Why the wrestlers’ protest matters so much to the sisterhood of working women

New Delhi: Wrestlers Vinesh Phogat, Sangeeta Phogat and Bajrang Punia with supporters during their protest march towards new Parliament building, in New Delhi, Sunday, May 28, 2023. (PTI Photo/Kamal Singh)(PTI05_28_2023_000155A)Far away from the fussy scholarly histories of the public archives and speeches, often ignored by the commentariat, lies a secret history of social change. It is written by the private conversations within families. It is a personal history of who murmured words of encouragement, of who cooked the meals in a crisis, of who spent time and effort in protecting and caring for us when we dared to resist the state or social convention, of negotiations between fathers and daughters. This is a history of the quotidian underlying the history of the nation.

The spectacle of violence against champions protesting sexual violence in the Indian wrestling federation is not merely a question of legalese and tropes of technocratic “due process” for our women. It is not a matter of honouring medals or laurels alone, but the honour we accord as a society to the hard-won battles of women seeking independent livelihoods and a role in the public sphere. Sports are an important source of jobs too. Her-story, the personal history and future of India’s working professional women, is at stake here.

Rudraneil Sengupta’s remarkable book ‘Enter the Dangal: Travels through India’s Wrestling Landscape’ (2016) shows how the history of women in Indian wrestling is nothing but a history of inter-generational social change. In one of our most conservative and patriarchal regions, this is a history etched by fathers braving ridicule and violence for pushing women’s presence in the sport, of mothers preparing nutritious meals for girls who have historically been underfed, of brothers and male friends organising lighting and safe spaces, of sisters being brave for each other, and young women being brave when chased out by villagers with sticks. These families, and their daughters, pushed back on the very foundation of muscled Haryanvi masculinity, a state where only two of ten women are in the paid workforce.

Unlike what Bollywood feel-good films on wrestling will have you believe, Indian women’s presence in wrestling is also a messy history about men debating and mirroring social change amongst each other. From the age of sixteen, Mahavir Phogat trained under Master Chandgi Ram — a handsome runaway with three wives who trained two daughters as wrestlers. Ram encouraged Phogat to train women in his family as well. “Masterji opened my eyes” — Phogat says about Ram in Sengupta’s book. The rest is a well-known history of grit and glory.

Any Indian family, especially one that has raised daughters to earn recognition and income through work beyond domestic roles, viscerally connects with the wrestlers holding vigil. I went to Jantar Mantar with a friend and broke down in tears after seeing the wrestlers sleeping under their mosquito nets. The pain is instinctive and shared by many. For fifteen years, I surveyed women who were the first to take up a job in their families, cultivating identities beyond motherhood and marriage. Much like me, irrespective of their political stripes, caste or faith, most of the women I interviewed have been obsessively watching the wrestlers’ protest unfold, hoping Indian institutional life does not fail independent women yet again.
We are no medalists or sportswomen, but working women who feel a sense of sisterhood with others who face the harsh brunt of a masculine economy, where safety, housing, or a steady income often depends on the good opinion of a powerful male. The fate of the ongoing conversation between protesting wrestlers and various organs of our state, police and media will signal the value Indian public life places on the everyday professional struggles, pains and precarity of India’s working women and the men and families that encourage girls to break norms. Studies show that families support women to pursue professional ambitions when they have role-models and media stories that amplify women’s career achievements. Watching such role-models being treated with indignity certainly won’t encourage conservative families to defy gender norms. In fact, we could expect them to double down on restricting female mobility.

The medals being featured in our headlines are not merely shiny accomplishments earned for extraordinary talent displayed during fights in a wrestling stadium; they also embody the history of personal and professional struggles faced by the first generation of women pahalwans in the akhada of social change. They hold the courage and fears of fathers who have dared to re-imagine what a woman’s body can be and do in North India. Should these medals be immersed into the Ganga, this stunning history of struggle in an unfair landscape will be robbed and hollowed of its meaning. In a country where women are still fighting for their freedom, the hopes and aspirations of many first-generation young women striving in the public sphere and the world of work shall drown with those medals as well.

All views personal