The public reaction in India to Vinesh Phogat’s exit from the Olympics has been unsettling — not because she left unexpectedly but because statements by political leaders, public personalities, and many people (as spotted on social media platforms) reveal no introspection, and no concern for the wrestlers’ conditions in the country.
India’s administration of wrestling sports has been far from ideal. Recall the wrestlers, especially females, whom the Indian government virtually abandoned ahead of the Asian Games in Hangzhou; Antim Panghal, who could not compete under the Indian flag despite winning bronze at the World Championships because of the complacency of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI); the lower funding and vexation of private sponsorships for female wrestlers; and the opacity surrounding the WFI’s operations.
Also recall the police and government inaction that forced Ms. Phogat et al. to protest in New Delhi, demanding justice over allegations of sexual harassment against former WFI chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh and the subsequent violent crackdown by the police.
Succeeding in spite of barriers
The rules that led to Ms. Phogat’s disqualification from the 50-kg wrestling contest at the Paris Olympics were always in place. They are not new. Yet they became a problem when she was found to have been 100 grams over the 50-kg limit on the second day of the stipulated requirement for the category.
We need actions that could prevent incidents like Ms. Phogat’s disqualification in the future by establishing institutions that produce more and more good sportswomen, in healthy, sensitive, and stable conditions, with the goal of consigning the inalienable arbitrariness of competitive sports to the sidelines where it belongs. Instead, we have statements only concerned with the arbitrariness of Ms. Phogat’s disqualification and not with the systemic issues that force India to pin all its medal-winning hopes on a few sportspersons — the people who have succeeded in spite of institutional barriers.
Ms. Phogat had once even said Mr. Singh had “mentally harassed and tortured” her after her outing at the Tokyo Olympics. And as Jonathan Selvaraj documented in Sportstar, Ms. Phogat could not compete in the 50-kg category at the Paris Olympics “for reasons beyond her control” and, could not make it to the 53-kg category because Ms. Panghal had already secured that slot. “Phogat desperately asked for trials to determine who would represent India at the Olympics for that weight. The federation didn’t budge. If she had to go to the Olympics, [she] had to wrestle at 50 kg or she wouldn’t get to wrestle at all.”
But now, just grams away from a silver or gold medal, there are already allegations of a conspiracy from various quarters over Ms. Phogat’s exit.
Losing is verboten
Some have advanced less direct but arguably more damaging claims in the form of speculation. Yet others have said Prime Minister Narendra Modi “let” Ms. Phogat to participate in the Olympics “despite” her involvement in the protests last year and that she has disappointed him and the country by losing. The government of Ms. Phogat’s home State, Haryana, has decided to felicitate her upon her return as if she were a silver medallist.
These statements sound at first blush like shows of support — indicating faith in Ms. Phogat’s ability to win — but are they? The rhetoric swirling around them is disinterested in actually improving the conditions of Indian women in sports. It is about refusing any outcome other than a podium finish for Ms. Phogat, and the confusion and moral panic over the statements’ authors not knowing how to celebrate the efforts of someone who did her best yet still lost in the face of arbitrary but pre-existing rules.
People routinely give it their all and still lose. Equally, arbitrariness is part of the foundation of sporting events. (There might be more legitimate questions about the matters to which arbitrariness can be justifiably applied but that is a separate discussion.) Researchers and journalists have exhaustively documented these facts. The real issue is losing has become verboten in India.
Fixation on winning
That the country lacks a sporting culture that is not true to its spirit is evident even in its wealthy cricketing realm. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), led by the son of the Union Home Minister, wields considerable political clout and financial muscle to modify tournaments to be most convenient to the Indian cricket team. In the recently concluded men’s T20 cricket World Cup, the BCCI arranged for the team to play its warm-up and opening matches at the same ground, avoid night games (ostensibly to maximise television viewership in India), and to know where its semifinal match-up would be held well in advance. While it is questionable whether this prescience conferred the team with any real advantages, why go to all this trouble to begin with?
The antipathy towards losing is not restricted to sports, of course, and has infused many aspects of India under Mr. Modi. They range from the BJP government’s claims of being the world’s “vishwaguru”, a primordial originator of knowledge, to Prime Minister Modi’s studied refusal to acknowledge or even talk about several issues that have embarrassed his government over the last decade. Even when he won his third term in Parliament with fewer seats than expected, observers quickly noticed a change in his body language, his familiar bravado and irreverence in interactions with his colleagues subdued by a more deferential attitude.
Many seem eager to celebrate Ms. Phogat’s phantom victory without engaging meaningfully with the distal causes of her exit and mitigating the conditions still causing others like her to lose out. In this and many other circumstances, political narratives — and the basest social and political attitudes from which they draw their power — have encouraged us to overlook the travails of those who have lost due to conditions out of their control and fixate instead on winning alone.
Published - August 08, 2024 06:32 pm IST
