The prescient film that told the story of the Indian wrestlers

When the wrestlers were on their way to Parliament to protest in May 2023, the police stopped them with a show of force that made the news across the world. (File)

In the film Dear Comrade, starring the poster boy of rage Vijay Deverakonda and the Indian internet’s favourite crush Rashmika Mandanna, the classic Bildungsroman template finds an unexpectedly thoughtful articulation—a once-furious young man finds the tempered steel within when he supports a suicidal young cricketer to confront sexual predation in the women’s cricket board.

The couple, Bobby (played by Vijay) and Lily (Mandanna), meet as neighbours when Bobby is a student who is a member of a Leftist union and frequently participates in breaking hands and legs and vandalism to settle disputes. Lily is a poised young cricketer, who calms him down almost immediately after they meet. Not by asking him to change his ways but most likely by arousing a desire to be with her.

But unlike most coming-of-age stories, Bobby’s big transformation does not come with the flush of the serious love. The couple part after a fight. Three years later, Bobby chances upon Lily in a Hyderabad hospital where she is tied up in a psychiatric ward. The two meet as different people, hormones in a very different measure: now he is poised and she is fragile. Bobby is stunned to learn about her sexual abuse by a cricket official. He believes her, and in his belief, she finds the gumption within to confront the board.

I thought of Dear Comrade many times this year. Most of all, during the devastating press conference at the Press Club in New Delhi on December 21, where the outstanding wrestler Sakshi Malik announced her retirement to protest the election of former WFI chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s aide Sanjay Singh in the wrestling federation. It was impossible to watch—the powerful, proud sportswoman with superb musculature—unable to hold her tears back before the cameras. It is always inappropriate to comment on an individual’s physicality, even if this is done in praise. But in this case, it speaks of how much of a loss Malik’s decision is. She looks fighting fit. She deserves to compete. We deserve to have her compete. She won an Olympic bronze (at the women’s freestyle 58 kg category) in the Rio Games.

How many Indians have won individual medals at the Olympics? Twenty in independent India. How many women among them? Seven, with Sindhu winning twice. Malik remains the only Indian woman to have brought home an Olympic medal in wrestling, a sport at which India is world-class.

By now, everyone has heard about the goings-on in Indian wrestling. Still, so much has happened that they bear articulation. In January 2023, Indian wrestlers including Vinesh Phogat, the first Indian woman to win a wrestling gold at the Asian Games, and Olympic medallists Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia sat on protest in New Delhi, alleging protracted sexual harassment by Singh. The wrestlers withdrew their complaint that month after the Union sports ministry suspended Singh, but returned to protest in April because the government did not release the finding of a probe into their complaints nor did the police lodge their complaint.

Seven wrestlers, including a minor girl, lodged a police complaint against Brij Bhushan in Delhi in April. Later, in an unsurprising turn of events, a 17-year-old minor girl withdrew her complaint of sexual harassment against him. In May, Singh was invited to the inauguration of the new Parliament building. When the wrestlers were on their way to Parliament to protest, the police stopped them with a show of force that made the news across the world.

Criminal charges against Brij Bhushan followed this episode. On 26 July, it was reported that Brij Bhushan’s son-in-law Vishal Singh was one of the candidates in the running for the wrestling federation election. Although no one from his family eventually contested, on December 21, Sanjay Singh who is known to be a Brij Bhushan loyalist, won the election decisively with 13 out of 15 posts going to his faction.

In the film Dear Comrade, Lily (Mandanna) never articulates the sexual abuse she undergoes in cricket. She gives up the game. Her lover Bobby finds out about it almost by accident. He goes to the police to file a complaint which she refuses to sign. But something finally gives within her, at the sexual harassment hearing at the film’s close. Mandana’s Lily lashes out at the abusive selector, physically and verbally, letting out a primal scream.

The sort of scream you can hear in your head when you see the photographs of Olympians Sakshi Malik and Vinesh Phogat being restrained by scores of men in uniform in Delhi.

“Why didn’t you disclose this issue all these days,” journalists ask Lily at the close of Dear Comrade.

“Fear,” says Mandanna’s character, “every girl has this fear. We are scared about what will happen if we complain. Everyone has a dream. But to achieve that dream, one must face many problems. We did not find any support during that time. No one pays us any attention. That is why the fear.”

Sakshi Malik announced her retirement from wrestling at a press conference in Delhi on December 21, 2023.

More than anything else, what the events of the past 12 months reveal is that the word of survivors of sexual abuse carries little weight. The testimony of the complaining wrestlers did not lead to charges against Singh. It was the viral circulation of the images of Delhi Police, captured in the use of force against the wrestlers. It was the negative publicity across international news.

There is a sequence in Dear Comrade where the cricket official throws a cricketer down on the floor and kicks her. The first time I saw the film, I thought it was overdone, the rare dramatized moment in a film that chooses emotional understatement for the most part. But when I watched it again this year, I thought of the photos of the Delhi police detaining the wrestlers. Khaki-clad knees looming over the supine wrestler Sangeeta Phogat. Scores of uniformed hands holding down a sole woman wrestler. Swinging Olympic medallist Sakshi Malik by her arms and legs. If anything, Dear Comrade is understated by comparison.

An accomplished, unexpected love story made in the mainstream format with two enormously popular stars, who delivered superb performances, the film did not get much attention at the box office when it released in 2019. It was the summer after the brief MeToo movement in India flickered and died out, and I remember being startled by how timely it was, how resonant. When I watched it again this summer, when some detail of the wrestlers being yanked by the police brought it back, I was startled again by how prescient it felt.

That is how it goes here—it is always the summer, the fall, the winter after a blazing protest movement, now extinguished. Some other monstrosity is unfolding now. Or a fresh chapter of an old violence. And always, there is something prescient, something resonant—a film, a book, a song, a picture—that told you about how it would be. But like the characters locked in a curse, we are doomed to read the signs, and watch it unfold all over again without changing a thing.