The nation’s all-time great track star and Indian Olympic Association (IOA) president P T Usha thinks the Jantar Mantar protest by the wrestlers against WFI president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh has hurt the country’s image. She labelled the Olympians taking up the cause of the women wrestlers alleging sexual harassment against Singh, indisciplined.
For someone so conscious about the nation’s global perception, it would be interesting to know how Usha feels about Singh representing Indian wrestling on the world stage. The police complaint by seven women wrestlers, one of them a minor, isn’t the WFI president’s first brush with the law. Indicted under TADA for allegedly harbouring associates of Dawood Ibrahim in the ’90s, Singh’s name figures in several ongoing court cases.
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Usha’s comments had come about a day after World Championship medalist Vinesh Phogat, the face of the protest, told this newspaper that the indifference of other sportspersons towards their fight showed their timidity in standing up to those in power. Heartbreakingly for Phogat and the Olympic medalists Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia — the much-celebrated grapplers spending their nights under the stars fighting mosquitoes — the sportsperson in power, read Usha, wasn’t just insensitive to the complainants but also undermining this unprecedented agitation.
Sounding like a matriarch angered by a family secret getting leaked, Usha pulled up the wrestlers for taking to the streets and not approaching the IOA. Had she kept herself abreast with the intriguing Wrestlers vs Singh saga, she would have understood the reason for the players’ mistrust in the system and past champions.
It’s been three months since the sports ministry put in place a high-profile probe panel — chaired by boxing legend MC Mary Kom and Olympic medalist Yogeshwar Dutt among the members — to look into the sexual harassment allegations against Singh. A full report is still awaited. A disclaimer at this stage of the article wouldn’t be out of place. Like the ruling party sitting MP Singh, both Usha and Mary Kom had been nominated to the Rajya Sabha by the BJP. Dutt has contested an election on a BJP ticket.
The government did share what it called the “major findings” of the report prepared by the Mary Kom committee but was mysteriously silent on the core issue — the serious charges against the sitting MP Singh. Going to Delhi Police too didn’t help much. They dragged their feet, dilly-dallied in filing the FIR, till the Supreme Court stepped in.
Pushed to the corner, the wrestlers moved to Jantar Mantar. This is when the IOA should have reached out to the wrestlers. The onus was also on Usha to win back the confidence of her fellow athletes — not just the Olympians giving interviews to the media but more importantly, the minor girl living the trauma of repeating her sexual harassment ordeal.
Usha, the ’80s sprint queen, belongs to the era when athletes didn’t have forums to air their grievances. Back in the day, the federations’ office-bearers were obliged to constitute only one committee that made the selection. POSH and ICC (Internal Complaints Committee) didn’t exist.
Had Usha taken a short walk from her Rajya Sabha MP accommodation to Jantar Mantar, she would have understood the gravitas of the moment. Lending ears to those on the fringes of the protest would have educated her about what this means to the wrestling fraternity.
In the early days of the protest, there was a young mother of a budding wrestler talking to a television channel. She was worried about sending her to camps since she read about the allegations. She pointed to Vinesh and Sakshi and said, “Look at them, they are role models for every young girl in the village. Now, they sit here as if they are nobody. If they are this helpless and don’t feel safe, what about my young girl,” she said while stopping the flow of tears with her dupatta. The reporter stopped her questions, rubbed the woman’s back. Going beyond her call of duty consoled her, “Everything will be fine, there will be a change.”
The “change” that everyone at Jantar Mantar talks about concerns Singh. He has been in charge of the wrestling federation for more than a decade. During his reign, the sport has been most consistent at the Olympics. Since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, there hasn’t been a Summer Games where an Indian wrestler has not been on the podium. But even the Mary Kom committee’s interim report points to WFI’s structural inadequacies. They mention the absence of the ICC, and lack of communication between the federation and wrestlers. But there’s more to the story.
Tales of Singh’s autocratic ways have been doing the rounds for years now. His appalling abuse of position can be best viewed during the national championships. The scenes are a throwback to the age of monarchs. Sitting on the stadium dais like an emperor watching hand-to-hand combat at a coliseum, he would announce impromptu gifts to winners, change the verdict of a referee or, as is seen in a viral YouTube video, deliver a rasping slap to an out-of-line wrestler.
Vinesh, at The Indian Express Idea Exchange, shared how things worked in Singh’s WFI. “He will do whatever he feels like… Federation officials keep troubling us for the smallest of things… They threaten that somebody had complained against you, Neta (Singh) heard of it and he’s very angry, so be careful.” Meanwhile, wrestlers who toe his line, and be at his beck and call would get rewarded with plum post-retirement postings.
Usha has been around for long enough to decipher the difference between institutions and fiefs, the difference between appointment and co-option. She had a chance to be the bulwark of the “change” that Jantar Mantar was demanding. Usha seems to have missed the grand podium once again.
sandeep.dwivedi@expressindia.com