If the Delhi-based journalist and author Rudraneil Sengupta were to enter a dangal, which is a wrestling arena, it would be ‘suicidal’. “Though I did give it a try with (Olympic medal winners) Sushil (Kumar) and Yogeshwar (Dutt) on the mat, who obviously were very gentle with me. So, no dangal for me,” says the 35-year-old. And though Sengupta kept himself out of the dangal, his life revolved around it for a while.
No, Sengupta has nothing to do with Aamir Khan’s latest movie Dangal, whose trailer by the way, he was “kicked” to watch. We are talking about his new novel Enter the Dangal: Travels through India’s Wrestling Landscape. Through this book, Sengupta aims to explore the wide landscape of wrestling through people who have made it their home.
From Olympic wrestlers like Sushil Kumar to wrestlers like Bilu Singh, who did not make it but are making sure others do by setting up akhadas (places of practice with boarding and training) in slum areas - Sengupta highlights both peaks and valleys of wrestling.
What piqued Sengupta interest is not the violence but how the body is pushed through all kinds of boundaries. Also, when it comes to wrestling in an akhada, Sengupta says it’s a great leveller. “Wrestling has always been a counter-culture to the caste system and any other system of hierarchy. Even a king wouldn’t go into the akhada as a king; once he steps inside he is just a pehlwan,” he says. So kings wrestled too? Yes, he says, in fact King Henry the VIII was a wrestler. There were akhadas found in Iran, which are now on the United Nations list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. It was in a cave in France that wrestlers were carved out, almost 3,500 years ago. As Sengupta doles out these facts, we can’t help but wonder why wrestling, though widespread throughout the world, is more prominent in North India and not the south.
“Previously, there was a mercenary kind of army training where anyone could take up arms and go under a manager or a thekedar, who would have 100 to 200 such soldiers. Kings could lease soldiers from them in case of war,” he explains.
The East India Company stopped this practice to create their own standing army, predominantly from Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, neglecting the rest. So the culture grew more in those areas as a sort of training for the army. British soldiers were often seen in the akhadas, trying their hand at mitti ki kushti. Talking about neglect, women too are a recent phenomenon in the sport. That’s right Sengupta says, only after the announcement that women’s wrestling was a part of the Olympics in the 1990s. This and many more inferences can be drawn from Sengupta’s new book.
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