As stars revolt, walls closing in on ‘netaji’ who rules with an iron fist

When Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh enters the wrestling hall, one can’t help but notice. He arrives in a cavalcade of SUVs, with a throng of 20-30 followers in tow.

The officials bow to him, touch his feet, and chant “Neta ji zindabad” as he settles in his chair. It is clear that he is the man in charge, and that he enjoys the attention. The bouts continue but only until Singh, the 66-year-old who has been Wrestling Federation of India president since 2012, starts talking. He shouts at wrestlers, offers advice, cracks jokes, threatens to throw parents out, calls himself the most “shaktishali (powerful)”, and his posse responds by laughing and cheering him on.

The cheers, though, might have fallen silent on Thursday as calls for his ouster reached fever pitch. A group of wrestlers, led by Olympians Vinesh Phogat and Sakshi Malik, has accused him of mental torture and sexual harassment, and said they won’t get back on the mat as long as Singh remains at the helm.

Singh stays defiant

Singh has been defiant against the onslaught. After all, he is a difficult man to intimidate. The six-time parliamentarian who first entered the Lok Sabha in 1991 is currently the sitting MP for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from Kaiserganj in Uttar Pradesh. He has faced charges before, with multiple criminal cases against him including attempt to murder, punishment for dacoity, causing disappearance of evidence, and deterring a public servant from doing his duty. He has not been convicted in any.

But unlike the previous charges against him — he was named in the Babri mosque demolition case and even rallied seers to oppose Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray’s Ayodhya visit in May 2022 — the latest controversy has come at a time when the BJP is readying for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. And at this point, with public sentiment building against him, it remains to be seen if he can survive a revolt by Indian sporting superstars.

“97% of players are with the WFI. Their (the protesting wrestlers) careers are over, they can’t win medals anymore. I am hurt by the sexual harassment allegations. Not a single player can bring such charges against me or the chief coach (Jitender Yadav). Some wrestlers were pressured to sit on a dharna,” Singh said as the walls appeared to be closing in.

Singh’s high handedness

Stepping back, though, will be a huge loss of face for a man used to doing things his way. At almost every nationals, while carrying a mike in his hand, he has been taking top wrestlers for a round of all the mats just to show his people how they follow his instructions.

In January 2021, during the national championships in Noida, he suspended a Railways coach for being “too animated” on the sidelines.

He publicly slapped an athlete at Ranchi in December 2021. Despite the act being caught on camera, he wasn’t apologetic. Instead, his statement had a rather boastful tinge to it: “It was light tap, didn’t hit him hard, had I done so, he would have landed far away.”

In August 2022, he stopped the trials to pick India’s representation in the 59kg category for the World Wrestling Championship just 54 seconds after it had begun because a group of seers from Ayodhya, who were the chief guests, were not invited to “bless” the two competitors before the start of the bout.

Politics and sports

Over the years, such incidents have become all too common because this is how Singh believes people are kept in line. He says he uses these methods during political rallies and believes they work in sport as well.

Once asked if he was a leader first or a wrestler, he said, “Pehle pehalwan (first a wrestler)”.

Strength is a way of life for him and that is how he made his way to the top of the wrestling federation. He started off by becoming president of Gonda district wrestling association in 2004, and then became the President of Uttar Pradesh Wrestling Association in 2008, before finally becoming the national wrestling association chief in 2012. In 2019, Singh was elected unopposed as president of WFI — the third time that Singh had assumed the post.

But Singh now appears to be running out of time. The Union sports ministry on Wednesday gave WFI 72 hours to respond to the allegations. But he still has the support of his political peers. “I have known Brij Bhushan since he was a student in Ayodhya’s Saket College. He was good in studies, played a prominent role in Ram temple movement and ever since been a darling of saints. I don’t know who is behind these allegations, but to me it appears this could be some kind of conspiracy against him,” said Mahant Ram Vilas Das Vedanti, former BJP MP and a co-accused in the Babri mosque demolition case.

Singh has been claimed that the sexual harassment allegations were motivated and that he would “hang himself” if any of those charges were true.

So, the battle lines have been drawn. Will Singh discover the vagaries of sport where the applecart can be upset in ways few can predict? Or will the “shaktishali” leader somehow manage to survive?