NEW DELHI: Each reported rape in the capital briefly inflates the need for self-defence in women, and an army of martial artists spreads out to take over the attentiveness of largely clueless assemblies. In school grounds, corporate office courtyards, and public parks, women reluctantly search for the supposed strength within them. Even the Delhi Police trains its ladies in this style. Inside the same state’s borders are 200 akharas, out of which 50 are certified and equipped with coaches, gymnasiums and mats. An average of 25 girls wrestle in three: Guru Premnath Akhara in Gur Mandi, Guru Radhe Shyam Akhara in Gokulpuri and the Indira Gandhi Stadium.
Wrestling is an Olympic sport, points out Jagdish Kaliraman, son of India’s Olympic wrestling champion, late Master Chandgi Ram. He is the on-screen and off-screen coach to Anushka Sharma and Salman Khan in Yash Raj’s upcoming movie Sultan. “What is essentially a ‘gaon ka khel’ needs the attention of urban India. It must be reinvented as something cool,” he says. His sisters Sonika and Deepika were the pilot batch of female wrestlers who entered dangals (mud fighting) in the late 90s. In 2009, Sonika won a silver medal at the national level and was denied a place in the Commonwealth Games. After much pleading, the Wrestling Federation of India gave her a conditional offer of a place in top 3, if she beat 15 players. She broke the 73 kg weight category and defeated 14. Ultimately, a far less experienced girl participated in the Commonwealth Games and India lost a medal. While Sonika gave up and settled abroad, Deepika runs a girls akhara near Dwarka. “The Mudra Credit Guarantee Fund encourages women entrepreneurship, but it takes six to seven years to register a body with sports federations. A web of sanctions and approvals trap our resources and energy,” says Deepika, who spends `25,000 a month in maintenance and still can’t afford to pay her coaches or modernise her facility.
In Delhi villages like Narela, Bawana, Najafgarh and Kanjhawala, akharas run purely on the enthusiasm of the locals. Babita Nagar is a lady wrestler employed by the Delhi Police, which mostly offers constable ranks in its limited vacancies for wrestlers. She says a diet of 60 litres of milk and 2 to 3 litres of ghee in a month is no longer enough. Today’s khusti requires food supplements. The monthly dietary cost for a child is `1,500 and that of an adult is `5,000. “With corporate funding, only the top three players get rich. Nothing trickles down into the system for others to benefit from,” she adds.
Deepak Anusuya Prasad agrees with Babita. Born to a family of pehelwans, he gave up his MBA degree to mentor young girls. Five years ago, he convinced village elders in Muzaffarnagar’s Chaproli village to allow women to mud wrestle. An investment of `25 lakh was hence made and a modern centre for girls is coming up there. “Since there are no female fighting partners, these girls have to battle boys and only a family with wrestling legacy is able to justify putting its girls in a contact sport,” he says. Divya Sain, who is his niece, was the first girl to fight boys in dangals and remains undefeated. “Her mother used to stitch loincloths for wrestlers and her father would go to sell them. Many would gather to watch Divya take on the boys and that’s how the family earned,” shares Prasad. Delhi stands nowhere compared to the world class facilities run by Haryana’s Nidani Gaon, Sonepat and Rohtak, feels Praveen Kumar, a women’s wrestling coach. “Meerut’s Chaudhary Charan Singh University has saunas and gymnasiums. Why can’t Delhi University’s Aditi Mahavidyalaya in Bawana, where many girls wish to fight, do the same?” he asks. Today, the Delhi Wrestling Association invites girls from Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab to pose as its players during inter-state tournaments.
Meanwhile, the Pro-Kabaddi and Pro-Wrestling Leagues are changing the state of indigenous contact sports in India. The total cost of a kabaddi franchise has gone up from `60 lakh in 2014 to `1.25, `1. 37 and `2 crore in each subsequent year. DoIT Sports Management that owns the Delhi kabaddi franchise, pioneers in ‘Rurban’ rural and metro sporting ventures in India and has plans to nurture raw akhara power and make it compatible with international standards that focus more on tact. Although there aren’t enough women for an eight franchise league, it’s a start. In January, CBSE too introduced boxing, wrestling and kabaddi in its curriculum. Strength, however, has weaknesses of its own.