First Family of Woman Wrestling

The Phogat sisters, all six of them, and their father Mahavir, will go down in the annals of sporting history as the unit which brought Indian woman wrestling to the international mat with singular rebellion and revolution. MEENAKSHI RAO catches up with this Haryanvi family to tell you why Dangal is an apt serenade to the sport & its propellers

It is 4  am in Balali village of Bhiwani district. Daya Kaur, a hapless mother of four daughters and no son, is busy tending to the cattle, milking the buffaloes and cleaning up the brick and mortar house, as all other women in her locality. That’s Haryana for you in general, a deeply patriarchal society where women are meant only to bear kids, tend to the house and potter around closed confines fulfilling their men’s wishes, generally from behind long veils.

Daya’s daughters are up too, at least the elder two, Geeta and Babita. And no, they are not assisting their mother in household chores. They do not have a chunni on their heads. They are not wearing a salwar-kurta. Instead, they are in shorts, heads shaven, wearing sports shoes, secretly scowling at their father and going for a morning jog across the village, into the fields, over the bridge and back.

The villagers are stunned, smirking, mocking and even planning a khap against such glasnost. Daya is a worried woman, praying for her daughters’ future, especially their marriage possibilities. But her husband, an atypical Haryanvi Jat otherwise, is unrelenting. Against all odds, against the wishes of his wrestler father, against his relatives and much against the opinion of the village elders, he has decided that his daughters will work hard, much harder than all other girls put together, but not at home. They will be on the mat, fighting male wrestlers in local dangals in a contact sport — not just unheard of but plain and simple Harakiri.

Meet Mahavir Singh Phogat, the retired amateur wrestler and self-styled wrestling coach who rose to give the nation a pack of path-breaking female wrestlers, four being his daughters and two nieces. Talk to him over the phone and it’s not rustic charm that flows through. It is stern no-nonsense talk which, his now grown-up daughters tell you, is the much mellowed down version of what he used to be in their childhood, driving them mad with his strict demands on their time, social life, eating habits and training schedules.

“He was hanikarak bapu for us back then. He would not let us do anything we as girls would have wanted to. No fun, no frolic, no dancing at our friends’ weddings for us. We were not even allowed to savour gol-gappas, our favourite street-side platter. But today, having reached the peak of the sport on national and international platforms, we can only thank him for what he did for us, that too in a village where no one agreed with his decision, not his wife, not his family and certainly not his fellow villagers. Even we never wanted to wrestle and would beg our mother to make him see reason,” Babita Phogat, younger sister of Geeta Phogat, tells you.

Both the sisters have been national champions. Geeta is the first woman wrestler in the country to have clinched a Gold Medal at the Commonwealth Games in 2010, the first female wrestler to qualify for the Olympics in 2012. Babita has several medals to her name too, including Gold at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and a Bronze at the World Championship.

Babita and the entire family are just back at their village after attending the star-studded show of Dangal in Mumbai on a special invitation of Aamir Khan who plays their father in the movie. Had it not been for certain logistical problems, the Phogat family would be having fun at the recently opened billion-dollar Dubai Park and Resorts in Dubai where Khan wanted to have a world premiere of this stunning sporting film on the life and struggles of the Phogat sisters.

Aamir decided to play the multi-layered and obsessive character of Mahavir as he strongly felt that Phogat’s achievement in bringing Indian woman wrestling to the international zone is singular in the face of where it comes from. Mahavir fought mindsets that could have turned fatal, he withstood extreme social pressure, scorn, ridicule and opposition in his pursuit of honing champions in a village where there is still no sporting facility or infrastructure to talk of.

Today, he is a proud man who stood by his convictions against all odds. After all, there is no family in the country which has produced three women Olympians in the single individual discipline of female wrestling, no family that can boast of three Arjuna awardees and a Dronacharya Award coach who has more medals than he can count on the mantelpiece above his wife’s chulha, that too brought in by his daughters.

“Even if you were to ignore the sporting limitations and social pressure, there were genuine concerns like who would marry women wrestlers who have cauliflower ears. Also, as it is a contact sport, he was asked how he could allow his girls to be in a mud pit with boys in langots,” says Saurabh Duggal, author of Akhaada, an authorised biography of Mahavir Singh Phogat, released to coincide with Dangal.

Babita agrees without hesitation. “When he took us to our first dangal in the neighbouring village of Dwarka in 2002, we were so scared. The organisers flatly refused to let us participate. When my father persisted, they asked who we would fight as there were no girl wrestlers to fight with. They offered to let us fight the boys thinking my father would back out as wrestling is a contact sport. But he readily agreed and since then Geeta and I have never looked back,” she recalls.

Duggal says, it was Mahavir’s deadly combination of passion and stubbornness that propelled his daughters to become international champions. “When he started off on this project more than 16 years ago, Haryana was — and continues to be — a conservative society unable to accept such revolutionary ideas. He fought the community with his stubbornness and he ignored mindsets to do what he wanted to.  That has paid off,” he points out.

Today, Haryana sends the maximum number of women in the country to the Olympics. Close to 90 per cent women wrestlers come from Haryana. The social milieu, despite the regressive patriarchal society, is changing at least in sports. Mahavir trains a lot of children but only those having enough money for a good diet can make it to his training centre.

Wrestling, Duggal explains, is a sport closely related to north Indian agricultural states with a common culture. That’s why women wrestlers in Maharashtra or the North-East, for example, are unheard of even though male wrestling is picking up in these areas,” he says.

Mahavir may have started off due to his stubborn passion to train his daughters for the till then unclaimed Olympic Gold Medal award announced by the Chautala Government after the Sydney Olympics but his and his daughters contribution to the sport in India  has been tremendous. “All the medals that the six Phogat sisters have won, the close to `10 crore prize money they have brought in, the awards and the recognistion have had a multiplier effect on not just promoting women wrestling but also the participation of women in sports in general,” feels Duggal.

Geeta, now a DSP in Haryana Police, married to a wrestler and living in Sonipat, says the commitment to wrestling has to be complete. “Though all sports need hard work, women wrestlers need that extra speed, power and agility to survive on the mat,” she says, emerging out of a four-hour training session just a day after she returned from the premiere of Dangal.

She has no hesitation in proudly announcing that her father and family’s contribution to the sport has been comprehensive. “Not many had even thought of women wrestling before we got into the akhada. My Commonwealth Gold Medal in 2010 gave the real boost to woman wrestling and our presence on the global stage is steadily growing. I was the first woman to qualify for the Olympics in 2012. Rio had three women wrestlers with one Bronze medal. The next Olympic will only post a better score,” she promises.

The growing interest in professional leagues and the success of Pro-Wrestling League (PWL) which is in its second year in India has gone a long way in bringing the focus on women wrestling.

“The PWL is a big boost to

woman wrestling in India. As you see, in international competitions, we do not get much exposure and sometimes get out of the competition in the initial rounds. The PWL gives us a good exposure through bouts with world class wrestlers from across the spectrum,” Geeta feels. Both Geeta and Babita are in the same team and looking forward to the upcoming tournament.

Vishal Gurnani, Director, ProSportify Pvt Ltd, the commercial arm of PWL, couldn’t agree less: “The Phogat sisters symbolise female dominance in sports. It is commendable that they all come from one family. We are happy to know that the entire Phogat family is a part of the league.”

It is commendable that PWL 1 was the first big platform Olympic Bronze medalist Sakshi Malik played on. “We hope PWL 2 will produce lot more future medallists,” Gurnani adds.

But way back in 2002 when Geeta fought the village dangal as a 14-year-old, the realities were very different. The Dwarka dangal was a big draw, what with stunned spectators watching Geeta Phogat, then just 14, hair cropped, wearing tights and a T-shirt, in the mud pit for the first time. Disapproving whispers, catcalls and whistles soon turned into applause and hesitant respect as Geeta took less than two minutes to defeat her sparring male opponent. Money was showered on her and Mahavir pumped proud fists in the air. A girl, in Haryana, in the male sport of wrestling, had defeated a well-trained boy. “It was unprecedented even for us,” Babita recalls.

“The thunderous applause from an all-male crowd was unbelievable. It took a minute for the realisation to sink in that I, a girl, had defeated a boy, something papa always believed was possible. For as long as I can remember, papa had taught all of us that gender does not play any role in a person’s ability. I looked across the pit to find my father and when I saw him I noticed his eyes reflecting his pride — he now had proof that his girls were second to none,” Geeta tells you 14 years later.

But when their father took them to other dangals, like the ones in Chakhri-Dadri and Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan, he was summarily turned away. However, by then, Geeta and Babita were names to reckon with in the still unheard and unsung sport of wrestling. Geeta was a national champion and Babita well on her way.

The journey may sound smooth but the pitfalls were so huge that the Phogat family will go down in the annals of India’s sporting history as the game changers.

The grand old patriarch of this Phogat family is, however, still not entirely satisfied. His undying dream for that elusive Olympic Gold remains unachieved. But work goes on.

His son, now 13, is being trained. Sangeeta Phogat is just 18. Ritu is 23 and working hard. Vinesh Phogat, 22, and in rehab for a month more after she sprained her thigh muscle and dislocated her leg in her bout in Rio, is hungry as hell.

So, the wrestling story is far from over for India, for now, with just one Bronze in woman wrestling through the surprise entry in the name of Sakshi Mallik.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, December 25, 2016