Transcript:

Thank you for inviting me. I believe this project is extremely significant in the context of sport and gender, and therefore, I’m very keen to contribute to why you are working on this particular archive and the toolkit or the curriculum that you are going to create for media persons. I think it’s an extremely important piece of work because media has played such an important role in making what women’s sport is today to people, to fans, for example. The discourse around women’s sport, and it’s quite a big thing at this point, given also, if you notice the improvements and the development in the field of football, women’s sport across countries internationally is developing in a very fast way. So I think it’s a very good budget from that particular point of view. In my 15 years of work as an activist, I have had several opportunities to work with journalists. And in fact, very close collaborations have also often taken place, especially in the context of the investigative journalism in sport. I have had great allies with whom I have been able to work because there is a commonality as to trying to create a different sport, trying to create a space which is much safer for athletes.Trying to create a space which is more equal. There is that commonality between many of these investigative journalists who want to change sport for better. And so is the case for defenders of athletes rights like me, where we also want sport to change for the better. Having been an athlete in the past myself and facing certain abuse, as in the sense of coaches abuse, verbal physical abuse, I was quite aware, even as an athlete, later on I became a coach as well, and also did my research under Supriya Chowdhury as part of the School of Women Studies in the university. When I started working as an activist, it was at formal decision. My first engagement with a particular athlete who was sex-tested was Shanti Soundarajan. Shanti was banned from competing in 2006 when I was still a PhD student. But in 2009, I started connecting with her. And by 2010, I had met her, and I did a video interview of her and all of that. From then on, the journey has been about speaking to these athletes, understanding them in a way which nobody has tried before. It was quite, I can’t say it myself, but it was a first of a kind in many ways. Nobody was really preaching out to these athletes. There was that culture of a suspicion around these athletes. No one was directly speaking to them. They were looked at as cheaters. You don’t go and speak to cheaters. They were treated as any doper in the field of sport would be treated as. From that to think of their rights, that they have rights which are being violated in the process, was a different sensitivity that I was bringing to this conversation. It started with Shanti and then with Pinki. During Pinki’s case, when I got directly involved in giving interviews in television panels, whether it was a national media or even in Bengal, it was a huge thing. For weeks, it was those headline news in print, Ananda Bazar Patrika, or everywhere, basically. And nationally also, it did get a lot of attention. And the question initially raised at that time, I very clearly remember, was about whether this happening to as represented India’s women is really a boom. And her gender was constantly questioned. And the first and major thing that I had to do through my intervention in all these media panels and everything was the fact that you first need to understand that everyone deserves a fair trial.There was a complaint about sexual harassment against her. At that time, the Indian law said that only a man can rape. Therefore, from that, this question of whether she’s a man or woman came. To change that conversation in the media to the point of having fair trial. Everybody has a right to fair trial. Also the fact that what does porter relations say and how one cannot question on his gender. These conversations was gradually being raised. In 21 days, when Pinky was released from jail, the conversations that by then very much changed. We were talking about how she was, what she was experiencing in the jail. So Pinki’s case was very extreme as well. The kind of scrutiny of her body that happened forcefully tied her. They tied her hands at the hospital and removed her clothes and all kinds of… It’s very… strange… I don’t know how to explain that, but it was really very difficult situation through which she had to go through with this physical examination done and she photographed while the doctors were physically examining her. She was photographed as well for research purposes, and nobody is given any right to give consent to research, etc. All of those things happened, and nobody was talking about that. The people and the media was only talking about whether she’s a man or a woman, whether she had the right to compete for the country as a woman. These were the conversations. What we did for those three weeks while she was in jail and we were trying hard to get her out of the jail was also to change this conversation in popular media around whether she as a man or woman, to conversations around whether she deserves a fair trial, what human rights violations have taken place, what does the sport regulation really say, whether it tries to determine someone’s gender, to when she comes out, finally, 21 days later, talking about her rights. But at the same time, questions around medical records being publicly shared It. This has happened with many intersex people in the past, in other parts of the world. There is a sense of curiosity about bodies where they’re not typically female or typically male. It serves interest some people. Media loves to sensationalize it. People love to read it. That was happening without really paying any attention to this individual person about whose body we were constantly discussing. While people are questioning whether she has at all sexually assaulted someone, there was a allegation of that sort. No one was really talking about this accused person’s rights. It was very different as a case and very sensationalizing. We were able to change the direction in which the conversation started in a very positive way, I felt. I remember one particular incident on the day she was finally released. She appeared in that very program from her home in Baguihati. The studio was in Central Kolkata somewhere, as far as I remember. I had an interview with the NDTV, with Anil Ray, and then I traveled to this space. By that time, the program had started. There were other speakers, supposed to discuss. She was in Baguihati after when we were at her home, and they got her from there.There were other speakers, lawyers, doctors, et cetera, in the studio, and I entered there. Then there’s this particular journalist, her forgotten his name, who appeared on a monitor speaking from a certain place, Lal Bajar, near Lal Babar, and saying, Police, should we able to. From police sources and other sources, we have come to know what exactly the medical report of Pinki Pramanik is saying. And then he starts reading certain things from whatever the medical report was. I was furious, and I did not care that I was on camera, and I started screaming, I think, about the fact that if I am tested today, my blood report would be announced first to the media. Police has no right to give information away to the journalist, and the journalist ethically shouldn’t be reading out in live television. I was very furious and I started screaming. There was a huge… It was a one-hour program which got extended to one and a half hours. Sandipta was anchoring the programme, who later passed away. Sandipta was anchoring that particular panel. I did raise this point very clearly that she has her rights. She has her rights to privacy. You cannot share her medical information. It’s just because, and the journalist argued, but people want to know like the nation wants to know now. That was the argument this person told me. This has In a debate for the last few weeks, people want to know what exactly the medical report says. I said, They have no business whatsoever to learn about the medical report. Has Pinki heard about it? Has she read her I don’t know. She hasn’t. This is something that I have noticed in other cases as well. But in a very different context, when federations or international federations conduct such examination, there also doctors face this dual loyalty because they are employed or recruited or commissioned by the federation. But they have somebody who is in this case, their patient, and their loyalty should only be towards their patient, and any medical record that you have should be given to the patient. In these cases, in the context of sport, the loyalty is dual. So you have a loyalty towards the federation and also towards your patient. But often these doctors, because of the hierarchy that exists between an international federation and an athlete, they only tend to send the medical reports and medical information to the international federation. Many of these athletes across Africa and across Asia that I have worked with tell me the same story that we don’t have our reports. In case of Shanti Soundarajan, we had to do a Right to Information Act. Under Right to Information Act, we asked for her reports from Asian Games several years later, and she herself asked for it and she got it. In other parts of the world, in some countries in Africa, there are no such similar provisions where You could have asked for your reports. But all of them talk about this. There is this very… Lack of transparency. Lack of transparency. But also it’s a severe violation of someone’s rights to her own private medical records. That has happened over and over again. But anyways, going back to the story, there was a lot of this intervention that I happened to make during Pinki’s case. But what was quite remarkable was a year after, through some friends, I got to connect to with Chandril in Anand Bazar Patrika, who was keen to have a story on Pinki by Pinki. This was an idea that was there in my head for some time, and I was discussing it with Pinki. Because athletes are often not so eloquent, they cannot really write their own pieces. So I helped write it with her. I remember spending a whole day with her and sit with her and I’m not going to write that piece. So I was typing what she was talking about it. And it was about her experience in the last one year. This was a year after that arrest and how she was perceived throughout that time, what she experienced, what responses, reactions she got when she got back to working as a ticket checker. And it felt like finally she was, She took ownership of her own story because she was telling her own story. And Ananda Bazar Patrick’s Rabi Bhashariya published it. And not only published it, they actually had a series of holdings across Calcutta saying that if you want to read Pinki Pramanic’s story in her own voice, do buy Rabi Bhashariya on this date. So for more than a week, there was this build-up to that article, and it was really a moment of, I think a moment when both Pinki and I, both of us felt that we have been able to switch something around in some way.That was one of these One of the anecdotes that I thought I should share. Then we moved on, and in 2014, Dutee Chand is dropped from the national team. One of these journalists, I think from mint, got hold of me by a phone and said, Have you heard there is this athlete who has been dropped? Her name is Dutee Chand from the Glasgow Commonwealth Games team. I said, No, I haven’t. But how do you know? And then I figured that there was an interview that was given by somebody which licked her name. So by then I knew what is it that causes maximum harm to these athletes. Weeks. So I, especially in the context of what happened with Shanti or Pinki, I knew about it. So what I did is I got in touch with… I tried to get in touch with Dutee, but I also got in touch with Sports Authority of India as Director General, Gigi Thompson, who knew me because I was already involved in the work they were doing around the standard operative procedure the year before. And I told him that, What have you done? And He was very receptive. He was one of those administrators who were willing to do things differently. He said that, What should we say to the media? I said, Can I help you write your media release? I volunteered to do so, and he was very happy with that. I helped them write their media release in a way that would not raise questions about Dutee Chand’s gender. The report, while following the regulations, because I was not myself supportive of the regulations, but a government agency, as a government agency, they wanted to support the policy that was in place by the internationally governed body. But having said that, it can be framed in a way which is less harmful to the athletes. Therefore, media messaging is so important. It’s not only about what the reporters are writing. What I realized at this point is you can actually control what is being written and printed across the country, across different media houses, by only making sure that the press release that comes from this government agency is written in a way which is supportive or at least not harmful to the athlete. The words and sentences we used there were quoting from the regulations like, this regulation is not trying to determine the athlete’s gender. This is called hyper androgenism regulations. This is about a certain hormone. This is not about the athlete is a woman or a man. It is about- This was not suddenly Indian government, it was regulations like international sports body regulations. These were international body regulations. But when it comes to these things, federations, athletics federations of India- They have to provide by force. Is bound by the policies of the international federation. The government necessarily is not. But in this case, because AFI doesn’t have medical… They have a medical commission, though, but by then we had the SOP. Sop needed nodal officers who are government connected, etc. So the question that you were asking was about the policies, how the government is connected. Government connected, etc. The question that you were asking was about the policies, how the government is connected. The government generally tries to follow what the international federations are saying because there is a sense of respect towards these international federations as to what they are suggesting is the right reason. In sport, we tend to look up to these international federations for policies and sport rules. Often, these rules are considered as As something that you cannot not follow. These are sacrosanct. You cannot really not follow these orders. They are sacrosanct. That was the atmosphere. They brought out that press release, which was supportive It was a motive of the regulations. It didn’t really capture my position about the regulations, but it did also make sure that- To an extent, yes. To an extent, make sure that the athlete’s gender is not questioned. That was my contribution to that. There was a standard operative procedure in place. Athletic Federation of India didn’t They have the means to really conduct an entire… The Hyperandrogenism Regulations Testing, Medical Test, Medical Assessment. They wrote to Sports Authority of India to conduct this test. In that also the language used was about why it was important that they do this test in order to avoid embarrassment at an international stage. There’s a sense of embarrassment, shame attached to these athletes. There are many documents. We tend to talk about reportage. We tend to talk about what we read in newspapers or in electronic media, what we see. But there are all these other documents, whether it’s policy document, whether it’s a standard operating procedure document, whether it’s a communication between the foundation and the government. These documents represent not only these They represent these athletes, but it also reflects the State’s ideas, media fraternity’s ideas.They also represent a certain a kind sensitivity or lack of sensitivity that people had towards this certain group of athletes.

Because this project is conducted by two universities, I assume that the archive you are creating is not only meant for media persons, but also meant for students, also going to help researchers in the future. If that is the target, then I think it shouldn’t be only about the media reporting, but it should also include these government- Policy documents. Communication, policy documents, etc. Because they also capture a certain language that was used to identify these women or a certain approach around embarrassment and shame and suspicion that was also used in those case that time. I take pride, again, about this. There’s another anecdote I can share. After this whole new press release, things suddenly changed across and people suddenly started talking about the regulation, whether she has a high level of testosterone, why is it so, whether people generally have it, etc. Slightly different, not her gender. So that was the first positive step. Then I get a call from the Director General of Sport Authority India asking me to go to Delhi. So I went to there. And I was not told that I will be meeting to about 25 bureaucrats that day. But he took me to this Gigi, Giji Thompson. He took me to this room full of bureaucrats all working in the field of sport. He said, why don’t you talk about what we should do around the Dutee Chand’s case? I was surprised because I was not prepared for it. But I think I more or less did a good job. He was… Gigi Thompson used to take decisions very quickly. This was his way of making sure that everybody knows who he was going to give responsibility to next. I didn’t have any idea of that. I went and I said, Okay, India has had this athlete in the past. It is high time. We do something about it. It is not about taking that approach where we consider these women cheats and we ask them to leave sport. But we look at these women as our women athletes doing well and have prospects of doing well, and we stand by them. Therefore, how can we stand by them? Not by asking them to take medical steps and giving providing funding for the medical test or medical intervention, but by supporting them in legal action. Because by then, I had spoken to Professor Bruce Kidd in Canada, who was a former Olympian chief of CAGOs. At that time, he was chairing the Commonwealth Advisory Board in Sport. He was also speaking with some of the Indian officials who were visiting Glasgow. I had a chat with Bruce Kidd and he said, Maybe this is the time that Dutee can take this case to court of arbitration for sport and challenge these regulations. I had to convince the Indian government that you support Dutee, stand by her, and take this case to Lausanne to challenge the very regulations because the regulations are not based on scientific evidence. Working with journalists have been an everyday thing for me. It is not only in the context of India, but even my work, which became quite international later on and having worked with several of African athletes as well, and being in Europe, being geographically closer to these international federations, there is a lot of work that goes on with journalists. Now, I will start with one article that was written by New York Times on Dutee Chand in 2014, where both of us were featured. Our photographs were there and all of that. Now, that I remember very correctly that the New York Times journalist wanted to visit Dutee’s village, and I said, maybe not a good idea, because I felt it might bring back the scrutiny around and heard in the immediate village. Those making them understand the cultural context, also changing the language. I’ve done a lot of work with journalists. You’ll be surprised to know, and this is not something that even the individual journalist would share with their legal department because they’re not supposed to share their written articles. But a lot of times they would personally either read it out to you to get your views on whether it is safe for the athlete, whether it is right for the athlete, whether the language is correct. I have had these individual relationships with journalists where they would call up and read out their article and I’ll say, No, maybe you shouldn’t use ‘gonads’ is a right word, not testicles. You make these comments, and they have been receptive. This is not only in India, but international. I’ve had journalists in Western European countries or in the US or in Australia, even in South America, Africa, where I had the opportunity to directly contribute to how it’s been written, how it’s been presented, even if it’s a documentary, the BBC, anywhere. That has been a lot of my work, and a lot of the work has been in the background and mostly unpaid, of course, which has been a struggle. But this has been very It was very important. The fact that there was this interest and curiosity in this particular topic meant a lot of media persons gradually became interested, but they didn’t know how to report. I have seen the same language issues being replicated everywhere. The same questions around gender, the same word about whether to use testis, testicles, gonads, internal sex organs. What is the correct language? Everywhere, journalists are also worried about using a word which is completely unknown to the public. Will testosterone make sense as testosterone to the people? Or should we call male hormone? A lot of Bengali media would call male hormone. And I have very aggressively worked with each of them, trying to tell them, We cannot write male hormone. At some point, testosterone used to be called male hormone, but it is not a male hormone. All women have testosterone, men have testosterone, and there are variety. We have different levels of testosterone. So the moment you call it a male hormone, you’re also assigning an idea of sex and gender to it, and therefore you cannot. But nobody will understand if I say testosterone, but you will have to start it. If you start using it, people will one day understand. Those conversations where you cannot use male hormone because that’s going to have a negative impact. That happened very much as well with some journalists, not many. No, no. Because especially in recent times at the international level, I think journalists are more respectful about the rapport they create with people like us. But then this happened in India where I felt when Dutee Chand decided to come out, obviously, I was very close to her as an advisor, initially appointed by the government. I was very much aware of Dutee’s sexuality. I’ve been close to her. My relationship started as a government advisor to her, but then she was young and I became kind of a mentor. I knew about it. We have had discussions about whether to come out or not. Since she was focusing on training at that point, I did advise her, I will accept it, that I advised her not to come out at that point because I wasn’t sure how the government will respond, how her sponsors will respond etc. The legal safeguards were not in place. There are perceptions about her already because of the fight she took to CAS. I was being in a way, protective, not thinking like an activist. I was thinking like a mother, I believe, in some ways, if I may say so, but without being patronizing. But Dutee is this very different person as well who often surprised me and taught me a lot as well. She decided one fine day that she must talk about it to the media, and she did. In spite of me having a long call with her the night before, I wake up to the news that the world know that Dutee as a homosexual. I saw that the journalist who broke that news was someone I knew closely. I worked very closely with for us. Often, these conversations are what is the right language? Please change the language, or this is a report that publish it in this way at this point. You have constantly strategizing. You have a media strategy as an activist, which I didn’t know I was doing at that time, but I was actually I’m doing that. I had this very good relationship with the journalist, but when it came to deciding whether I get to publish a breaking news to the world as opposed to whether I should think of what is the right for the athlete, especially in this case, she was by then an adult and she was deciding for herself. I really didn’t have a say. At that point, I was a bit unhappy with the fact that Dutee didn’t take my advice and also unhappy about the fact that the journalist who broke the news to the world could have consulted me before publishing it. And I’m being very frank. Not many people would appreciate what I am saying because I see that I was trying to control things where I shouldn’t have tried. But you do all kinds of things. You do want to control the media messaging all the time as an artist, to be fair.

At that time, I didn’t realize that this is actually going to be received so positively. She became a bigger icon than she was before. I didn’t see that coming. A lot of my friends from the community, I’m an ally to the LGBTQI community, would feel terrible about what I’m saying But all of us have- This is a learning experience.

So then Dutee has always surprised me with doing things very differently or When I would be very tense, saying something to me, which would be like, Okay, on the day when the results were about to come from Court of Arbitration for Sport, I was so tense and down. And she said, You’ve done whatever you had to do. You should just be relaxed and wait for the judgment.

Nitu’s story was quite a story of being married off- A remote village. We were remote village. Also, there are cast issues which wasn’t captured because she didn’t want to talk about it much. It wasn’t captured in that interview because of that reason. But there were cast issues that she faced. It’s a wrestling is a physical sport. It’s a contact sport. Therefore, if you are from a lower cast, there could be people who may not want to wrestle with you. You’re not getting enough practice. These are issues that she has faced, but she didn’t really talk about it. I’m sure there are other men and women from lower caste, inversely, who face similar issues. Nitu’s story was obviously about very early marriage, then sexually abused by the father-in-law, then somehow escapes that, runs away from that house, goes back to her get on her home, then gets married to another person called Sanjay, who has been a very supportive husband to her. After giving birth to a twin, she wanted to become a hustler. She became a wrestler. She started wearing Salwar kameez. She started jogging early in the morning in the village. People started in Khariana. They started talking about this bahoo who is suddenly running around, initially in salwar kameez, then in track pants, and they were not really appreciative. Very critical of what she was doing and her family, why they were allowing her to do. That’s the approach that women, women, make their decisions in these cultures. From then, that’s into becoming one of the National Games medalists and then going to, I think Brazil, somewhere in some other continent. Then they suddenly realized that her name is in the newspaper. That’s, again, an interesting connection to this particular project, Her Game Her story, I think, is the fact that when she’s trying to train, wanting to be a wrestler, a married woman with kids, people are not appreciated. But the moment they see her achievements in a newspaper, the Panchayat people, they started saying that because of you, our village’s name is in the newspaper, so we should be proud of you. So suddenly overnight, She’s received with garlands and everything, and she becomes a star in the village. Not really international news only because nobody is going to read the New York Times. But even in the Hindi or in the local media, the fact that the name is its small village. That changed her life in the village. It is also something that tells us about if a woman- The worth of journalism, yes. The worth of journalism on one end, but also as a woman athlete, you have to really be exceptional to be accepted. Otherwise, your story isn’t of any value. But at the same time, The Nitu’s story got featured in English language media as well because she was this mother of twins and all of that. Because Mary Kom was huge as well, being a mother and a boxer and a champion for several years. That was a huge story in those days. In 2012, I remember when the international magazines had her on the cover, saying, mother of two. At that time, she had two. Now, she has three.

Even now when you look at Kim Clijsters, Serina with Olympia, in all of these you constantly see the idea of being a mother and the champion athlete is great. We necessarily do not see so much with the male athletes being father’s and being parents. But I also understand why that is the case because is such a physical thing for women. Obviously mother’s, especially being athletes, is way more complex. But recently I am pleased to see Rafa Nadal’s son junior Rafa’s photograph, where, he is playing and the child is watching from the stand and that being sort of in the news quite a bit. It was refreshing to see Rafa as father getting quite bit of attention as well. But these are sort of physicality specifically for mothers I understand.But it is also a sort of often for getting other athletes even if you are not a mother you can still have quite great story. But that isn’t as great as being a mother and champion to our traditional minded media house. Then you are not interested on someone who is not a mother and the champion. You know there are those kind of things you see sometimes. Sports as an Institution and sports as a culture, sport as media sport only take interest in excellence. This is not new whether it is women sports or men sports. It is always all about excellence. And the focus is on excellence, focus is on national Pride, focus is on winning medals for the nation. So it is all about that. Sports helps in nation building in that way as well. We have seen this over and over again and therefore we get very little of this recreational sport or sport as medium for other kinds of life skills.You can go into individual sport as well and see that their history their journey and their trajectory is very different. Kabaddi and cricket would be very different from one another. Team sport and individual sports would be very different, for example tennis has very different trajectory. But then again tennis and badminton also have very different trajectories. Tennis coming from the West whereas always been quite big in Asia. As a market is now way more recognised from when we wear growing up. So all of that obviously is there. But I think sports is focused generally on excellence which makes the media also focus very little on the recreational part of the sport. In 2007, when I was doing my PHD, in Khiddirpore there were already girls wear boxing. Boxing wasn’t a Olympics sport at that time. So there wasn’t much money in the sport. If it is not olympic spot you do not get governments funding because there is no scope for medals in Olympics. So non-Olympics spots always suffer a lot. Women boxing was not a part of Olympics sport in 2007 at that time I was doing my PHD and so I visited them and decided to submit one of my chapters as an audio visual document in the 15 minute – 16 minute documentary called “The Bold and The Beautiful”. When a different name today would have made the film differently If I did it today. But having said that, it was quite and interesting experience where see that this is 2007 which was obviously post the 1990s a lot had shifted and how the muslims were responding to the changes around. And you suddenly see that these women who are all from Muslim families in Khiddirpore area. Their families were mostly supportive of these women, young girls competing in boxing because I think in some way they felt this is a form of also martial art or a form of learning to save yourself and defend yourself. Therefore often parents were happy to do that. But also a couple of other things came up during that work. One was couple of mothers talked about “humein bhi yehi khwaish thi” which translate to we also had the same wish but our parents would not allow us to do so. So there was the Mother’s wanting their daughters to play sports and living their dreams through them. It was one of the things that came up. The Other was one of the fathers constantly talking about how “jung ke jaisa hai” or I would love my daughters to go and fight for the country. And when you are competing in boxing there is that hope that they will one day fight for the country. There was a whole idea of nationalism brought in. But you also see how as a Muslim family of those days there was a need to emphasize your identity as an Indian over your identity as a Muslim. Those things I saw in 2007 which was quite before 2012 when finally women’s boxing was introduced as an Olympics sport in London where Mary Kom goes and wins the bronze medal. But was quite an interesting thing and I think it is worth mentioning.