Being Vinesh Phogat – Struggling with Power

“I’m fighting for the future generation of wrestlers. Not for myself. My career is over and this is my last Olympics. I want to fight for the young female wrestlers, so they can wrestle safely. That’s why I was in Jantar Mantar and that’s why I’m here.”

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This was Vinesh Phogat speaking to the ESPN at the Paris Olympics. Shortly after, she defeated the leading Olympic and world champion and entered a territory where no Indian female wrestler had gone before her: the Olympic final. >

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

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The story of this feisty 29-year-old begins with a difficult childhood that included the early loss of a wrestler father who chose to mentor her and her two sisters. By recognizing her distinctly feisty spirit and encouraging her indomitable will, her father and after him her mother gave her a difficult gift: a nearly impossible identity as a successful female wrestler for a teenager from the macho state of Haryana. >

As she won one match after another, she increasingly came under the brunt of politically powerful men in the Indian wrestling world who controlled the funding and selection of wrestlers for prestigious matches. Many abused their power to molest young and scared girls whose future they felt they owned. Once Vinesh stood on her own two feet, she decided to speak publicly about the routine vilification and sexual exploitation that most female wrestlers, including Olympic medal winners, had been subjected to for years at the hands of top officials of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI).

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Once she opened up, her sisters and other enthusiastic supporters joined her. They were beaten and abused by the police, booed by officials in the media, and strong legal intervention was conspicuously absent despite the filing of petitions. When forced to intervene, state authorities began to talk about the need for “objective” assessment and properly “factualized” petitions with solid evidence. What, one might ask, is objectivity in a civil society where those at the top of the power pyramid have traditionally been men who have designed the norms and institutions that determine the law, and then filled their governing bodies with politically powerful groups of brothers? >

Such a response from a government that has repeatedly paid lip service to Nari Shakti empowerment showed how gender divides power more firmly in India than caste or color. From Manipur to Hathras, such cases take months before FIRs are filed. If the sympathizers and victims (if they are still alive) are in harnas to demand justice, the police-controlled streets push them back while political decision-makers look away. The case against ex-WFI leader and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the man who ruled the fortunes of Indian wrestlers with an iron fist for over a decade, is still ongoing. >

Vinesh, despite broken knees, torn ligaments and routine intimidation, rose like a phoenix to make it to the Olympics and defeat a world champion. Then suddenly it was heard that she had lost the chance to win silver, if not gold, because of the confusion created by what a senior sports reporter described as “opaque house rules” that determined the category she was placed in. “Wrestling has won, mother, I have lost, my dreams and spirit are broken,” she wrote, please forgive me.>

But because she was Vinesh, she challenged the Olympic disqualification the next day. At the time of writing, her petition had been accepted by the Court of Arbitration (CAS) for Sport. and they have said that the final verdict will be made at the end of the Games.

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It is not surprising that those who had remained silent when she was humiliated by the federation officials she had complained about were the first to send kind messages of sympathy. But we need to look beyond endless mud-raking and party politics. We should instead focus on extending the freedom that Vinesh’s confrontation with brute force in three domains at once — sports, policing and party politics — has created for all women. She has dissolved the identity of girls from ordinary backgrounds as Indian-Haryanvi-wrestler-woman, until the idea of ​​being just an iconic wrestler or athlete or writer seems to us as natural and unselfconscious as a giant Peepul tree growing out of natural soil. >

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At times like these, a male supremacist political system like ours will always defend itself vociferously. This is further reinforced by the fact that the system stands on four male-dominated pillars of democracy, which are closely interlinked. Vinesh’s anger and being repeatedly dragged over coals has helped us ‘see’ the truth about our official rules and regulations that guide the courts, as experienced by victimized women in their daily 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 the ‘victims’. >

Logic, as the old proverb goes, lies in the eye of the logician.

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Vinesh’s tireless pursuit of justice has proven that no law gives men who are heads of governments or educational institutions or federations or recruitment agencies or casting agencies of film studios the right to molest women players or actors. This was unnecessary as our laws (even after amendment) have often failed to address the main reason: easy access of men to women under their control. Accused after accused tell the media how the footage of them touching women inappropriately has been manipulated. They had ‘touched’, hugged or held the women as a gesture of affection, like a father or brother. >

No law silences women who are subjected to physical and mental harassment. But that has not been necessary, since most women who indulge in male harassment need the job and often, as in Vinesh’s case, crave a chance to prove their undeniable professional excellence. No law gives officials in WFI or elsewhere the exclusive power to impose categories on women athletes other than those for which they are professionally suited. That is not necessary, since our micro-laws for determining categories remain opaque and every new federation chief interprets them as he pleases. No law requires the central sports minister to prove equal treatment by reading out a list of how much money the state has spent on Vinesh’s training. That is not necessary at all. But Mansukh Mandaviya did, and he did it on the day Vinesh was heartbreakingly stripped of her hard-won glory.
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Before women in India can be legally equal, they must also be socially equal and have a seat in all representative bodies that decide their fate.>

“Equality,” observes Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dubé of Canada, “is not just 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 an equal sense of self-worth.”>

And to promote a greater understanding of freedom as gender equality in a deeply unequal society, and to share with hundreds of young female wrestlers what Barack Obama once called “the audacity of hope,” the nation should bow down to and honor this brave young woman.

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