Hamida Banu: The First Girl Wrestler | #IndianWomenInHistory

Hamida Banu’s story stays primarily shrouded in thriller. With hardly any official file of her outstanding feats, it’s deplorable {that a} lady’s achievement each inside and out of doors of the sports activities area stays unacknowledged and uncelebrated. As the primary of her sort, Banu’s entry into the sphere of wrestling isn’t solely a precious sports activities accomplishment but additionally a major social change as she defies oppressive gender and spiritual constructions.

It’s largely by means of newspaper clips of the Fifties that any gentle will be shed on Hamida Banu’s life as a sportswoman. The ignorance round her life is suggestive of a mentality that’s nonetheless reluctant to simply accept ladies wrestlers or accord them with a lot significance. In modern creativeness, she is an virtually legendary and mysterious determine: unbeatable, unfeminine, and even dehumanised. 

Any try to seek out particulars about her private life solely results in assertions of her wrestling prowess and eating capability: with claims like “she sleeps 9 hours a day, trains one other six and spends the remainder of her time consuming.”

Often called the “Amazon of Aligarh,” Hamida Banu’s life is generally seen by means of a fantasised lens thus obscuring real looking particulars about her social place, struggles as a lady, and facets exterior her wrestling profession. That is one more reason why she isn’t typically related to modern-day ladies wrestlers as she isn’t introduced as actual sufficient.

Nonetheless, The Paperclip makes an attempt to archive her lacking historical past by means of these fragmented information clips to formulate an attention-grabbing story of her life. Regardless that the main focus continues to be largely on her wrestling profession and virtually superhuman may, the detailed descriptions of her legendary fights give a reputable form to the lady.

Coming into the male-dominated discipline of wrestling 

Hamida Banu’s journey to changing into a longtime feminine wrestler was typically obstructed by patriarchal views which couldn’t fathom a lady within the wrestling area. Wrestling at a time when ladies’s participation in sports activities was extremely restricted and restricted, Hamida Banu competed with largely male wrestlers. This meant dealing with the biases and insults of her opponents who didn’t contemplate her worthy sufficient to battle. 

Belonging to a household of wrestlers in a small, conservative city, Banu selected to turn into a wrestler when such a class didn’t even exist in her society. Wrestling was thought-about a person’s sport because it carries with it the standard manly qualities: power, aggression, competitiveness, and bodily energy. It was additionally thought-about indecent for girls to enter this area as ladies are sometimes sexualised in performing any form of bodily exercise.

This was the rationale that Banu’s rivals typically ridiculed her makes an attempt at wrestling, whereas concurrently sexualising her as a marriageable entity. In a notable episode, Banu is challenged by an egoist male wrestler, Baba Pahelwan, to both marry him or defeat him in a wrestling match. 

This already betrays a sensibility of male entitlement and misogynist outlook as he nonetheless posited Banu as a lady to be courted and never revered as a fellow athlete. His vanity was additional appalling as he was unaware of the truth that Hamida had already ousted two different such suitors/rivals. The episode ends with an excellent victory of Hamida as she overcomes Pahelwan in simply 1 minute and 34 seconds!

In one other incident, Hamida Banu’s talent was validated once more as she crushed one other overproud male opponent, Feroze Khan. He, too, met Hamida’s problem with light-hearted dismissal and derision however was ultimately humbled by a defeat at her palms.

Nonetheless, her victories inside the sports activities area contrasted together with her struggles exterior. It was tough for an orthodox neighborhood to simply accept her wrestling ventures. She was in the end forced to leave Punjab and its wrestling neighborhood resulting from public insults and even bodily assaults. Throughout a bout in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, the viewers threw stones at her and berated her for defeating her male opponent. In one other occasion in Pune, Banu’s match was cancelled resulting from intervention by the controlling authorities.

The rejection of Banu didn’t simply come up from the traditional notions about feminine morality but additionally indicated a fragile patriarchal angle which couldn’t digest a lady wrestling higher than males. Nonetheless, Banu’s zeal was commendable as she continued on her wrestling journey, regardless of many such societal suppressions.

Hamida Banu’s spectacular victory file incorporates an invincible successful of all her 320 bouts. Furthermore, she tried to increase her horizons to take up worldwide challenges by competing with European wrestlers. An article in Indian Daily Mail briefly data Banu being challenged by Raja Lai La, a lady wrestler from Singapore. She additionally defeated Vera Chistilin of Russia in lower than a minute at a freestyle competitors held in Bombay.

The transient data which might be accessible on Hamida Banu testify to her resilience as undeterred by patriarchal discriminations and prejudices, she left her mark on the nationwide and worldwide wrestling atmosphere of the Fifties.

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Popping out of the ‘purdah‘

Hamida Banu was hounded by conservative non secular injunctions to restrict herself inside the ‘purdah.’ The sporting apparel donned by her was seen as breaking the norms of chastity and propriety. This angle marks the objectification of girls who can not exist as athletes and are all the time put beneath the scrutiny of the male gaze. It’s a regressive ethical view that hyperlinks ladies’s advantage with protecting up their our bodies.

Hamida Banu didn’t simply resist the literal impositions of ‘purdah,’ but additionally different societal guidelines which restrict a lady’s company and motion. Her creation into the general public sphere and never conforming to the gender roles established for girls is an even bigger subversion of girls’s subordinated place. She didn’t simply problem these male wrestlers within the area; it was a problem in opposition to the entire patriarchal system which doesn’t enable ladies to exist in supposedly masculine domains of sports activities, outward actions, and bodily valour.

The legend surrounding her supposed vow to marry the one who will defeat her signifies Banu’s religion in her wrestling expertise. It exhibits a lady who derives her self-worth from her skills as a sportsperson and never superfluous patriarchal values. And, on the identical time, this additionally helps her to perpetuate a ruse of presenting herself as a prize within the wrestling matches to persuade her male opponents to compete together with her.

Regardless that there may be not a lot documented about her private life, it will be faulty to imagine that she succumbed to conventional frameworks. There’s a trace that she spent the years after retiring from her wrestling profession organising dangals (wrestling bouts). This makes it obvious that Banu was not able to let her legacy go to waste. She continued to encourage others to take up this career.

Banu’s modern significance

There’s now widespread recognition and appreciation of girls wrestlers. The favored movie, Dangal, depicted the biography of the Phogat sisters, the place Geeta Phogat is the primary lady wrestler in India to qualify for the Olympics. Phogat sisters are additionally celebrated for his or her wins on the 2010 Commonwealth Video games. Geeta Phogat talks about defying gender roles and bringing constructive change in her neighborhood by means of her wrestling creation.

Nonetheless, the muse stone to pave the best way for girls wrestlers was put by Hamida Banu. Although she is seen as virtually a mythic determine, these admirable contributions by modern-day ladies wrestlers are part of Banu’s legacy. Ladies’s wrestling was not recognised within the Olympics till 2004 which makes Banu’s victories within the Fifties much more outstanding. 

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She pioneered the ladies’s motion into the in any other case male-dominated sphere of wrestling and created a precedent for all the ladies who comply with her. She is, in the end, an integral a part of ladies’s sports activities historical past — motivating ladies together with her athletic expertise and feminist potential alike.