An excerpt from Sakshi Malik’s Witness: Defiance to farce

While on a protest against the Wresting Federation of India and its then powerful chief Brij Bhushan Saran Singh over alleged sexual harassment and other misdemeanours, Olympic medallist Sakshi Malik and other wrestlers were brutally grabbed by the Delhi Police. In this excerpt, Malik recalls what happened when the wrestlers decided to immerse their medals in the Ganga at Haridwar. An excerpt:

All the wrestlers who had brought their medals went and sat along the ghat even as a crowd surrounded us. While we were sitting there, someone came and took Bajrang Punia away, saying Home Minister Amit Shah wanted to talk to him. The rest of us were instructed to wait until 7 p.m. because there was a ‘big’ meeting going on between Bajrang and Shah. We sat there on that ghat for half an hour, hoping against hope that Shah would actually call Brij Bhushan and dismiss him.

Sakshi Malik (right end) with other medal winners at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, in Brazil.
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Simultaneously, we also got word from Naresh Tikait, a senior activist who was known to all of us as one of the leaders of the farm rights agitation from a year ago and whom we respected as an elder of the Jat community we belonged to, to wait until he could speak to us.

Sakshi Malik celebrates her win at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, in England.
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I’d always imagined that one day, when I became a mother, my daughter would point to the wall, to my framed Olympic medal, and ask me what it was. And I would open that frame and show it to her. I might be older and out of shape by then and my kids might think I was just a boring mom, but I’d tell them what that medal was. I’d tell them the story of how their mom won it. I’d tell them the story of how she met their dad. How she was something once, a long time ago.

Protesting wrestlers in Haridwar.
| Photo Credit:
PTI

But instead, I was on that ghat, about to throw that medal away, all because I’d tried to fight for a cause I knew was right, hoping against hope for a favour from a politician that might stop that from happening.

Sakshi Malik of India being declared the winner at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
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That sinking feeling

As the crowd got bigger and bigger and tighter around us as we waited, my heart started to sink. I knew that we were being backed into a corner. And then, suddenly, from the midst of that crowd, Tikait emerged. He unwrapped the safa on his head, walked up to each of us, took our medals and placed them in that cloth. He told us the medals were the pride of the country and he’d make things all right.

Farmer leader Naresh Tikait taking away the medals from protesting wrestlers.
| Photo Credit:
ANI

Then he walked away from the ghat, leaving us there by ourselves.

Within a couple of minutes we realised what a tremendous mistake we had made. What was supposed to be a great act of defiance had turned into a complete farce. Not only had we not been able to get Brij Bhushan Singh out of the federation or give up our medals, but we had also broken our word to the people who had supported us.

Sakshi Malik holding all her previous medals in one hand and the Olympic bronze in the other, at her home, in Rohtak.
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All of us sat in a car in a state of complete bewilderment. We were crying. Vinesh had started hitting herself. I was just blank. When animals face a predator, they either run or fight. And they say the same applies to us humans. For me it is neither. I just freeze. When I am faced with something traumatic, I just switch off. My mind stops working. I start thinking everything will get better. It’s wishful thinking, I know. Of course things don’t just get better by themselves.

When we had recovered somewhat, we thought we would go and take back our medals from Tikait and throw them in the Ganga as we had first planned to do. It was too late for that, of course.

Even as we were sitting in our car, some of his supporters had gathered around us. We were told we were to go with them to Tikait’s house and sit with him while he addressed a press conference. And just to make us more inclined to agree with them, they mentioned that the police were coming to arrest us.

Wrestlers Sakshi Malik (centre), and Vinesh Phogat (right), and Bajrang Punia (left) during their protest at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi.
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No comeback

We went to Tikait’s house and sat silently next to him while he addressed the media and took credit for being the man who had stopped India’s medals from being lost. It was his moment to shine. As for us, we had been completely dishonoured.

Later, people would tell us that Tikait, for all his image of confronting the government, had a history of selling out movements he had been part of, and he’d done the same to us. I don’t know the truth about that, but the fact is that the mistake of actually handing over the medals was made by us. The kindest explanation I can give for myself is I was so swayed by the emotion of the moment that I wasn’t thinking clearly at all.

Until then, I had always felt I could turn things around in the protest. That had been how I had wrestled too. I was known as someone who would pull off comebacks from the direst of situations.

But there was no comeback here. We couldn’t have been beaten more thoroughly. There was nothing I could do to turn this around.

Witness; Sakshi Malik with Jonathan Selvaraj, Juggernaut, ₹899.

Excerpted with permission from Juggernaut.