57makes its way to the ground. Matches
can last more than half an hour, and
can become very physically demanding.
Although kicks and punches are not
allowed, it doesn’t take long for blood to
spill to the ground, often intermingled
with sweat and tears.
This is a particularly tough session
given that the start of the tournament
season is just around the corner.
Most competitions – called dangals –
are held in rusty building structures on
the outskirts of small and medium-sized
towns. During matches, it gets
so crowded inside that it becomes
difficult to move, and so bets – the
core business of many a sport – are
shouted out loudly by members of the
audience. In most places, there are no
women, since they have traditionally
been banned from attending and
taking part in such games given the
masculine tradition.
The makings of an icon
But things are changing fast. A few
female teenagers have decided to
challenge the status quo of the sport
Top Kushti, the
precursor of wrestling,
is thousands of years
old and is a national
sport in Indiaand, in turn, Indian society, by starting
to train and compete in kushti. Female
wrestler Divya Kakran even fights with
men – and she seldom loses.
“I was six when I wrestled for the
first time”, the 18-year-old recalls at her
home in a suburb in Delhi. Her father, an
ex-wrestler who never won anything, sits
besides her, listening carefully. They are
flanked by a wall hanging Kakran’s 43
medals. “My family needed the money,
and it all started out as a joke. I was
strong, so the audience at a dangal bet
I wouldn’t be able to defeat a boy.
“But I did. I had been secretly
training with a guru who didn’t mind
teaching girls, and after that, I started to
compete more often”.
She is not the first to break kushti’s
unwritten laws banning women from
the sport, but she is certainly the most
successful. And now, after winning gold
at the Asian Games in Greco-Roman
wrestling – in the cadet category –
she eyes a medal in the forthcoming
2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. “I train
in traditional kushti, which is more
demanding, and then learn the specificrules for other styles to compete
abroad”, she says.
Unsurprisingly, she has become a
role model for many other girls aspiring
to train in kushti, and her growing
success keeps bringing girls as young
as six to the akharas. “I don’t think
we challenge the historical rules of
kushti. We abide by them, but take the
sport into the 21st century, where the
constitution states that there should be
no gender discrimination”, she says.
Many disagree. “They say women
can’t fight wearing only the janghia,
which leaves the torso exposed.
They argue that this fact distorts the
techniques used to wrestle for hundreds
or years. It’s true to some degree, but
it’s also true that kushti took inspiration
from Persian wrestling, and that many
of the things that were permitted in
malla-yuddha are now forbidden.
India must not forget its roots, but has
to keep evolving and looking forward,”
says Kakran.