Land of Lime

First, enjoy these award winning wonderful photographs by Tomasz Gudzowaty and Judit Berekal. They were taken at the Gopalaswamisvara Garadi (wrestling ring) in Naalabeedhi, Sunnadakeri, Mysore.

Now seriously, I have spent my entire life in and around universities, hanging out with writers and thinkers. In all these years, I have never come across a ‘cooler’ ‘research project’ (I should just say theme instead of this inelegant phrase) than that of my friend, Ishwar’s. I know him ever so slightly, mostly through common friends, but I have stayed awake many a night thinking excitedly about his theme and questions, being seriously jealous of all the cool, fun stories he had access to, back home in Mysore. I would often initiate conversations with him, to compel a normally reticent Ishwar share some of his stories.

When I met Ishwar nearly ten years ago, he had begun writing an oral history of untouchable wrestlers of Mysore. He had chosen to write on a colony in which he had grown up and still lived; further, being a prominent Dalit student leader in Mysore and a wrestler himself, he had easy access to all those whom he needed to talk to. But to explain why this is the coolest theme ever, I need to write about his field site, Ashokapuram and about wrestling itself, especially in the context of Caste.

Ashokapuram is an untouchable colony, which has now become part of Mysore city. If my memory serves me right, the Maharajas of Mysore resettled untouchables (mostly, the right hand caste of Holeyas) in what was then the southern outskirts of the city, about hundred years ago. I will do some research and provide a more substantial history but for the time being, all we need to know is that this was one of the villages/settlements in the outskirts of Mysore city. Now all these villages (even as they retain their traditional appearance) have become part of the city, surrounded by middle class neighborhoods. Inhabitants of these villages, who practiced traditional occupations such as agriculture or crafts in addition to providing useful services to Mysoreans as recently as ten years ago, have now become well integrated in the city life, through education and by entering the workforce.

Even then, these villages have added a distinct flavor to the culture of city, through their cultural performances (especially all night plays and harikathas), festivals and yes, wrestling. Wrestlers from Ashokapuram, like all other neighboring areas/villages such as Kannegowdana Koppal and Vokkalageri, were very well known personalities and stories on their legendary fights to save the honor of the Mysore court are told with much relish and pride even today.

To my mind, Ishwar’s dissertation potentially raised all the questions one could want to ask about modern India. How could an untouchable wrestle with a caste Hindu or Muslim, who wouldn’t consider touching or even perhaps even train with him?

Well, we all know that body is the site of caste discrimation. Impurity resides in the body of an untouchable. This impurity and social discrimination caused by it could be overcome only in liminal spaces such as the wrestling areana (akhada or garadi). True, bodily contact and sexual relations between the men of upper caste and lower caste women has been sanctioned even by dharmasastras. But here contact involves two men and such contact is allowed only inside an akhada. I am not aware of wrestling schools where untouchables practiced with others but compete they did!

Stories and legends on Mysore wrestlers always were about defeating an outside challenger, thus saving the prestige of the Mysore kings, and the city. Usually, the story would begin with an outsider, who would come to the court of Mysore and challenge Mysoreans to either defeat him or wear bangles and cook a meal for him. When all formidable wrestlers of the court had been defeated, someone from one of the outlying villages would enter the arena and quell the challenge of the outsider. When an untouchable performed such a task, then he gained prestige and dignity for his caste too.

So to write about untouchable wrestlers is to write about memory, pride, dignity and honor of these communities. It is also about discrimination and inequality and discrimination, competition and sport, body and touch. Ishwar and I, along with our friends, often talked about the disabilities one couldn’t overcome, in spite of gaining the respect of those above oneself. But we never lost sight of another more significant aspect: wrestling arena still remained a liminal space, where all discriminations and inequalities were temporarily set aside. More importantly, here was a site where a certain kind of purity could be sought; this world, especially in Kaliyug as my friend Shankar would remind me often, isn’t a place where respect and purity could be achieved easily. But wrestling house is a self-defined area, where a different set of rules exist and where not only purity could be sought but achieved too!

I spent much of my childhood and youth within a two-mile radius of Ashokapuram. By the 1970s, this quiet untouchable colony had become a hotbed of radical Dalit politics, thanks to Dalit politicians who had gained a voice and a sizeable number of students who had entered Mysore University. Young Dalit activists never tolerated any insult and often physically challenged anyone who insulted them or discriminated against them. In fact, rest of Mysore feared passing through a main road that passed through Ashokapuram. Wrestling houses declined as this new activism arose, although there is no correlation between these two evetns.

Closer to my parents home, another village, Kannegowdana Koppal (named after Kannegowda and now famously known as KG Koppal) had an even more illustrious wrestling history, thanks to such accomplished wrestlers as Basavayya. My exposure to popular culture, especially to popular interpretations of epics and myths was through the all night plays and Harikatha performances at this village. A local and marginal perspective especially on stories such as Hariscandra and Shani could only be gotten from such sites and my appreciation of epics and epic imagination deepened because of the time I spent at these places. By the early 1980s, when I began frequenting these villages, wrestling had become less popular, although Mysore boasted of many traditional ‘gyms’, where ‘Gurus’ would teach through traditional means and equipment the art of danda and samu (traditional wrestling exercises), even to those who were interested primarily in ‘physical culture’, rather than wrestling per se. Their legendary diet – pista, badam and other such nuts, milk, eggs and ghee – attracted many enthusiasts. Like boxing for African-Americans in modern American cities, wrestling was also an opportunity to gain dignity and some material benefit too, especially before independence, when a great performance in the court could bring land and cash award from the king. During the annual Dussera festival, wrestling would be the main feature under the Maharajas. It still is, even today; Dussera kesari and Dasara kumar competitions usually attract thousands of enthusiastic viewers in October, although the sport itself has lost its glamour.

This morning, when I read a news item in my favorite Star of Mysore on the above mentioned photographs on the wrestlers of Mysore, I was reminded of Ishwar, his ‘cool’ work and indeed, the wrestling culture of Mysore. One of these days, I need to do something more substantial than a LOL entry on the wrestlers of KG Koppal and Ashokapuram, indeed on the history of wrestling culture in Mysore. Ishwar’s work would be a good place to start along with these photographs.

In the meanwhile, enjoy the photos. Thank you, Tomasz and Judit. If you need some text to accompany these photos, I can help you with both research and writing. But the photos by themselves are marvelous and tell a mighty story.