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Description
The present paper is an attempt to understand the Akharas spaces of Delhi, India. Although wrestling has become the topic of wide-ranging discussions and deliberations, Akharas, where wrestling is taught, practiced, and disseminated, are often overlooked and missing in the discussion. Meanwhile, Indian wrestling which is a mixture of the age-old Indian tradition of Mallayudha and Kushti which was brought to India by the Mughals from the West is undergoing substantial changes due to various factors, but the resultant changes in Akharas are understudied in academia. This is where the present paper is located. It locates Akharas at the intersections of contemporary city life, olympification of wrestling, and associated spatio-political structures. By using the multi-sited ethnography conducted in the various Akharas and with the help of available literature, it discusses the various contradictions and challenges which are prominent and can be read in the Akharas spaces.
It conceptualises Akharas as the spaces of competing modernities, where the traditional sport of Kushti, is wrestling for its identity with the emerging forms such as western wrestling which are often state-sponsored and controlled. It shows that while the state is investing in Akharas in the name of encouraging the traditional sport of wrestling, this also is changing the inherent nature of these Akharas. This paper studies the various aspects of Akharas such as patronship, membership, their location both spatially and socially in the city to argue that under these changes there are new corporeographies in making which is redefining the way Akharas are imagined and situated in the contemporary city life of Delhi.
