BJP cries ‘politics’ as Haryana welcomes Vinesh Phogat back

It took the wrestler’s cavalcade 13 hours on Saturday to cover a distance of 110 km, and she reached her village in Charkhi Dadri past midnight. A welcome party with a stage, musicians, and hundreds of people awaited her return. An exhausted Vinesh thanked them and spoke for three minutes from the stage before falling asleep right there. She called upon the people to support the ‘daughters’ and pledged to train them and share her experience and skills with the younger sportswomen.

But Haryana BJP spokesperson Neha Dhawan denounced the ‘politicisation of sports’ by opposition leaders. “Chief minister Nayab Singh Saini has announced benefits on par with silver Olympic medallists to Vinesh, but some opposition leaders are trying to set a political narrative around the issue,” she said, apparently objecting to the presence of Congress MP Deepender Hooda, a former president of the state wrestlers' association.

The BJP troll army claimed that the entire welcome and roadshow was sponsored by the Congress. One of them posted on X, “Vinesh Phogat’s dramatic 13-hour journey from Delhi to her village, filled with extravagant welcomes, is a pathetic display. Disqualified for being overweight and returning with zero medals, this grandiose reception is not only unwarranted but also deeply disappointing. This entire event, clearly sponsored by Congress, is a blatant misuse of political influence. The focus should be on addressing her performance issues, not turning it into a spectacle.”

Trolling the wrestler on social media is seen as unwise and costly, with most BJP leaders keeping away. Making fun of the wrestler, disqualified at the Paris Olympic Games after reaching the final for weighing 100 gm more than the prescribed weight, has not gone down well with the people in the state.

To be fair, a few other people too felt that the Congress MP should not have climbed on the vehicle that had Vinesh sitting on the roof and greeting people. The sentiment was not shared by many, though. When an airport employee at the T3 terminal said out aloud, “The MP shouldn’t have got on to the car,” an elderly man asked, “But where are all the other Jat leaders?”

The troll offensive on X against Vinesh and her Jat community, for her sharing the car roof with the Congress leader, was not reflected on the ground. “Why aren’t other politicians with her?” was the refrain. Significantly, BJP leaders were conspicuous by their absence on the route unlike Deepender Hooda, who had stood by the women wrestlers during their agitation against former Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, an erstwhile BJP MP.

The BJP is riled by the statement of former Haryana chief minister and Congress leader Bhupinder Hooda, asserting that if the party had the numbers in the state Assembly, he would have liked to send Vinesh to the Rajya Sabha. While she is ineligible to be elected to the Rajya Sabha because she is not yet 30, there is a growing demand within the Congress to put her up as a candidate in the Assembly election in the state due next month.

It is not clear, though, if the wrestler herself is interested in a political career now as she is on record stating that she has enough fight left in her to continue to wrestle until the next Olympic Games. However, even the prospect of the wrestler campaigning for anyone in the election is traumatising the BJP. 

She may have returned medal-less from Paris, but her fighting spirit and memories of the her and other women wrestlers dragged by police on the streets of Delhi have captured the imagination of the people in the state, and not just the Jats.

Her appeal was more than evident when news reporters at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International airport identified Prof. Nandita Narain, who had retired from St Stephen’s College in New Delhi, trying to catch a glimpse of the wrestler. She had travelled from Greater Noida, 40 km away, just to see Vinesh.