Pride turns into shame

By M L Satyan

Bengaluru, June 1, 2012: As everyone in the country, I too was looking forward to see the mega inauguration of the magnificent Central Vista building on the morning of May 28.

The yagna, reception, honour, and installation of Sengole, the multireligious prayer, honoring of the construction workers and the speech by the Prime Minister gave the impression of a well-planned event.

When the Parliament building was being inaugurated, just less than 2 km away, the protesting wrestlers had to face a hard time with the Delhi Police as their plan to hold a sit-in outside the new parliament was flogged into the ground.

The wrestlers, including Olympic medallists Bajrang Punia, Sakshi Malik, and double World Championships medallist Vinesh Phogat have been protesting at the Jantar Mantar since April 23 demanding the arrest of Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh over the allegations of sexual harassment levelled by 7 women wrestlers, including one minor girl.

Unprecedented scenes of police dragging the Olympic and world championships medal-winning players were witnessed when the wrestlers and their supporters breached the security cordon ahead of their march towards the new Parliament building for the planned women’s ‘Mahapanchayat’.

The wrestlers did not have permission to move toward the new Parliament building, hours after it was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and when they were stopped by police, an ugly scuffle broke out.

All the wrestlers were forcibly detained by the police and were also removed from their protest site at the Jantar Mantar area in the national capital. Later, an FIR against them was filed for violation of law and order.

Visuals of the athletes being dragged and carried off in buses went viral, sparking criticism from some top athletes and opposition politicians. In their statement, the wrestlers decried the police action against them and said they had been treated like criminals. “Have female athletes committed some crime by asking for justice for the sexual harassment committed against them?” they asked.

The pictures of how the wrestlers were mistreated by the police were indeed heart-touching and disturbing. The spontaneous questions came to my mind were: Am I living in a democratic country? Why is the Human Rights Commission a mere spectator? Is India safe for women?

Today, all the top wrestlers, including Sakshi Malik, Bajrang Punia and Vinesh Phogat, put out a statement on their respective social media accounts, saying they would go to Haridwar to immerse the medals into the holy river at 6 pm. “These medals are our lives, our souls. There will be no reason to live after throwing them in the Ganga today,” it read further.

“It came to our mind how to return the medals to our President, who is herself a woman. Our conscience said NO, because she is sitting just 2 km away from us and did not utter a single word,” the statement read.

The wrestlers said, “The Prime Minister Narendra Modi who used to call us the daughters of this homeland, did not even once show his concern for us. Rather, he invited the oppressor to the inauguration of the new Parliament building who even posed for photographs in bright white clothes. That brightness is piercing us like it wants to convey that he is the system,” it read.

“After that there is no point of living, so we will sit on a hunger strike until death at India Gate,” Sakshi Malik said in the statement written in Hindi. The same statement was also shared by her compatriot Vinesh Phogat.

The influential politician and MP of the ruling BJP has constantly denied all the allegations and called the protests politically motivated. The Sports Minister Anurag Thakur said the wrestlers had not been stopped from protesting at their designated spots in Delhi. He said appropriate action would be taken against Singh once Delhi Police completed their investigations. He also asked the wrestlers to register their statements in the case.

Whatever said and done, the whole nation witnessed the ugly scenes of undemocratic way of ill-treatment of the medal-winning wrestlers.

At this critical time let us pray with Rabindranath Tagore:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high,
Where knowledge is free,
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments,
By narrow domestic wall;
Where words come out from the depth of truth,
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection,
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way,
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee,
Into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

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