Forty-year-old Mahananda Vishal Patil from Dhanora village at Beed in Maharashtra had never got the opportunity to play a game after she attained puberty. “When I heard there was a kabaddi tournament in the village, I went to watch it. One of the players didn’t turn up and the organisers were asking if somebody would like to play. At that moment, I knew it was my one chance to relive my childhood memories,” she says.
She hitched up her sari and got into the arena, and her team won the second place in the tournament. Women in saris playing kabbadi matches are a rare sight, especially in rural Maharashtra. But this is now changing, thanks to a string of recent tournaments organised by the women of Committee of Resource Organisation (CORO) India’s Ekal Mahila Sangathan (Single Women’s Organisation), an NGO that works for the upliftment and rights of marginalised women in Maharashtra.
Forty-six-year-old Rukmini Ramesh Nagapure from Beed town, got married at 14 and lost her husband at the age of 32. “Women playing sport, specially a widow, is a taboo in our region. I never thought I would ever play any outdoor game again. It felt liberating to be on the ground, laughing and screaming with joy and excitement! We didn’t realise how much we had bottled up within us for years. I know it is not a big deal for many women in cities but for us, it is a life-time opportunity,” says Rukmini.
So far eleven tournaments have been conducted from April 28 to June 15 in 11 villages of four districts in the State — Osmanabad, Beed, Nanded and Latur. In all, 854 women between the age of 18 and 70 played kabaddi and around 2,000 women gathered to encourage them.
In the Marathwada region, widows, single women, women who are divorced and those abandoned by their families face social ostracisation. Patriarchal norms restrict their mobility and they are expected to be confined to their homes and be caregivers. Widows are not allowed to participate in any festivities as they are considered inauspicious.
Mahananda Chavan, one of the organising committee members of Ekal Mahila Sangathan, explains, “During the last four years we have been holding meetings to discuss these patriarchal norms that restrict a woman’s development. In our gatherings, we made women interact with each other. To break the ice, we made them play games, like musical chairs.”
She adds that the women gradually felt comfortable enough to open up about their feelings and share stories of their childhood when they used to play numerous games such as hopscotch, kho kho and kabaddi. “They stopped playing when they reached puberty and many of them dropped out of school and were married by the age of 14 or 16. Since then we have had several discussions to normalise women playing sports, whether they are married, single or elderly,” says Ms. Chavan.
When the organisers reached out to panchayat bodies and villagers for donations to conduct the tournament, they were ridiculed and met with scepticism. They wondered why the women should participate in tournaments instead of taking care of their households and families. Some of them were aghast at the image of women hitching up their saris and indulging in sports of any kind.
“But there were also people who supported the idea by contributing cash — from ₹10 to even ₹5,000 — or by offering to arrange venues, tarpaulins for shade, drinking water and so on,” says Ram Shelke, the co-lead of grassroots campaigns in CORO India. “Some sports teachers offered to step in as umpires and moderators without charging a fee.”
To garner publicity for the tournament, Ekal Mahila Sangathan members hired autorickshaws and pushcarts and put up banners and posters announcing the event. “There were men who abused us. They said we were a bad influence on women, pelted stones on the posters and tore down the banners,” says Ms. Chavan.
She says women who were eager to play were forced to lie to their families to get some time for practice sessions. “They stepped out on the pretext of buying groceries or visiting hospitals. Some of them practised with their children inside their homes when their husbands went to work.”
Most of the women were dressed in saris as they could not get permission from their husbands and in-laws to wear salwar-kameez or leggings and kurta.
In Godhala village in Latur, 45-year-old Sujata Achut Kamle faced verbal abuse when she was gathering women for the tournament. “When I decided to play, I started talking to other women to form a group so that we all could practise together. We used to play in the night in a nearby school ground when everyone was sleeping. It was tiring because we had to wake up early in the morning for household chores. When we won the prize and appreciation, it felt so good,” says Sujata who is pursuing graduation through distance education.
Now the women want this tournament to go big and take place every year. Kabaddi has been unexpectedly powerful in changing attitudes towards the women, and giving them more confidence in themselves.
An inspiring sight
In Sonarwadi village, Osmanabad, for instance it was a rare and inspiring sight to see when 24-year-old Puja Yuvraj Waghmare and her 40-year-old mother-in-law, Sharada Angad Waghmare, playing kabaddi together in the same team.
Stating that their team also won the first and second prizes in two different rounds held in nearby villages, Puja, who was married at 16, says it was tough at first. “There were people who were calling me a bad influence and saying that my husband should be strict with me... But he has been extremely encouraging.” Her husband and father-in-law watched the duo play along with her two sons, taking photographs and cheering them on.
Her mother-in-law, Sharada, who was married at 11 and never went to school, says she does not see kabaddi as a competition. “We just want to go in the field and relive lost memories of childhood,” she says, adding, “We play with all our heart. I feel so happy from within, like how I used to feel as a child.”
