A desperate act reveals the dwindling space for dissent in India

The Olympic wrestlers arrived late Tuesday on the banks of the holy river Ganges for what they had announced as a last act of desperation.

Two days earlier, police had forcibly dismantled their protest camp in New Delhi and dragged them to jaildealing a blow to their longstanding effort to hold accountable a politically powerful sports official they accuse of serial sexual harassment of female wrestlers.

Now the athletes would throw their hard-earned medals, including two Olympic bronze medals for a great country strangely devoid of global sporting laurels, into the river and then go on a hunger strike.

“These medals adorning our necks mean nothing anymore,” they said in a statement, adding that authorities “went after the victims” to force them to end their protest. “What’s the point in life if you compromise on dignity?” read the statement.

The wrestlers, sobbing on the crowded riverbank, stopped throwing away their medals at the end of two hours of high drama, when community leaders stepped in to ask them to keep their pleas for another five days. But their act of desperation, after being evicted from New Delhi’s main protest site, exposed the shrinking space for protest in India’s capital, nearly a decade into Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reign.

Opposition activists, analysts and politicians are describing a pattern as Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP has become increasingly allergic to dissent.

The party uses its parliamentary majority to disrupt any debate on uncomfortable issues. It deploys the New Delhi police, which is under the control of India’s powerful home minister, to derail or prevent protests over these issues.

And, as equally powerful leverage, it unleashes a national broadcast media fearful for its best interests, as well as an army of social media trolls and influencers, to demonize anyone who questions it.

In such an environment, the women wrestlers have learned how lonely and exhausting the process of justice remains for women when they face the wall of political power. Laws have been changed and reforms promised in recent years following brutal cases of violence and abuse against women, but cases like the wrestlers’ case show how misogyny remains deeply rooted in power structures, advocates say.

Their plight could have wider demoralizing consequences as India faces a pressing need to tap into its vastly underutilized female workforce in its quest to become a great power.

Mr Modi once celebrated these wrestlers, who became famous for beating the odds in a particularly male-dominated part of the country. But now that they have accused the head of the country’s wrestling federation, a six-year-old BJP lawmaker, of sexual harassment and abuse, they have been met with what they call a political cover-up.

The protesting wrestlers – Sakshi Malik and Vinesh Phogat, along with a male wrestler, Bajrang Punia – say the wrestling chief, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, 66, sexually harassed at least seven young women, one of whom was a minor. of a decade, starting in 2012.

Mr Singh has rejected the claims. “If even one accusation is proven against me, I will hang myself,” he said on Wednesday.

Officials from Mr Modi’s party have tried to frame the allegations as a conspiracy concocted by the political opposition less than a year before the national election, while saying the wrestlers should trust sports authorities and police to make a claim. to conduct research.

The wrestlers say they have reasons not to trust the police. It took pressure from the Indian Supreme Court to get the Delhi Police to finally open a case against Mr. Singh to sign. And while in other cases the Delhi Police have been quick to arrest people on far less serious charges, Mr. Singh a free man, despite a strict protection of minors law requiring arrest as proceedings continue.

As a further reason for their mistrust, the wrestlers cite Sunday’s events when Mr. Singh the grand inauguration of a new parliament building by Mr. Modi attended and posted pictures of him inside. That same day, police took down the wrestlers’ protest encampment, arrested them and charged them with disturbing public order.

It was this latter act – which United World Wrestling, the sport’s governing body, condemned in a statement that also expressed “disappointment at the lack of results of the investigations” – that led them to the river.

Protests in the capital have increasingly been relegated to a small designated spot called Jantar Mantar. There, too, permission is needed from a police force accused by lawyers and activists of abusing “prohibitions” to prevent gatherings of dissent groups while looking away when government supporters gather, sometimes without permission.

Kavita Krishnan, a feminist activist, said she had seen a drastic shrinking of the physical space for protest in the capital in recent years.

The previous coalition government led by the Indian National Congress Party also tried to disrupt protests, especially after a horrific gang rape case that shocked India in 2012. But she and other activists were still able to hold large and small protests on a regular basis, she said.

“We were not just picked up and taken away and were not allowed to hold a demonstration at all,” she said.

“Jantar Mantar is the designated place for protest, and the wrestlers are not even allowed to continue their protest there,” she said. “Even if you can’t protest for a long time in the designated places, where do you go?”

Suman Nalwa, a spokeswoman for the Delhi Police, rejected suggestions that the police are abusing laws to prevent gathering. She said Delhi continues to host protests regularly, especially in Jantar Mantar.

“There are certain areas in New Delhi district due to security and law and order issues as well as traffic issues – they are prohibited from any form of protest by anyone regardless of their political or ideological affiliations,” she said.

As villagers and farmer groups announced they would join the wrestlers at the protest site, more barricades were erected – some even welded to the road – while many of the groups were stopped at the gates of the city. After the camp was dismantled, police put up large posters stating that any gathering in the area was illegal without prior permission.

On the banks of the Ganges in Haridwar late Tuesday, the wrestlers huddled as a large crowd of supporters and cameras surrounded them. Thousands gathered for evening prayers at sunset.

Ms. Malik, the winner of Olympic bronze and several other international medals, tightly embraced what her fellow protesters said was a box of her awards and citations.

At about 7:30 pm, a group of elderly farm leaders arrived and forced their way into the group for a meeting. When it became clear that they had persuaded the wrestlers not to throw their medals in the river and to give the government another five days, an almost comical search among protesters ensued: Where were the medals? (The peasant leaders said they brought the medals to protect them.)

“Who sends his daughters to practice the sport when these kinds of jackals are roaming?” said Suhdir Kumar, a father of three, including a daughter, who supported the wrestlers’ protest.

“They’re doing the right thing,” he said of the wrestlers. “At least they open the eyes of others.”