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Journalism of Courage
Beyond Ayodhya district, across the Sarayu river, one face appears with regular frequency – on hoardings along the highway, on banners announcing a mahapanchayat, on wall posters, and outside a string of colleges on either side of the road. It’s by now a familiar figure: that of Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the man against whom some of India’s top wrestlers have raised allegations of sexual assault and had sat in protest for over a month.
This, Nawabgunj in Gonda district, is Singh’s undisputed territory, a landscape he dominates through a cluster of educational institutions and a string of schemes targeted at the youth and farmers – a largesse that has earned him unflinching loyalty among those who live and work here. Few speak about Singh and fewer about the controversy that has dominated headlines over the last month.
With around 80,000 students and over 3,500 teachers, the 54 educational institutions that Singh owns or is associated with are on either side of the Ayodhya-Gonda highway that runs through four districts — Gonda, Balrampur, Bahraich and Shravasti. But it’s Nawabgunj, about 45 km from Gonda town, that’s the headquarters of Singh’s empire that, besides the colleges, includes a hotel, a shooting range and a national wrestling academy.
In a region with few employment opportunities, the annual ‘Talent Hunt’ for the youth, Kisan Sammans – “progressive farmers” are given free calves as gifts – and the Khel Melas that Singh organises generate enough excitement for the cash awards that he doles out.
The district-level ‘Talent Hunt’ is one of the most anticipated events in Gonda’s college and school calendar, with the OMR test papers circulated across all institutions in the district and beyond. The winner usually gets a motorcycle or a Scooty while the second-, third- and fourth-prize winners get cash rewards ranging from Rs 22,000 to Rs 2,000.
“We have witnessed the rise of Brij Bhushan’s empire over the past two decades. It all started in 1990, with the establishment of Nandini Nagar College in Nawabgunj, which officially started functioning only in 1995,” said a veteran BJP leader in the district, adding that Singh soon lent his name to a string of other business ventures – a chain of schools, colleges, the Gonda Hotel and hospitals.
According to the BJP leader, Singh’s following among youth – he was a student union leader at the Saket Degree College of Ayodhya – brought him closer to leaders of the temple movement in the 1980s and 90s. “Today, the institutions that he runs gives him complete hold over the youth and the people who work with him because the economy here practically runs around his businesses,” he said.
Local leaders talk of how Singh would make it a point to be part of inaugurations and other events, even when his wife Ketki Devi Singh was briefly MP.
Elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1991, the 66-year-old or his wife have been an MP from Uttar Pradesh almost ever since. In 1996, when Singh was denied a ticket after he was indicted in a TADA case for allegedly harbouring associates of Dawood Ibrahim, his wife Kektidevi Singh was fielded by the BJP from Gonda and won.
Spread across 10 acres, Nandini Nagar College is affiliated to Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University of Ayodhya. With sprawling fields, sports grounds and a badminton court, the college has facilities that even the university to which it is affiliated can’t boast of.
The college campus also has a five-mat state-of-the-art ‘National Wrestling Academy’, a smaller two-mat academy run by the Sports Authority of India and a large mud-pit with a gallery and a watching area that recently hosted the Open Senior National Ranking Wrestling Tournament.
But it’s Singh’s five-mat academy – with its air-conditioned galleries that offer a bird’s eye view of the ground – that has the pride of place here. Among the coaches at this academy is Alexander Shorenko, who is referred to as “videshi coach”.
Shorenko is still to pick up any Hindi and his English is functional enough for him to say that he was brought in through the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), is paid $2,000 a month and that his contract is ending in September.
Another coach, Prem Chand Yadav, says the two academies together house 100 students and five coaches – besides Shorenko, an adhoc coach, one funded by Khelo India, and two “personal coaches” of the college.
Yadav and Physical Education teacher Naveen Singh talk of how, before the controversy broke out, Bajrang Punia and Sakshi Mallik, besides other top wrestlers, were frequent visitors to the college and, like several other wrestlers, often stayed on campus to train and practice.
A few metres from the wrestling academy, past hoardings of a recently concluded Kisan Samaroh that have photographs of Bhushan and his daughter-in-law Rajshree Singh, and past a swimming pool — inaugurated in 2018 by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath — is the main college campus. The college is shut for the summer break and there are few students around.
As she walks out of the college gates, Khushi Singh, a BCA second-semester student from Bihar, stops to chat but clamps up at the mention of the recent wrestlers’ protests in Delhi. “We have heard about it but no one discusses all that here. I have been on this campus for a year and I have not heard of any such incident.”
In his office, Principal B L Singh says, “Our infrastructure is so good that over the years, the college has hosted several sports camps… We have students not just from neighbouring areas but also from Bihar and Nepal.”
Also in Nawabgunj is the Nandini Nagar Law College, Nandini Educational Institute, Nandini Nagar PG College, Nandini Nagar College of Pharmacy, Nandini Nagar Technical Campus for Engineering and Management, Women’s Educational Training College, the 100-bed Gonard Hospital and Trauma Centre, the Gonard College of Nursing and Paramedical, and the Chandra Bhan Singh Inter College and the Vipin Bihari Balika Madhyamik School – all either founded by Singh or managed by him and his family members.
The family also owns or runs at least seven schools and colleges in neighbouring Balrampur district, eight in Bahraich district, and three in Shravasti district.
A few kilometers from Nandini Nagar College is Singh’s ancestral village, Vishnoharpur. Posters of the now-cancelled June 5 rally proposed in Ayodhya are still up on either side of the road leading to the village.
Singh’s house here is a two-storey structure spread across several acres, with manicured gardens, a swanky gym, a huge parking area lined with a fleet of six SUVs and a Robinson R-66 turbine helicopter that is parked in the backyard. The caretaker says the helicopter takes off every two to three days.
Just outside the house, across a lake, are a stable and a shed for 70 cows. The caretaker at the shed says Singh often rides either of the two horses. “The horses are very attached to malik. They recognise him and know when they hear his vehicle,” he says.
Around 45 km from the family home is the Mahakavi Tulsidas PG College in Paraspur, Gonda, another of the institutions associated with Singh.
Standing under a tree as she waits for her friend, Ankita Pandey, a BA first-year student who lives in the neighbourhood, says she has heard of the controversy surrounding Singh and the wrestlers. “We do not discuss it in college. We are only concerned about our education. But my parents are worried when they hear of all this, more so because I walk to college. They have now given me a mobile phone.” she says.
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