Opinion Express View on wrestlers’ protest: Unseeing eye, deaf ear

How many times do victims have to speak up before they get justice” — asks Vinesh Phogat, as the unprecedented sit-in by the country’s top women wrestlers at Jantar Mantar completes a month. She could as well ask a question even more damning of the system that seems to have turned its back to those who have done the country proud, stood at the victory podium, medals around their neck, the national anthem filling the stadium: How many times do victims have to speak up before they are even heard? Because by all accounts, the wrestlers who have made allegations of sexual harassment against the Wrestling Federation chief and BJP MP, Brij Bhushan Singh, are unseen and unheard by the powers that be. This unseeing eye and deaf ear, this hard wall of silence, worsens their ordeal that began when they took their courage in both hands and mounted a collective fight against a powerful politician and sports administration. The report by a probe committee led by boxing great MC Marykom hasn’t yet been made public. IOA president PT Usha berated them for taking to the street. Delhi Police continue to drag their feet in a case involving a minor. Members of the Oversight Committee asked for audio and video evidence of Singh’s sexual advances.

In a piece written for this newspaper, Phogat shared her experience of sleeping under the stars and fighting to be heard by those who, in earlier times, would rush to be in the same frame during victory celebrations. For the gritty Haryana pehlwan, the hurt is, most of all, about being stonewalled by those who celebrate “desh ki betiyan” in photo-ops and slogans — but only till the nation’s daughters speak up and demand justice. The only voice from the ruling party that has been heard during this Wrestlers vs Singh showdown is that of Singh. The five-time MP from UP has sought to malign the victims. In his many interviews, he has called the protesting wrestlers pawns in a game that ostensibly involves opposition parties, a top industrialist, one “businessman baba” and a top official of the Sports Authority. He is being given the room to make unsubstantiated claims and to smear what is Indian sport’s most serious and sweeping case of alleged sexual harassment.

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Singh’s party, the BJP, has made no move, so far, to reach out to the protesting women athletes or to censure or distance itself from Singh — no minister, not even Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani, who speaks her mind and is otherwise not known to hold back from making a point on women’s issues, has reached out to them. Of course, the legal process must run its course but that cannot be cover for the sheer withholding and denial of sensitivity by the ruling party and government. It was the BJP government that asked a minister to step down from office days after testimonies by women alleging sexual harassment and predatory behaviour became public — MJ Akbar, then MoS for external affairs, had to resign in 2018. And yet, five years on, Singh struts around, as the women, among the nation’s finest wrestlers, protest on a footpath and in the open. Phogat wrote that her mother is scared and worried and keeps asking her, “Beta, kuch hoga? (Will something happen?” The least she deserves is an honest answer — from those who have the power to act against the accused.