Nationalized Services and Government Boards

Many of the basic services in India are nationalized and organized as separate departments with regional and municipal jurisdiction. The post and telegraph, water, and electricity boards are the largest of these departments. The National Railway is a similar institution and provides employment for tens of thousands of people. The armed services are organized on a large, national scale and are, of course, directly affiliated with government. Each state of the republic has a police force. The PAC (Police Armed Constabulary) is organized on a national level. The State Bank of India is the largest of the nationalized financial institutions and has a network of offices throughout the country. All of these institutions are monolithic in size and provide employment for hundreds of thousands of people.

Each division or subdivision of these branches recruits and hires athletes to fill their “sports quota.” As a result local railway offices, police precincts, banks, and post offices hire wrestlers as checking clerks, constables, filing clerks, and postmen. In some cases branch offices build akharas for their locally hired wrestlers, but more often than not wrestlers who work for a branch of the government exercise and train in their own guru’s personal akhara.

Wrestlers compare these government institutions to the kings and princes of pre-independence India. The railway and police in particular, but also the water and electricity boards and State Bank of India, sponsor a number of wrestlers who have proven themselves in national competition. In Banaras, for instance, Sita Ram Yadav, Banarsi Pande, Bishambar Singh, Jharkhande Rai, Krishna Kumar Singh, and Ashok have all been national champions in their weight class and work for the Diesel Locomotive Works or other railway offices. Sita Ram Yadav and Bishambar have wrestled in international competitions, and Banarsi Pande has taken part as an international referee. Bhaiya Lal, a national-level wrestler, is sponsored by the State Bank of India, where he works as a clerk. The well-known and respected Govardan Das Malhotra, one-time national referee, is also employed by the state bank. In many ways he personifies the role of the bank as patron.

Although the government boards and the nationalized services are concerned with sponsoring wrestlers, they are not particularly interested in wrestling as a way of life. On account of this it is not surprising that many of the wrestlers who are employed by the railway board or state bank do not feel any great affinity towards their sponsors. The relationship is regarded in a very utilitarian light. Wrestlers feel no great pride in being wards of the state, but they are glad to have an income and a secure status. They turn to their guru and akhara, however, when identifying themselves as Indian wrestlers.

The patronage of the state varies in significant ways from the patronage of kings and princes. Primarily, wrestlers are not kept strictly as symbols. They are employed and are required to work. In the armed services this arrangement is compatible since a recruit has no assigned task other than what he is ordered to do. He is, in effect, recruited as a wrestler. In the railway and state bank, however, wrestlers must work as clerks, baggage inspectors, and draftsman. In the post and telegraph office they must sort mail or learn some other skill. Wrestlers in the police force are expected to direct traffic or patrol their assigned post.

Many of the wrestlers with whom I spoke did not take their work very seriously, for it conflicted with their vocation of wrestling. Sita Ram Yadav pointed out the paradox, saying that wrestlers are recruited to win championships but then are told to work seven or eight hours a day. It is impossible to practice and train given such a situation. Another well-known wrestler complained that he spent his time sitting behind a desk when, as he put it, “I was born to live in the akhara.” Senior wrestlers take a cavalier attitude towards their sponsoring institutions. Whether or not they actually do what they say is not clear, but many claim that they go to work only if they feel so inclined.

The railway and the armed services arrange annual training camps, and wrestlers often take an extended leave of absence from their work to attend. The camps provide effective training for national competitions and for international tours, but they do not foster ideals and values essential to wrestling as a way of life. One wrestler expressed concern over the increasing number of men who were now bringing their wives and families to the training camps. To his way of thinking this was antithetical to the mind set required of a self-controlled wrestler.

Generally speaking, the railway board and the other service branches see wrestling as just another sport. As such it is a sport cut in a very Western mold. Wrestlers are hired for their individual prowess rather than for the ideals they represent. For the most part an Indian wrestler who is hired by the railway or state bank is stripped of his unique identity and reclothed as a skilled but otherwise regular employee of the state. In this guise wrestlers no longer stand for a way of life but for a nationalized sport. To be sure, kings wanted the best wrestlers to be in their service, but they embraced the whole regime and did not extract the wrestler, as a mere athlete, from the important context of his whole way of life.

Although wrestlers glorify royal patronage, they recognize that in many instances old wrestlers were unceremoniously put to pasture. The unfortunate example of the great Gama is a case in point. Still the “world champion,” he died an all-but-forgotten, poor, sick man (Rajput 1960). In some cases rajas and maharajas gave their retiring wrestlers small land grants and stipends, but for the most part there was no established precedent for giving a pension to a retired wrestler. A wrestler’s career is short lived. By the time he is thirty-five, or forty at the very latest, he is no longer competitive. Severance is an important consideration for someone who has spent his whole life wrestling. Government service is very good in this respect and the senior wrestlers who no longer compete are comfortable and secure in their tenured status.

The number of wrestlers who are sponsored by the various branches of government service is insignificant when compared to the total number of wrestlers in India who have no formal sponsorship at all. It is unlikely, however, that even the rajas, maharajas, and wealthy landlords sponsored a majority of all wrestlers. One had to be good to be a court wrestler, and most practitioners of the art never earned a rank of this order. Significantly, even those without sponsorship idealize the relationship of a patron and his wrestler. Sponsorship is, therefore, more important as a symbolic relationship than as a financial and economic one. The fact that Govardan Das Malhotra was able to negotiate a state stipend of 150 rupees per month for two old Banaras wrestlers is paltry on a financial scale, and characteristic, wrestlers tell me, of the bureaucratic somersaults which have to be performed in order to squeeze out a bare minimum of prestige. Still, the stipend was a powerful, if muted, message of validation.

On the whole, government sponsorship is not charged with the same significance as royal patronage. The railway and state bank do not have tangible prestige or political power in the same way as did wealthy kings. In state institutions there is no figurehead, no pomp, and there are few if any rituals of status for the wrestler to emblazon with his character. What made wrestlers and kings compatible was the symbolic parallel between royal power and physical-cum-moral strength. There is no such parallel between wrestlers and the modern state apparatus. The nationalized services are vast bureaucracies with which wrestlers cannot identify. On the state roster a wrestler is a grappler and an athlete. Nothing more and nothing less. Contrast the biographical profile of a state wrestler with that of a court wrestler like Ramju.

Randhawa Singh (Punjab), featherweight: Born on February 2, 1945, Randhawa hails from Lachara village, District Muzzafarnagar, and is at present a Sub-Inspector of Police in Punjab.

His first big achievement was the National Championships in 1965 in Kolhapur, when he was declared champion of his weight class. He repeated his performance in 1966 (D. P. Chand 1980).

The story is the same for other well-known champions such as Bishambar of the railway and Bhim Singh of the armed services. Their lives are a litany of bouts and awards, and their bodies are reduced to the stark numbers of dates and weight-class identification. Their only identity is their success. Epic, apocryphal tales of great strength and superhuman achievement are strikingly absent from the state wrestler’s portrait.

Although most government sponsorship is utilitarian and deals with wrestling strictly as a sport and with wrestlers as simply athletes, there are some notable exceptions. Individuals within the state apparatus who have a personal interest in wrestling as a way of life have succeeded in taking on the role of moral patron.

Govardan Das Malhotra received his training as a wrestling referee from the National Institute of Sports in Patiala in 1963. Since then he had coached international teams and managed tournaments in Kabul and Teheran. Malhotra is active in the state bank trying to recruit young wrestlers for sponsorship. He has also helped organize local bouts in the Banaras area. Three things mark Malhotra from other modern patrons of wrestling. First, he is conscious of the need to preserve interest and provide support for Indian wrestling as a way of life. Second, he has written numerous short life sketches of famous wrestlers so as to illustrate the value of Indian wrestling as an important national heritage (Malhotra 1981: 17–96). Third, he has consciously removed himself from what he refers to as the gross politics of modern wrestling where influence is everything and skill, ability, and character count for very little.

Like Malhotra, Gupteshwar Misra has worked to preserve the tradition of Indian wrestling. Though a national level freestyle wrestler himself, and trained as a referee in Paris, Misra has remained committed to the training methods and lifestyle principles of Indian wrestling. Misra is directly responsible for the national success of most Banaras district wrestlers. He has inspired many through example. In his prime he would regularly do 2,500 bethaks and 2,000 dands, run four miles, and wrestle for an hour every day. He would then drink a liter of milk and a quarter-liter of ghi and eat half a kilo of almonds and a dozen oranges. Misra has helped organize teams for the railway, the police, and Banaras Hindu University.

Malhotra, Misra and a number of others of equal stature—Parasnath Sharma, Ram Narian Sarien, and Bishambar Singh, to name but three—are important patrons of Indian wrestling. Their best intentions are, however, not fully realized. Whatever effort these men make to hold up wrestling as a symbol of the state, they do not, by themselves, have a public image of powerful patronage. They cannot quite pull it off. In his capacity as a relatively high-rank employee, Malhotra certainly represents the stature of the state bank. But he does not represent the bank’s financial power in the same way that a raja represented absolute authority and temporal power. He does not embody the government’s intangible power any more than does Bishambar Singh personify the power behind the railway bureaucracy. Neither man is able to effect royal pomp and circumstance. Unlike kings, modern state officials are unable to decorate akharas with palm fronds, flowers, and rose petals, or saturate the earth of wrestling pits with buckets of oil and turmeric paste. Neither can they sprinkle their wrestler’s bodies with expensive perfume. They are unable properly to champion the cause of wrestling, for they do not represent the right kind of power, wealth or authority.

The Birla Mill Vyayamshala in Old Delhi, under the tutelage of Guru Hanuman, is perhaps the only wrestling akhara in India today that has the kind of sponsorship which royal patrons provided. While the circumstances of this akhara are unique, it is representative of the kind of patronage which wrestlers envision for their way of life.

The Birlas are, in effect, kings of free enterprise in the republic of India. They are one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the country. Jugal Kishor Birla, a contemporary of Mahatma Gandhi and financial backer of the Freedom Movement, donated money for the construction of an akhara in 1928 and established Guru Hanuman as its manager. The akhara is affiliated with one of the Birla cloth mills from which it takes its name. There is no clear indication of the financial arrangement between Birla Enterprises and the akhara. Some people have told me that all of the wrestlers there—numbering in the hundreds, but the exact figure is vague—are paid a regular monthly stipend. Room and board is available at the akhara for some wrestlers, but many others come for practice and live outside the complex. Through the person of Murlighar Dalmiya, Birla Enterprises pay for the akhara’s upkeep and for new construction and improvements. There is an earthen pit as well as a Western-style “rubber” mat purchased in 1979. It is likely that the Birlas also pay for the travel and training expenses of the akhara’s many national and international wrestling champions.

A story is told which exemplifies the relationship between the akhara, Guru Hanuman, and Birla Enterprises. A young wrestler had come to Delhi from Maharashtra in order to take part in a wrestling tournament. Unfortunately he ran out of money and was unable to purchase a railway ticket for the return journey. Knowing one of the wrestlers at the Birla Mill Vyayamshala, he went there to seek help. At the akhara he was well taken care of. Guru Hanuman had one of his wards prepare a glass of almond tonic for the Maharashtrian wrestler. He then wrote a note which authorized the withdrawal of fifty rupees from the mill’s accounting office. This he gave to the Maharashtrian wrestler, who was put up for the night by one of the mill wrestlers with whom he was acquainted. The part of the story which is particularly emotive for most wrestlers is Guru Hanuman’s apparent ability to draw freely from the ample coffers of his industrial patron.

While the financial outlay for the akhara is, no doubt, considerable—200,000 rupees were spent on a foreign wrestling mat—there is much more to Birla patronage than money. Guru Hanuman and his wards—Suresh, Ashok, Satpal, Ved Prakash, and many others—bask in the light of an industrial giant. Their success matches the financial success of Birla free enterprise. Physical strength and skill reflects well on wealth and prestige, and wealth gives stature to a “traditional” way of life in modern India. Guru Hanuman and the numerous national champions that he has produced are more than just successful wrestlers, for they stand for something larger than themselves and on the shoulders of the likes of Ghaneshyamdas Birla, who was not only one of the wealthiest men in India in the first half of this century but was also a man who awoke three hours before dawn, exercised, ate a vegetarian diet, and religiously read the scriptures and had faith in god (Ramakrishnan 1986). Like many of the best-known royal patrons, Ghaneshyamdas Birla was himself a practitioner of what he patronized.

By sponsoring an akhara, the Birlas are not just filling a sports quota, they are making a public statement about specific ideals and values. For them the Birla Mill Vyayamshala is as much a statement about independence and national identity as was their support for Gandhi and the freedom struggle. Just as kings invited the public to see in their wrestlers an image of royal authority and power, so the Birlas invite the public to see in the person of Guru Hanuman and his akhara the benevolence of an industrial giant supporting the hope of the nation.

Although the Birla Mill Vyayamshala is a powerful example in its own right, it is unique. Of all the akharas in India it is the only one with a powerful patron who is, ironically, a private industrialist. It is held up as a model for others to follow and as a vision of what the state ought to provide so that the wrestlers can get on with the task of disciplining their bodies.