It was a sad day for the sport of wrestling when the prominent athlete Sakshi Malik placed her wrestling shoes on the table at a press conference and announced that she was quitting the sport.
Just earlier, the five-time MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s acolyte Sanjay Singh had won the election for the Wrestling Federation of India president’s post trouncing medal-winning wrestler Anita Sheoran by 40 votes to seven.
A politician or his aide winning an election to an administrative post in a sports body is not uncommon. In fact, sport in free India is riddled with a proliferation of politicians seeking to soak in the popularity of sport and sportspeople by seeking office.
What made the scenario worse for wrestling, a sport that has landed India many medals at the world, Commonwealth and Asian levels for close to 100 years now, is that the politician who swung this election was the one accused of sexually harassing and exploiting female wrestlers and against whom athletes have been agitating for close to a year now.
Had the former WFI president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh not been a politician who is electorally important in Uttar Pradesh, he may have been counting bars as even a Pocso case was registered against him, besides serious charges of exploiting women athletes.
Such is his political clout that he remains not only free while courts take their time over cases registered against him, but also is much feted as a leader with an outsize influence on the popular sport of wrestling that he controlled until he became ineligible to run for the top post again. The hold of politicians to the electoral processes of sports federations cannot, of course, be legally challenged.
Wrestling may not be the first sport to witness allegations of sexual exploitation of young athletes of both sexes, but it was an extreme case that athletes could do little about despite at least three prominent performers throwing their all into opposing an administrator accused of being a sexual predator. It is a comment on society that politicians should hold such sway as to have their way even in sports administration.
