Royal Patronage

Royal courts and princely estates have sponsored wrestlers probably since the time of Kansa, Krishna, Ravana, and the Pandava brothers. However, there is no detailed historical record of this and no way of telling whether wrestling patronage has changed over time. In all likelihood, the formal aspect of patronage has not changed significantly (cf. Rai 1984: 221–247). Kings have kept wrestlers because the physical strength of the wrestler symbolizes the political might of the king.

In the epic poems, and in some of the Puranas, wrestlers are portrayed as warriors who not only symbolize power and prestige but also effect it as their patron’s martial arm. In his many wrestling battles Hanuman may be seen as both a symbol of Ram’s power and as a warrior/agent in the war on Lanka. This is also clearly the case in the Harivamsa story where Krishna and Balarama defeat Kansa’s court wrestlers.

Krishna, thus playing with Chanura for a while, adopted his own form as a chastiser of the wicked, and then the earth shook and the jewels on the diadem of Kansa fell on the ground. Krishna pressed down Chanura, and placing his knees on his breast he struck a fierce blow with his fist on his head (Harivamsa, chap. 86, Bose n.d.).

Krishna then proceeds to move from a symbolic to a literal victory over Kansa:

He jumped on the royal platform, and caught hold of Kansa by the hair. This sudden attack completely overwhelmed the king. Garlands, earrings and other ornaments fell from his body. Krishna tied his neck by his cloth and dragged him down to the ground. Then he killed him (ibid).

One of the best early accounts of wrestling patronage is found in the western Chaulukya king Somesvara’s (1124–1138) Manasollasa(Srigondekar 1959). The chapter entitled “Malla Vinod” describes the classification of wrestlers into types by age, size, and strength. It also outlines how the wrestlers were to exercise and what they were to eat. In particular the king was responsible for providing the wrestlers with pulses, meat, milk, sugar, and “high-class” sweets. The wrestlers were kept isolated from the women of the court and were expected to devote themselves to building their bodies (Mujumdar 1950: 11).

According to a number of sources (Khedkar 1959; R. B. Pandey n.d.; Suryavanshi 1962; Verma 1970; K. C. Yadav 1957; Yadavkumar 1982) the Yadava kings and nobles of the early to middle medieval period were avid wrestlers and sponsored numerous tournaments. However, few details are known beyond the fact that many of the kings who ruled the great Vijayanagar Deccan kingdom (1336–1565) practiced wrestling along with other martial arts (Mujumdar 1950: 15). Krishnadevraj is said to have drunk about a pound and a half of sesame oil every morning.

The symbolic equation between physical strength and political might is also found in more contemporary historical accounts. In a number of the Mogul court records references are found which indicate that wrestlers were part of a ruler’s estate. Indications are that wrestlers were paid a regular stipend and were also given provisions for maintaining themselves (Beveridge 1921: 656, 660, 683; Blochmann 1873–1948: 253; Mujumdar 1950: 16; T. N. Roy 1939). In turn they were called upon to entertain the royal court. Bouts were organized with wrestlers from other courts.

According to Mujumdar, the great Maratha leader Shivaji established numerous akharas throughout Maharashtra at the behest of his guru Samrath Ramdas (1950: 18). During the Maratha period, Maharaja Daulatarao Shinde is said to have kept a wrestler on a daily allowance of twenty pounds of milk and a sheep (ibid: 20). The best account of a royal akhara for this period is that of Nanasaheb Peshwa. According to Mujumdar his akhara was equipped with twenty-four different pieces of exercise equipment (ibid: 21). Bajirao II also built and maintained a fully equipped akhara and established Balambhaat Dada Deodhar as the guru of this facility. Later Deodhar and his disciples moved to Banaras where they established an akhara now known as Kon Bhatt Akhara in the Bibihatia neighborhood. Although the evidence is scant it would be a fair to say that court wrestlers during the Mogul and Maratha periods were kept as entertainers and as symbols of royal power. The same is true for princely states of the more modern period of British imperialism.

In an interview on the subject of princely patronage Shri Ram Sharma ji recounts his experiences to Banarsi Das Chaturvedi:

I had the opportunity to stay with King Rukmangad Singh and I can say with complete honesty that the government of Uttar Pradesh has not done half of what this king has done for the art of wrestling. There is a small princely state in the district of Hardowi where Raja Rukmangad Singh received a privy purse from the government in the amount of 400,000 rupees. The king would sit down with about thirty wrestlers and give them instruction every day. Each day he would spend between 150 and 200 rupees on them. . . . Every wrestler in India knew the Raja and thought of him as his guardian (Banarsi Das Chaturvedi 1961: 102).

One of Maharaja Holkar of Indor’s wrestlers, Kasam Ali, is said to have broken the leg of a camel that kicked him. His wrestling janghiya briefs were so big that a normal man could fit his whole body through one leg hole. Tukojirao Holkar’s wrestler, Shiva Pahalwan, broke up a fight between two raging bulls. As the story goes he “sent one flying north and one flying south.” Many remember when Shivajirao Holkar arranged a bout between Paridatta, the father of Gulam Kadar Pahalwan, and Ahamed Mir Khan Pathan. After three hours of wrestling the bout was still tied and the Maharaja called a draw. After the fight the wrestler’s legs were so swollen that their janghiya briefs had to be cut from their thighs. There are countless other such anecdotes which are told and retold. At each telling the power of the king is remembered as a political manifestation of his wrestlers’ pugilistic valor.

A similar situation obtains when the diet and exercise regime of a wrestler is considered. The quantity, quality, and richness of a wrestler’s diet reflects directly on the status of the king. A wrestler’s appetite was often said to be equal to that of an elephant, and the king’s strength was as great as his wrestlers’ appetites. The same holds true for exercise. A court wrestler who could drink five liters of milk and do thousands of dands and bethaks in a day was symbolically demonstrating the extent of his king’s power. Gama, the great wrestler of the first quarter of this century, championed the position of Maharaja Jaswant Singh of Jodhpur by doing more deep knee bends than any other wrestler from a field of four hundred—and this when he was only ten years old (Ali 1984: 101). Later, when in the court of Maharaja Bhawani Singh, Gama was provided with a daily diet of about ten liters of milk, half a liter of ghi, a liter and a half of butter, and two kilograms of fruit.

The body of the wrestler is held up by the king as an emblem of his rule. As the following examples clearly indicate, the wrestler embodies the king’s temporal power.

Kasam Ali, the ninety-five-year-old disciple of Abji Ustad, was a courtier of Maharaja Tukojirao. Even at this age he was tall and light skinned. He had a pleasant disposition and never stooped. I looked at him and the breath left my mouth: “If these were the ruins of an old man, then the tower was as strong as ever.” . . . Wrestlers were the glory of their king. (Patodi 1986b: 71)

Brij Lal ustad, a lifelong brahmachari, a man of his word and a man with faith in god, asked his king, Shivaji, to permit him to wrestle a Punjabi wrestler who many other wrestlers had declined to take on. Surprised, the king asked Brij Lal, “Are you really going to wrestle this champion?” Without batting an eye Brij Lal replied, “Lord, who am I to wrestle, it is I in your name who challenge this man.” With that the king gave his permission for the bout to be fought (Patodi 1986c: 65–66).

Even though wrestlers were in some instances kept in other capacities (as was Kasam Ali, who worked in the king’s munitions department), they were never called upon to work per se. As indicated by Ratan Patodi, wrestlers were symbols in a strict sense of the word.

Wrestlers had self-respect when India was a colonized country. The independent princes never called upon their wrestlers to do any thing which would undercut their self-respect. And along with self-respect, courtesy and modesty was ingrained in them. Wrestlers considered it their duty to be honest and to shun any kind of doubletalk (1973b: 11).

It was precisely because wrestlers already “stood for” the ideological principles of a disciplined way of life—physical strength, moral virtue, honesty, respect, duty, and integrity—that they served so well as political emblems. Kings co-opted the terms of this ideology and glorified themselves by implicitly advocating a wrestling way of life. Wrestling became the language of royal pomp and power. Whatever else patronage was, it served as a public dramatization of wrestling as a way of life. The king who bestowed a prize on his champion wrestler—gold and silver, jeweled necklaces, crowns, cash, elephants, titles, and many other things—implicitly advocated chastity and the attendant system of disciplined action which was part of the whole regime.

The wrestler became the archetypal citizen of the royal state. This aspect of patronage is perhaps best exemplified by Bhawanrao Pant, the raja of Aundh. Inspired by Balasaheb Mirajkar, raja of Miraj, Bhawanrao popularized and codified surya namaskar, a system of exercise which synthesizes many aspects of the wrestling ethos. The raja made surya namaskar exercises mandatory in the schools under his control (Mujumdar 1950: iii). He thus symbolically transposed his power onto the physique of his subjects. Conversely, he saw his estate as drawing power from the collective health of his people. Although there is very little information to go on, it seems that earlier kings of the medieval period—the Yadavas and Somesvara, in particular—also felt compelled to turn their subjects into disciplined wrestlers. In establishing hundreds of gymnasia throughout Maharashtra it seems that Shivaji was also using wrestling patronage as a model for the public administration of a broad-based program of physical education.

The rajas of Aundh and Miraj were not the only royal patrons of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Maharaja of Baroda, raja of Kolhapur, a number of the rajas of Indor, and the rajas of Patiala, Jodhpur, and Datiya were all strong supporters of wrestling as a way of life. They are regarded by contemporary wrestlers as the guardians of an honored tradition.

According to contemporary wrestlers, the art of wrestling would have died out completely had it not been for royal patronage. What they mean by this is not so much that wrestling needed royal financing, but that it needed public royal acclaim. It needed to be drawn out of the village akhara and writ large on the royal stage. Left to its own devices, one might say, wrestling would have flourished only as a popular sport and as a marginalized and somewhat esoteric way of life. Royal patronage served to turn a popular sport into a political discourse with nascent nationalistic undertones. Although the precise history of this development has not yet been fully researched, its implications for contemporary nationalism will be examined in a later chapter.

One context in which wrestling became associated with nationalistic ideals was during the struggle for independence in the early part of this century. The story of Gama is a dramatic case in point. In 1910, two years before he became the court wrestler of the maharaja of Patiala, and as India’s struggle against British imperialism gained momentum, Gama was sent to London to fight in the John Bull World Championship Competition. Gama and his brother, along with two other wrestlers, were sponsored by Sarat Kumar Mitra, a Bengali millionaire. Unfortunately, Gama was too short to gain official status as a contestant. However, a local theater offered Gama 250 pounds sterling a week to take part in some sideshow bouts. From this unofficial venue Gama challenged any of the world-class London wrestlers to a bout. To whomever could last five minutes Gama promised to pay five pounds. On the first day Gama dispatched three English challengers in short order. The next day he took on another twelve with equal success. He thus gained access to the official tournament where he was pitted against the world champion Zbyszko. Though much smaller in size, Gama fought Zbyszko for three hours and clearly had the upper hand when the contest ended for the day. Zbyszko failed to show up the following day to continue the bout and Gama was declared the world champion. The symbolic implications of Gama’s rout of England’s best wrestlers in the very seat of imperial power were not lost on the subjugated Indian public. Popular accounts have it that there was not a single newspaper in Hindi or Urdu that did not herald the news of India’s triumph.

In 1928, after sixteen years in the maharaja of Patiala’s court, Gama again challenged Zbyszko. This bout was fought in Patiala at the height of the nationalist struggle. Though Zbyszko was not British, the bout was nevertheless a symbolic reenactment of Gama’s first victory. Zbyszko was defeated in two and a half seconds in front of a crowd of over forty thousand spectators who had come from all over the country to witness the fight. Ratan Patodi recounts that the arena erupted in one voice, shouting “India has won! India has won!”

After the victory the maharaja embraced Gama, took the pearl necklace he was wearing, and placed it around the champion’s neck. A parade was arranged and Gama rode on the king’s elephant holding in his arms a silver mace made specially for the occasion. So that Gama’s regal achievement would not be forgotten, the king gave him a whole village and an annual stipend of 6,000 rupees (Patodi 1984: 35). One can well imagine the prestige that the maharaja of Patiala derived from this contest. As the wrestling euphemism for defeat goes, the maharaja had “shown the world the sky” by pinning down an emblem of imperialism. Gama and his patron the maharaja came to symbolize the possibility of self-determination and independence.

While it is true that a wrestler reflects the power of his patron king, it is also true that a king must be equal to the status of his wrestlers. In this regard a popular adage is apropos: “A subject is only as good as his king.” Wrestlers sometimes reacted against their patron if they thought he was compromising their own status.

Once while watching a wrestling bout, Maharaja Tukojirao Holkar decided that he wanted to pit his wrestler Bare Bhaiya against Kyam Pahalwan of Lahore. This was arranged, and Bare Bhaiya came into the arena shouting the praise of his sponsor and patron the Maharaja. Entering the pit he applied a “jhar” move on Kyam who fell flat on his back. Bowing to the Maharaja and the people who had come to watch, Bare Bhaiya left the arena.

Kyam returned to Lahore and his patron Maharaja was not pleased with his performance and told him to go and fight Bare Bhaiya again. Kyam, a wrestler of self-respect, answered his king saying: “I am a wrestler not a cock that can be fought at will.” The king took offense and ordered that Kyam’s stipend be stopped.

Hearing this Kyam replied: “Rescind it if you wish, for it is a miserly amount upon which no one can wrestle. Wrestling runs on a silver grind stone and on the amount you give me I can only feed grain to the pigeons.”

In the end Kyam did not have to fight again and his stipend was renewed (Patodi 1973b: 11–12).

There is a degree of tension in the relationship between a wrestler and his royal patron. Each has a great deal riding on the image the other projects. Moreover, there is the issue of power and control. As the above examples have shown, wrestlers put a great deal of stress on self-respect. Among other things, self-respect means self-determination and an unwillingness to subject oneself to any authority. Patronage requires a degree of subjugation. Wrestlers are uncomfortable with the obligations which ensue from sponsorship. For their part, kings are threatened by the persona of a powerful wrestler. Physical strength, self-respect, honesty, faith, and moral uprightness manifest in a wrestler can sometimes outshine the king’s glory. The emblem can become too perfect, and, in a sense, surpass that which it is meant to represent. A king whose power and authority does not match up to his wrestlers’ standards becomes a parody of his own pomp. In fact, a king is never in complete control of the image his wrestlers project. For although a wrestler stands for the king, a wrestler also stands for himself. The king and wrestler compete for control over the meaning of such things as strength and morality. Does the king’s authority serve to advance the wrestler’s status or does the wrestler’s status serve to reflect the king’s power? This drama is played out in the following story.

Before independence there were numerous small princely states. Under the patronage of the kings and princes of these states, Indian wrestling flourished. Wherever the kings were skilled in matters of state they were also concerned with fitness and were often no less skilled than many of their wrestlers.

During the reign of Maharaja Khanderao in the princely state of Baroda, there were some three hundred wrestlers in the royal court. Most of these wrestlers were Punjabis, Chaubes, or Jethis.

One day Maharaja Khanderao called a special darbar [assembly] of his court. The reason for calling the darbar was Ramju Pahalwan’s uncontested success in the Indian wrestling akharas. Ramju was a Punjabi wrestler under the patronage of Khanderao and had been defeating one wrestler after another.

Maharaja Khanderao, being a patron of Indian wrestling, was concerned that there did not seem to be any counter moves to apply against Ramju’s technique. This was the issue for which the darbar had been called, and all of the court wrestlers were present. The Maharaja himself was seated on a high throne and appeared as a great sage of wrestling. His strong body and rippling muscles could be seen beneath his silken robes. As the darbar came to order, the Maharaja had only to think about Ramju and the wrestler leapt like a leopard onto the dais and stood humbly beside the throne of his patron.

The Maharaja said to him, “Ramju, you have been undefeated in every akhara where you have wrestled and many of those you have defeated have renounced wrestling on your account. Many have been subdued by self-doubt. For those wrestlers who have, on your account, removed their langot and janghiya [i.e., given up wrestling] I say, ‘It is easier for you, Ramju, to defeat a wrestler of equal strength and skill than it is for a wrestler obsessed with sexual passion to lose.’ This is true, and to prove it I challenge you to a wrestling match.”

Hearing this announcement the whole court was surprised. In order to protect the King’s honor many of the court wrestlers said, “let me fight first with Ramju, my lord.”

But the king said, “It will take you a long time to be worthy and skilled enough to fight Ramju.”

Hearing all of this Ramju spoke, “my lord, I am your humble servant. You are my patron. What means do I, a poor man, have that I can match my skill with yours?”

In reply to this the Maharaja said, as one versed and experienced in athletics, “wrestling is an art, and it has nothing to do with wealth and status. The bout will be held one month from now. Practice hard and spare no expense.”

The Maharaja instructed the accountant to spend as much as necessary on Ramju’s training and diet.

Exactly one month later the Maharaja and Ramju, surrounded by courtiers and advisors, took their places in the arena which was bedecked with rose petals and scented with perfume. Both wrestlers set upon one another like two rogue elephants bent on destruction. The Maharaja was matching Ramju’s technique with his own well-crafted skill. Every move was broken quickly and with great flourish.

After one hour neither wrestler had the upper hand. The Maharaja then began to have doubts as to whether Ramju was giving his full effort and asked him to swear by god and the milk he had drunk from his mother’s breast that he was putting out 100 percent.

Hearing this, Ramju felt a surge of energy, applied a “bagal-dubba,” and forced the king down on his knees. But the king again stood up and the match went on like this for another hour.

The Maharaja then said, “Ramju, we could go on like this for three days and you could still not pin me, but now I can no longer tolerate the smell of your sweat. Let me go and I will call you the winner.”

So Ramju let the Maharaja go and stood up, bowing slightly and folding his hands before the king, saying, “Lord, I am your servant. I am the one who has lost. Who am I to think that I was a match for you. I only followed your instructions.”

In reply the Maharaja said, “Ask whatever you wish as a prize. What you have given me is priceless and what you have taught me today is beyond compare. What you have given me is greater even than my family can give.”

Now, who could argue with a king? Ramju had been given an order, and there was nothing for it but to name his prize.

“Whatever is your wish,” cried Ramju, “but if you insist, it is your humble servant’s request that if you grant me the crown you are wearing I would be most honored.”

Hardly had Ramju finished speaking when the king removed his crown and some 25,000 rupees worth of jewels and gave them to his court wrestler.

About the rest of Ramju’s life it is only necessary to know one thing. When Ramju was at the zenith of his career he went one day to the Maharaja and said, “Lord, my body is splitting because I can no longer wrestle enough to get tired.”

Hearing this, the Maharaja ordered that two glass mirrors in the shape of hands be fixed into the wall of the akhara. He told Ramju, “After your daily practice and exercise regime place your hands on the glass mirrors and push until you are tired.” Ramju did as he was told (Patodi 1986b: 53–56).

Ratan Patodi concludes his account of this story as follows:

Swami Baldev Misra told me that he went to Lal Akhara in Baroda and saw for himself the glass mirror hands. With his great strength Ramju had turned the mirror hands upside down (ibid).

There are a number of interesting points which this story brings to light. The contest between the king and his court wrestler is a metaphor for the struggle between royal patronage and a wrestler’s own self-definition. The struggle is not of epic proportions. It is a subtle issue of identity: of who represents whom. In the contest the struggle is not definitively resolved; the king gives up. There is a symbolic resolution, however, insofar as Ramju is invested with political power manifest in the king’s crown. Conversely, the king himself is recognized as an accomplished wrestler. Their roles are reversed and thus the tension between physical and political strength is depicted in sharp relief through juxtaposition.

One reading of this story would be that the king felt threatened by Ramju’s success. He felt it necessary to put Ramju in his proper place. Having not actually defeated the king, Ramju nevertheless comes out the winner. Thus he may keep the crown as a votive symbol of status without power. The bout thus serves to enhance and underscore Ramju’s purely symbolic role.

In the symbolism of the glass-mirror hands, Ramju must, in effect, wrestle with his own reflection. While in the akhara he is purely a self-referential figure, a symbol of himself, a sign of pure strength and skill that mirrors a way of life turned in on itself. By fixing the mirrors into the akhara wall, the king is able to harness an ideology of physical, moral, and psychological strength. In the akhara Ramju’s incomparable strength is spent, impotently, on itself. Only the king can translate this energized conundrum into a reflection of political prestige. Ramju’s way of life becomes glorified only in the radiance of his patron’s royal status.

As a way of life wrestling does not necessarily require royal patronage, but it does require translation and interpretation. Restricted to the isolated world of the akhara, symbols of strength and virtue only refer back to a restricted and restricting set of values—chastity, devotion, and moral duty. In this self-referential arena the wrestler can only be a good wrestler and not a hero of royal proportions. From the akhara a wrestler speaks to a small audience. From beside his patron’s throne, the size of his thigh and all that it is known to mean, for instance, take on regal dimensions.

At issue in the relationship between wrestler and patron is control over public identity. By and large, the public image of the wrestler belongs to the king. This is made clear in the following example where the story is told of one wrestler who sought to reappropriate his own body and public self-image.

An artist always follows his own mind, and Ramlal Pahalwan suffered from being particularly independent and strong willed. Maharaja Tukojirao was constantly upset with him. Why was this? It was his manner. God had out done himself when he made Ramlal. To the last detail he was a tall and beautiful youth. Everyday he would wear a clean, freshly washed head cloth and dhoti [loincloth]. It was his habit to decorate his hands and feet with mehandi [vegetable dye] and place on his forehead a small, neat bindi [auspicious mark]. He always went out with a pan in his mouth. He never came out into his house compound unannounced; but if called upon by guests, he would put on perfume and come out with affected drama and pomp. The Maharaja was certainly concerned that Ramlal account for himself. But Ramlal never felt that his actions needed justification (Patodi 1986c: 64).

Being strong-willed, Ramlal wanted to stand for himself. Through his body he sought to give his own public interpretation of his identity as a wrestler. Although Ramlal epitomizes the tensions between patron and wrestler, his personality is anomalous and out of character with most other wrestlers. The majority of wrestlers, like Ramju of Baroda and Gama of Patiala, were willing simply to stand for power and prestige rather than affect it themselves.

The passing of royal patrons is lamented by every wrestler with whom I spoke. They were seen as the guardians of a way of life that would otherwise have died out as a mute and marginalized victim of modernism. The financial backing that rajas and maharajas provided is significant. However, patrons are remembered more for having cast wrestling in a positive light by giving it public and prestigious acclaim. As heir to the legacy of royal patronage the current national government is criticized by many wrestlers on precisely this point. In the court of kings, wrestling was a royal art; under the current government it is not accorded a comparable national status.