Wrestlers delight shutter boxes; win sympathy but lose battle   

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Photo credit @SakshiMalik

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By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi, May 28: Two days ahead of the planned ‘Mahila Samman Mahapanchayat’, a few men, sporting white kurya-pyajama and green headgear with flowing tails, leisurely walked from the new parliament building towards Press Club of India. They had I-Phones, and most of them times their busied in scrolling their smart phones.

When probed how they could think of marching to the new parliament building on a day of its inauguration, one of them said that “we will see on the day, but one lakh people will come”. They were only five, who had apparently been on a recce mission to see the site of the planned mahapanchayata, just in front of the new parliament building.

It seemed that the protesters had run out of the idea as they found that the channel of communication with the government was shut. The powerful Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh remained unfazed since the wrestlers, who have won Olympic medals, took to Jantar Mantar to allege incidents of sexual harassment and exploitation by the politician.

Singh had seemingly a strong shield. Almost all the sporting federations are headed by politicians, mostly from his party only. One of the heads of such federations, who is son of a politician, had recently been accused of rape but nothing happened against him. Thus, Singh knew that allegations of sexual misconduct would not be enough to trouble him, as he worked to make the issue of the protest of wresters at Jantar Mantar a Congress sponsored event. His supporters labelled that the wrestlers had levelled the allegations against him at the behest of the Haryana-based Congress leaders.

On Sunday, the wrestlers sought to break the barricade, knowing well that the move will incite the police action to send them into detention, which will also bring curtains on the protest at Jantar Mantar. This played out, as the protestors were bundled into the police vans along with activists and sent to some of the police stations. This is the way protests at Jantar Mantar end.

Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre by now has seen several protests to have developed own ‘toolkit’ to deal with them. The only protest to which Modi surrendered was farmers’ agitation, which had massive support, to almost choke the national capital for almost a year.

The wrestlers may now think of reasons why they failed to gain the popular attention, and, possibly, they may count that the popular support was missing. Also, the visibility of the political leaders at the protest venue may also have made the BJP government thick-skinned.  

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