There have been several public protests in Delhi against the State during Narendra Modi’s prime ministership. The Shaheen Bagh sit-in and the long farmers’ protest are the obvious examples. Compared to these mobilisations, the dharna at Jantar Mantar led by Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik, Sangeeta Phogat and Bajrang Punia is a small affair. The reason it has dominated the headlines in newspapers, social media and television news is not its size but the starkness of the moral choice it offers readers, viewers and citizens.
On the one side, there are three famous medal-winning women protesting against the sexual harassment female wrestlers have allegedly suffered at the hands of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the president of the Wrestling Federation of India.Seven women, including a minor girl, have complained in writing to thiseffect.
On the other side, there is Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, a six-time MP, with a rap sheet as long as his time in politics. He has confessed to shooting a man dead on television, and has, in his time, been charged with everything — from robbery to murder. Ranged in his defence are the Delhi Police who didn’t register an FIR till the Supreme Court intervened, the solicitor-general who justified the Delhi Police’s inaction on the grounds of due process, and Anurag Thakur, the minister of sport who buried the matter in an Oversight Committee whose report hasn’t been made public.
This is not a difficult matter to take sides on. It is made easier by the socially mainstream identities of the protesting wrestlers as well as the black-and-white rightness of their cause. One, they aren’t guilty of being Muslim as the Shaheen Bagh women were. Two, while there were plausible arguments made in favour of the prime minister’s farm laws, it’s hard to make a case for sexually molesting female athletes.
A government that claims to live by slogans like ‘Beti Padhao, Beti Bachao’ is now playing defence for a politician who publicly revels in his reputation for violence. The optics of this are so bad that even instinctively craven newspapers and news anchors have begun to report extensively on the dharna.
Despite this, only a handful of sportspersons have come out in solidarity with the wrestlers. Neeraj Chopra, who won an Olympic gold with the javelin, was the first. After his pioneering example, we have had Sania Mirza (tennis), Virender Sehwag, Kapil Dev, Navjot Sidhu, Harbhajan Singh, Irfan Pathan (cricket), Ravi Kumar Dahiya (wrestling), Nikhat Zareen (boxing), Rani Rampal and Pargat Singh (hockey), publicly ask for justice for the protesting women. Of these, Sidhu and Harbhajan Singh belong to oppositional political parties. No active cricketers or coaches or franchise-owners have, so far, supported the wrestlers’ cause.
Vinesh Phogat, who has been the dharna’s most articulate spokesperson, called out India’s cricketers for their silence. Given cricket’s complete dominance as a sport in India, given how much cricketers are looked up to, why has no active cricketer offered solidarity? Couldn’t they even put out a neutral statement asking for justice and impartiality?
This is a genuinely interesting question, not just a rhetorical one. This is, after all, exactly what Neeraj Chopra did. His statement is a model of intelligent empathy. “It hurts me to see our athletes on the streets demanding justice. They have worked hard to represent our great nation and make us proud. As a nation we are responsible for safeguarding the integrity and dignity of every individual, athlete or not. What’s happening should never happen. This is a sensitive issue and must be dealt with in an impartial and transparent manner. Pertaining authorities must take quick action in order to ensure that justice is served.”
Chopra is an active athlete. He has most of his career in front of him. The Indian Olympic Association likes pliant athletes. He could have milked his unprecedented Olympic success as the winner of India’s first track and field gold without worrying about the dharna at Jantar Mantar, but he went out of his way to express solidarity. Which brings us back to Vinesh Phogat’s question: what is it that stops India’s cricketers from doing the same?
One possible explanation is that team sports make the individual player answerable to the authority of a club or franchise and that inhibits behaviour that might be seen as out of line with a ruling consensus. Colin Kaepernick’s career was effectively ended by the hostility of National Football League owners to any form of protest that might be seen as unpatriotic or provocative by American football’s overwhelmingly white audience. The English Premier League with its working-class roots might still throw up Marcus Rashford, willing to take issue with the government of the day for the sake of a cause, but the IPL, given its franchise origins, is more like the NFL than the Premier League.
The instinctive deference that Indian cricketers offer up to authority has something to do with its shamateur past. State cricket used to be run by provincial businessmen like P.M. Rungta and N. Srinivasan who found sinecures for players in their companies and elsewhere so that they could make a living that the game itself couldn’t then provide. They were cricket’s patrons, and the players were their clients.
This habit of being creatures of patrons survived cricket’s transformation into a hugely lucrative sport. With the coming of the IPL came proper cricketing livelihoods but also new masters. India’s biggest businessmen bought into the new golden goose as did India’s most powerful politicians. A tournament controlled by a cricket association led by the Union home minister’s son and franchises owned by tame billionaires together created cascading incentives for conformity. A career spent on the auction blocks in a sport lacking any tradition of trade union solidarity made the Indian cricketer sports’ most pliant professional.
Vinesh Phogat name-checked Sachin Tendulkar. Why, she asked, is the God of Cricket silent? Tendulkar has spoken on public matters before. When Rihanna and Greta Thunberg expressed their solidarity with the farmers’ protests in 2021, Tendulkar tweeted: “India’s sovereignty cannot be compromised. External forces can be spectators but not participants. Indians know India and should decide for India. Let’s remain united as a nation. #IndiaTogether #IndiaAgainstPropaganda.”
With honorable exceptions like Kapil Dev, Bishen Bedi and Irfan Pathan, Indian cricketers are proxies, not agents. A Delhi Police constable has more agency than the average franchise star. Vinesh Phogat will have to win her battle without the help of her cricketing compatriots. Like hamsters on a wheel, they’re too busy pedaling to look outside their gilded cage.
mukulkesavan@hotmail.com
