The most striking aspect of Vinesh Phogat’s election campaign in Julana is the large throng of boisterous female supporters making up her entourage.
The sight would surprise anyone familiar with Haryana. Women are barely visible in public spaces in the state – especially not in large groups, unapologetically taking up space. On Thursday, as Phogat made her way through Julana’s bustling bazaar, visiting each shop and seeking the blessings of shopkeepers, her female retinue wove around behind her, its presence a powerful show of solidarity.
Julana, a small town in the Jind district of Haryana, is not used to any of this. It has never had a woman MLA or, for that matter, even a woman runner-up in an assembly election.
That might change with Phogat’s nomination as a candidate by the Indian National Congress for the assembly polls on October 5. One of India’s leading wrestlers, she was a key part of the wrestlers’ protest last year against Bharatiya Janata Party MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who was then the president of Wrestling Federation of India. Singh had been accused of sexual harassment by several female wrestlers.
After Phogat’s valiant performance at the Paris Summer Olympics in August, where she made the finals but was disqualified for being 100 grams over the weight permitted in her category, her popularity is at an all-time high.
Phogat’s entry into the race has meant the Julana poll is now being keenly followed across India. However, the election is not going to be a cakewalk for her. It is unclear how much of Phogat’s popularity as a sportsperson and the accolades she received for the protests against sexual harassment will translate into hard votes in the face of more traditional factors such as caste and Julana’s reputation as a difficult seat for the Congress.
She is up against Surender Lather of the Indian National Lok Dal and Yogesh Bairagi of the BJP.
Women’s vote
There is widespread support for Phogat’s candidature among women voters in Julana. Part of this stems from the belief that a woman MLA would be able to better represent their interests.
“I will vote for the Congress because as a woman, Vinesh can understand our problems and we can also meet her,” said Geerjana, a Scheduled Caste voter. “If the MLA is a man, we can’t go speak to him. Our husbands will get angry if we go talk to a man but no one will stop us if it is her.”
Barpai, 65, said that in her long decades of voting in Julana, she does not recall a woman candidate in an assembly election. “All the women here are very enthused,” she said. “A woman manages her household so well. She will similarly manage politics.”
Another young female voter, Poonam, said that she was inspired that as a woman, Phogat had done so well and become an Olympian. “She will become the sports minister and our sportspersons will get a lot of support,” she said.
Sangeeta, who belongs to a caste categorised as an Other Backward Class in Haryana, added: “The struggle we have faced, she has also experienced them.”
She was alluding to the protests last year against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, in which several female wrestlers from Haryana had participated. Visuals of the protestors being manhandled and detained by the police in May had created outrage, especially in Haryana.
Phogat’s popularity means she is also able to reach out to women who are not traditional Congress voters.
Sangeeta said that she will be shifting her vote away from the BJP, for which she had voted in the previous two elections.
Sushila Karela, 52, a member of the Jat community, said she would also also be voting for Phogat. Karela is the women’s wing head of the Haryana Jan Sevak Party. The party is not in an official alliance with Congress but withdrew its candidate from Julana to support Phogat’s candidature.
“She has increased our honour and reputation so we will support her,” Karela said.
Julana’s daughter-in-law
Local notions of honour also play a strong role in shoring up support for Phogat. Her campaign emphasises that she is Julana’s bahu or daughter-in-law since her husband, Somvir Rathee, is from the Bakhta Khera village in Julana tehsil.
This has found resonance among many voters.
“We will make her win,” said Bijender, 50, a member of the Saini community, which is categorised as an OBC. “It is the matter of the honour of Julana.”
Said Bhupendra Malik, 50, a member of the Jat community, “Why was she dragged on the streets of Delhi? That is an insult to us.”
Ram Gopal, 63, a member of the Brahmin community, said that if Phogat loses, it would be shameful for all residents. “She is not only our daughter-in-law, but the entire country’s daughter,” he said.
Both Bijender and Malik said they were not Congress voters but Vinesh voters.
Many of Phogat’s supporters also rejected the view that because she is a Congress candidate, only Jats will be vote for her. The Congress is being seen as the biggest beneficiary of the Jat vote in this assembly election.
“Vinesh has the full support of all 36 biradaris,” a supporter said, referring to the term commonly used to denote the plurality of Haryanvi society.
Anti-BJP wave
Phogat is also being helped by anti-incumbency sentiment against the BJP and the Jat-led Jannayak Janata Party, which governed Haryana in a coalition just a few months short of the entire five-year term.
The incumbent Julana MLA, Amarjeet Dhanda, is from the Jannayak Janata Party.
While Dhanda has a good reputation in his constituency, his party is accused of betraying Jat interests by forming an alliance with the BJP, a party that had tried to curtail Jat influence within Haryana. As a result, the Jannayak Janata Party has become massively unpopular among its Jat constituents in most of Haryana.
The BJP has not fared much better. In the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year, the BJP lost half of the ten seats in the state to the Congress due to dissatisfaction driven by concerns about livelihood and inflation.
Among the causes of anger is the Agnipath scheme for recruitment into the armed forces that was introduced by the BJP-led Union government in 2022. Jobs in the armed forces have long been popular with youth from Haryana. Under the Agnipath scheme, the armed forces will now hire soldiers below commissioned officer ranks on four-year contracts, rather than on permanent tenure. Only a fourth of the soldiers will be given permanent tenure.
This has made recruitment into the forces less attractive. “Our children have stopped preparing for military recruitment and have fallen into drinking in the evening due to the Agnipath scheme,” complained Rajendra Singh, 73, a retired government school teacher. This is why he would vote for the Congress this time, he said.
Other reasons for Singh switching to the Congress from the Indian National Lok Dal were taxes on food essentials by the BJP and the replacement of most permanent public sector jobs in the state with contractual employment.
Grumbled his friend Suresh Kumar, 66, a retired soldier, “Public sector workers have been reduced to labourers only.”
Another common complaint against the BJP was its reputation as a lathhmaar sarkar – a stick-wielding government – due to its penchant for using excessive police force against protestors. In recent years, these protestors have included farmers, wrestlers, sarpanches and anganwadi workers.
“Now it is our opportunity to take revenge and club them by defeating them,” said Chandra Kala, 57.
The BJP is also battling the effects of the protest by farmers across the state that has continued since 2020 against the BJP-led Union government. Among their demands is a statutory guarantee for minimum support price for crops.
The passage of three farm laws in 2020 by the Union government sparked widespread protests in Haryana. While the government claimed the laws would bring in more private investment, many farmers saw it as a move to reduce state support for agriculture.
Said Harpal Singh, 35, a Saral Kendra manager who comes from a family of Jat farmers: “Farming is a loss-making enterprise now.”
Not a walkover
Despite all this, victory is not given for Phogat, though. For one, she is against a strong opponent.
The Indian National Lok Dal candidate, Surender Lather, is from the Jat community, just like Phogat. The Indian National Lok Dal is considered a party that champions Jat interests. It won the Julana seat in 2009 and 2014. The Congress had last won the seat in 2005. In 14 assembly elections, it has won here only four times.
“There will be a close fight because of the Lok Dal candidate, who might take away some Jat votes from her,” said Dinesh Kumar, 54, a farmer from the Jat community.
Ravinder Patwa, a Lather suporter from the OBC community, said that Lather had been campaigning in Julana for the last six months, far longer than the other candidates.
Some local journalists that Scroll spoke with said that both Lather and the BJP candidate, Yogesh Bairagi, could give Phogat a tough fight.
A BJP supporter belonging to the OBC community, who asked not to be identified, pointed out that Phogat was not a career politician and may struggle with the responsibilities of being an MLA. “We respect Vinesh as the country’s daughter and as a sportsperson, but not as a politician,” he said. He said that he would rather have someone who has lived and worked in Julana as its MLA.
According to local journalists, some Congress workers in the constituency were not happy with Phogat being imposed on them as a candidate and their own aspirations for the ticket being disregarded.
Congress support might seem large due to the backing of the powerful Jat community. However, that by itself does not guarantee an election victory. “Most of the BJP’s voters are silent voters who you won’t find through interviews,” explained Anil Dhanda, who runs a local YouTube news channel.
In addition, Jat support for the Congress will push other communities to back the BJP. Scroll spoke with three BJP supporters working in the Julana market, all from the OBC communities, who said that they want the BJP government to continue because a Congress government would only look after the welfare and interests of the Jat community and neglect other communities.
“The Jat community would misbehave with members of other communities and get away with it under the Congress and Lok Dal governments,” one of them alleged.
Said another BJP voter, 23-year old Ritik Sain, from the OBC community, “We don’t want a government that looks after only Jats.”
Sain, who works in a shop in the town’s central market, complained that farmers “have large houses and send their kids to the best schools, but no one cares about the problems of labourers and other workers”.
Additional reporting by Kritika Pant.
