled by the police, heckled by the officials on media, and a strong legal intervention despite petitioning remained glaringly absent. When forced to intervene, the state authorities began talking of the need for ‘objective’ assessment and properly “factualised” petitions with solid proof. What, one may ask, is objectivity in a civil society where those at the top of the power pyramid have traditionally been males who have designed its norms and institutions that drive the law, and then gone on to fill their governing bodies with politically empowered bands of brothers?
Such a response from a government that repeatedly paid lip service to empowerment of Nari Shakti proved how gender in India divides power more firmly than caste or colour. From Manipur to Hathras, such cases take months before FIRs are filed. If the sympathisers and victims (if they are alive) sit in dharnas to demand justice, the streets controlled by police push them back while the political decision makers look away. The case against the ex-WFI chief and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the man who had ruled over the destinies of India’s wrestlers with an iron hand for over a decade, is still going on.
Vinesh despite broken knees and torn ligaments and routine harassment rose like a phoenix to make it to the Olympics and defeat a world champion. Then one suddenly heard she lost the chance to win a silver, if not gold, because of confusion created by what a senior sports reporter terms as “opaque domestic rules” that decided the category she was allocated. “Wrestling has won Mother, I have lost, my dreams and spirit are broken, she wrote , please forgive me.”
But being Vinesh, next day she challenged the Olympic disqualification. At the time of writing of this piece, her petition has been accepted by the Court of Arbitration (CAS) for Sports and they have said the final verdict will be given at the end of the Games.
Unsurprisingly, those who had stayed silent when she was being humiliated by the federation officials she had complained about, were the first to send sweet messages of sympathy. But we need to look beyond endless muck raking and party politics. We should focus instead on the expansion of freedom Vinesh’s confrontation with raw power simultaneously in three fields — sports, police and party politics — has created for all women. She has dissolved the identity of girls from ordinary backgrounds as Indian-Haryanvi-wrestler-female, until the idea of just being an iconic wrestler or athlete or writer seems as natural and un-self conscious to us as a vast Peepul tree growing out of natural soil.
Also read: IOA Didn’t Act on Phogat’s Disqualification for Two Full Days: Wrestler’s Lawyer in India
At moments like this, a male supremacist political system like ours will always defend itself vociferously. This is further enabled by the fact that the system stands on four male-dominated pillars of democracy, which are closely networked. Vinesh’s rage and her being repeatedly hauled over coals has helped us “see” the truth about our official rules and regulations that guide the courts of law as victimised women actually experience it in their day to day lives. It has revealed the many layered and long consultative modes used to arrive at a convoluted definition of ‘rape’ or physical abuse using the filters of ‘consent’ to blame it all on the ‘victims’.
Logic, as the wise old proverb says, lies in the eye of the logician.
Vinesh’s relentless pursuit of justice has proved no law gives men heading governments or institutes of learning or federations or recruitment agencies or film studio casting couches, the right to molest female players or actors. This has not been necessary, since our laws (even after being amended) have often failed to address the main reason: males’ easy access to women under their control. Accused after accused tells the media how the footage showing them touching women inappropriately is doctored. They had ‘touched’ or hugged or grabbed the females as a gesture of affection like a father or brother.
No law silences women subjected to physical and mental harassment. But that has not been necessary since most women who put up with obnoxious behaviour from males need the jobs and also many times, as in Vinesh’s case, crave a chance to prove their undeniable professional excellence. No law gave officials in WFI or elsewhere the sole power to enforce categories upon female athletes other than those to which they are suited professionally. That is not necessary, since our micro laws for deciding categories remain opaque and each new head of the federation, interprets them as he likes. No law requires the central sports minister to prove equal treatment by reading out a list of how much money the state spent on Vinesh’s training. It is not necessary at all. However, Mansukh Mandaviya did so, and he did it on the very day Vinesh was heartbreakingly denied her hard-won glory.
Also read: Pinned Down by the System: A Final, Bitter Twist to the Vinesh Phogat Saga
Before women can be equal legally in India, they must also be equal socially and sit in all representative bodies that get to decide their fate.
“Equality,” observes Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dubé of Canada, “is not simply about equal treatment, and it is not a mathematical equation waiting to be solved. It is about human dignity and full membership in society. It is about promoting and equal sense of self worth.”
And for promoting a better understanding of freedom as gender equality in a highly unequal society, and for sharing with hundreds of young female wrestlers what Barack Obama once called “the audacity of hope,” the nation should bow down and salute this brave young woman.
Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.
Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.
