Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh: the Bahubali, who was a one-man federation

It was his brush with the BJP MP and the sports secretary was unequivocal in his assessment: “Brij Bhushan was a bully.”

4 Olympics, 5 medals

A ‘bully’, a Bahubali who is never shy of relying on his strong-man instincts or quintessentially Brij Bhushan: what you call the outgoing WFI president depends on what side of the debate you are on.

Brij Bhushan has been accused of sexual harassment by seven women wrestlers. The chargesheet in the case, Union Sports Minister Anurag Thakur has said, will be filed by June 15. And while this is the most serious allegation against him, India’s three top wrestlers, Sakshi Malik, Vinesh Phogat and Bajrang Punia, have also accused Brij Bhushan of running the WFI like a ‘fiefdom’; according to his whims.

Indeed, the WFI came across as a one-man federation. Brij Bhushan – as the overall president, selection committee chief and chair athletes’ grievance panel – was the judge, jury and executioner.

The six-time MP has denied all allegations. In his counterclaims, he has alleged that one of the reasons why the wrestlers are out on the streets is because they do not want to participate in selection trials for the Olympics. Brij Bhushan has also claimed that during his 12-year tenure, Indian wrestling has increased its footprints beyond Haryana – the traditional hub – and is consistently among the top five wrestling nations in the world, rising from ‘20th rank when he had taken over the reins’. And to underline the efficiency of his federation, he has pointed towards the performance at the Olympics, where Indian wrestlers have finished on the podium at the last four Games.

Brij Bhushan, who did not reply to calls and texts from The Indian Express, has made these claims in multiple interviews since January this year.

But not everyone agrees.

‘Akhara culture keeping wrestling alive’

Veteran coach Kuldeep Sherawat, who was an India coach for a better part of the last decade, argues that while the federation under Brij Bhushan did its bit to organise more tournaments and ensure international participation, the WFI was reaping the benefits of the hard work put in by akharas in wrestling hotbeds of Haryana, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and, to some extent, Punjab and Karnataka.

“There is no doubt that compared to before, the domestic wrestling scene is vibrant now. National-level tournaments take place regularly, camps are organised all year round and the participation in international tournaments has been consistent,” Sherawat says.

He adds: “But to say that India is doing well because of the federation’s efforts is misleading. We have won medals at the Olympics and World Championships because of the tireless efforts put in by those running wrestling akharas.”

It is often held in Indian sports that champions are produced in spite of the system and not because of it. This is true particularly in wrestling’s case.

Arjuna Award-winning wrestler Kaka Pawar, who runs his academy in Pune, says the natural progression of a wrestler is to begin competing at a district level, move to the state, win there to qualify for the nationals, finish among the top four to get into the national training camp, take part in the selection trials to represent India in international events.

“During this journey,” Pawar says, “the federation plays a role only at the National Championship level. Before that, it is the local academies that largely take care of most things and after progressing from the nationals to the training camp, the government looks after everything. Of course, all this takes place under the aegis of the WFI but it doesn’t contribute at all to the development of a wrestler.”

Olympic medallists shun national camps

This reflects in the journeys of India’s Olympic medallists.

Sakshi Malik (bronze, 2016) benefitted from the robust wrestling culture in Rohtak. Sushil Kumar (bronze 2008, silver 2012), Yogeshwar Dutt (bronze 2012), Ravi Dahiya (silver, 2020) and Bajrang Punia (bronze, 2020) all learned their craft at the Chhatrasal Stadium in New Delhi and trained outside the national camps for the most parts of their careers.

Not just the Olympians, this is a common trajectory for all. Ningappa Genannavar, who became the first wrestler from Karnataka to win a gold medal at the U-17 Asian Championship, is a product of the ‘garadis’ in Mudhol.

In Maharashtra – arguably the biggest hub after Haryana – Commonwealth and Asian medallist Rahul Aware got drawn towards wrestling because of his father, was trained initially by local coaches at his village in Beed and his maternal uncle in Kolhapur before he was moulded into one of India’s most skilful wrestlers by Pawar. Aware is an example of how a wrestler’s career gets stagnated if he trains only at the national camps due to a lack of quality sparring partners and outdated coaching methods.

It’s an anomalous situation.

The cricket board can claim credit for creating a robust domestic mechanism that churns out high-quality players; the All India Football Federation, certainly not the benchmark for good governance, can boast of producing players through its academies; shooting has benefitted from the National Rifle Association of India’s liberal policies; and weightlifters have shown consistent improvement at the national camps under quality coaches who constantly upgrade their knowledge.

The WFI, however, cannot claim to have unearthed any wrestler in Indian wrestling. Neither can it take credit for nurturing talent.

“More than anything else,” Sherawat says, “it’s the akhara culture that’s kept Indian wrestling alive.”

Pawar concurs. “There is no system.”

Arbitrariness and diluted selection criteria

A system existed – on paper. But even then, there were riders and ambiguity, with Brij Bhushan given the right to have a final say on every major issue as per the WFI’s written guidelines.

For instance, it laid down strict criteria for admission into the national camp – gold, silver and two bronze winners in each category of the national championship. But then, there was an exception – the federation president was given the power to include ‘an international wrestler who has (a) good track record but missed’ the national championship. The definition of ‘good track record’ was left vague.

As the WFI president, Brij Bhushan also headed the selection committee, which gave him the authority ‘to recommend which wrestler will represent the country…during the next 3-4 months.’

For the Olympics, the guidelines said that the Brij Bhushan-led selection committee will have the ‘discretion’ to hold trials. “However, it will not be compulsory that all the quota earned wrestlers will be asked to appear in trials,” it read.

And with regards to the Asian Games, the WFI rules stated: “The selection trials in all weight categories are mandatory, however, the Selection Committee will have the discretion to select iconic players like medallists of Olympic/World Championship without trials provided recommendation by chief coach/foreign expert.”

If a wrestler was aggrieved by any decision, he had the option to approach the WFI’s grievance redressal committee. Incidentally, that, too, was headed by Brij Bhushan, underlining the control he asserted over Indian wrestling.

The arbitrariness in the written guidelines reflected routinely in WFI’s operations.

Last year, after the wrestlers returned from the Birmingham Commonwealth Games with a rich medal haul, Brij Bhushan exempted the male wrestlers from competing in the selection trials for the World Championships, which were to be held a month later. However, the same courtesy wasn’t extended to the women, including Vinesh and Sakshi, who were forced to go through the rigorous process all over again.

Brij Bhushan had a signature style of conducting the selection trials, where he would start and stop bouts as per his wish and, at times, would even instruct the referee what to do.

The wrestlers’ ordeal did not end with these trials. If they won, they had to then keep their fingers crossed that the federation would complete the logistical work in time to ensure their participation in a tournament.

Things like visa applications and informing the government-run travel agency about flight bookings may seem very rudimentary. But with the WFI, it was never so straightforward.

“During the last U-23 World Championship, many coaches and half of the wrestlers couldn’t travel because our visas didn’t come on time. It was because our applications were submitted late,” Sherawat says.

In 2021, after the WFI bungled their flight bookings, India’s top women wrestlers Anshu Malik and Sonam Malik were forced to workout at an airport terminal to cut weight, reached Almaty hours before their bouts, competed on an empty stomach but somehow, qualified for the Tokyo Olympics.

No bench strength

While Brij Bhushan kept a hawk eye on the selection process for the national camps and international tournaments, his interest in other aspects – especially planning and review – seemed minimal.

This was evident from its Annual Calendar for Training and Competition (ACTC) plans. The ACTC is a minimum mandatory requirement from the government in which the federations have to list out their programme for the entire year.

For instance, the Athletics Federation of India’s ACTC lists its medal projections for all major championships (for the record, the AFI has targetted 3-5 medals (0 gold) each for the 2023 World Championship and 2024 Olympics, as per their minutes dated March 2022. It goes on to list the events it is targetting ahead of the Paris Olympics, provides details of coaching camps, international competitions, domestic championships and the overall budget for the year, among other things.

In sharp contrast to the AFI’s 22-page proposal, the WFI’s planning and medal projections for this year’s World Championships and next year’s Olympics aren’t available publicly while their ACTC for 2022 was merely two pages long, listing out only the names of the tournaments, their dates and venues.

According to the former sports secretary who had a run-in with Brij Bhushan, the WFI ‘was more or less like a closed federation because nobody said anything that the president didn’t like.’

The concern, however, is that despite the akharas churning out talented wrestlers, India failed to develop a strong bench strength. Sherawat says the reasons for this are the WFI’s tendency to select the same wrestlers for most tournaments and reducing participation in invitational events, where the wrestlers could gain exposure.

The consequence of this was seen at the two Ranking Series competitions this year, where Indian wrestlers returned empty-handed in freestyle, which is considered to be the country’s strength.

With Brij Bhushan now gone and none of his close aides eligible to contest for top posts in the WFI, there is hope that the new administration will bring in more professionalism.

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“We have reached this far without really having a system. Imagine what we’ll be able to achieve with proper support,” Sherawat says. “A country like ours can’t be content with one or two medals at the Olympics. We can do much, much better.”