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ENTER THE DANGAL
The sport of wrestling is not just about strength and agility but also about thinking quickly
Rudraneil Sengupta
HarperCollins
264 pages, Rs 350
Wrestling is yet another example of the urban-rural divide in India. City dwellers pay scant any attention to the sport. It rarely makes it to drawing room conversations, except maybe when a Sushil Kumar or a Sakshi Malik wins a medal in the Olympics. Never mind that a city like Delhi has innumerable akhadas tucked away where youngsters under strict discipline learn the tricks of this ancient Indian sport.
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In the countryside, wrestling thrives. Dangals draw mammoth crowds. Companies, especially those with a large presence in the rural markets, have started to sponsor these dangals, which see grapplers slug it out on pits of loose earth, often to the best of drums. Prize money in some dangals can go up to a crore. As a result, the lot of wrestlers has improved: they no longer find the need to moonlight as bouncers and enforcers. Most of them move around in swank SUVs.
Rudraneil Sengupta brings to life this world of wrestlers: what motivates them to undertake this life of hard work and abstinence. Enter the Dangal is racy and packed with wonderful insights. Sengupta touches upon the past of the sport and explores it present. And this is no armchair book: there is solid research as well as vivid field reports in the mix. Anybody who has interest in wrestling will find it hard to put the book down.
Wrestling goes back a long way in India. Mention of it can be found in the Ramayana as well as the Mahabharata. In the latter, Bhim, Keetchak and Duryodhan were accomplished wrestlers. So was Hanuman.
In the Middle Ages, wrestling received wholesome patronage from the Mughals as well as other rulers of India. There are references of Akbar, the mightiest of Mughal rulers, stripping down to his langot for a bout or two of wrestling.
Till the early decades of the 19th century, when the troops of the Bengal Native Infantry came from the Indo-Gangetic plains, what is today Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, wrestling was the favoured sport in most units. In yet another instance of destroying a local institution, the British began to de-emphasise wrestling. It also happened that some of the “martial races”, which replaced the sepoys after the 1857 mutiny, did not have a tradition of wrestling, most notably the Gorkhas.
However, some of the royal households continued their patronage of wrestling and it remained popular in the villages. Wrestlers have worn their damaged earlobes like a badge of honour in the countryside for generations together.
The golden age of Indian wrestling came when “The Great Gama” burst on to the scene in the early 20th century, Sengupta informs us. Sponsored by the kings of Datia and Patiala amongst others, he pinned one opponent after the other. This earned him the title of Rustam-i-Hind.
He then travelled to England, with a handful of other wrestlers, including a younger brother, and threw a challenge to all wrestlers there. Not many came forward. Finally, a few accepted his challenge but could not defeat Gama. He returned to a grand reception in India and henceforth came to be called Rustam-i-Jahan.
The king of Patiala bestowed upon him large tracts of land. But all of that Gama had to leave behind when he migrated to Pakistan during Partition. His personal life was tragic. He had lost all his sons and was struck with arthritis in old age. A visitor found the great wrestler in a dank and squalid room in a hospital a few days before he died in 1960; his body had shrivelled and he was lonely and in great pain.
An important nugget of information Sengupta provides us is that the Birla family, when it came to know that the legendary wrestler was in dire straits, rushed him monetary help and also fixed a pension for him. In fact, the Birla family also patronised a well-known akhada in Delhi.
After Independence, the government took it upon itself to promote wrestling at the national level. The results were disastrous. Satpal, the famous wrestler, got to train on a jute mat for precisely a month before he was packed off to take part in the Olympics in 1972. “It’s the difference between driving a rally car on dirt tracks and racing on asphalt.” Sengupta says. Still, Satpal came sixth.
It is only in recent years that the wrestling infrastructure in the country has improved. While there were just a handful of wrestling mats in the country 20 years ago, several villages in Haryana, which seems to produce the maximum number of wrestlers, can now boast of one. Most politicians of the state find it worthwhile to get associated with one akhada or the other. It improves their connection with the people.
The sport of wrestling is not just about strength and agility but also about thinking quickly. The bout can be over in a matter of seconds. How to outwit the opponent requires quick thinking and reflexes. Moreover, wrestling is inclusive. Tournaments are not restricted to people from a community: they are open to all. In the pit, camouflaged by mud, all are equal.
