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A history of violence, now an Olympic dream
Chakar village, near Ludhiana, was once notorious for murders, gang wars and family feuds. Then, a boxing academy came up. Now, Simranjit Kaur is set to become the first Olympian from the village, and there are many more girls waiting to follow in her footsteps
Family rivalries that led to murder; gang wars and drug battles—the village of Chakar, a little over 60km from Ludhiana, has a history of violence that has left a lasting legacy.
Now that reputation is being blunted, the violence channeled, through a fighting sport. In the last five years, Chakar has developed into a boxing hub, and leading the way is Simranjit Kaur, 24, who will make her Olympics debut in Tokyo. She is set to become the first Olympian from the village.
“Earlier, our village was known for its murders, that’s how people describe Chakar,” Simranjit said. “Now we are recognized as the village of boxing champions.”
Simranjit’s mother, Rajpal, remembers all too well a time when people in the village lived in such fear that they would try to stay indoors once the sun went down.
“You can imagine what the lives of women and girls were back then,” she said. “Mostly, we stayed confined to our houses. Boxing has changed the fortune of this village. From fighting in brawls, the young people started to fight in the ring.”
The success of Chakar’s women boxers has been nothing short of remarkable—in five short years, they can boast of five boxers who have represented India at the international level, a World Championship medallist (2018, bronze) in Simranjit, a Junior/Youth World Championship winner (2015) in Mandeep Kaur, and plenty of state and national titles.
One village, one boxing academy, called Sher-e-Punjab.
“When we first came to the academy,” Simranjit said, “our coach used to tell us about the reputation of the village, and why this academy was started to try and change that. He would always tell us, ‘you are the ambassadors of this village, and what you do will become the village’s identity.”
Simranjit has an older sister and two younger brothers—all of them boxers with medals from the Senior Nationals.
Fighting every day
The Sher-e-Punjab academy is the brainchild of two NRI brothers from the village: Ajmer Singh Sidhu, who died in 2014, and his twin Baldev Singh, who runs a leading infrastructure company in Toronto.
But the story begins with their father Ujagar Singh, born in Chakar. In 1935, Ujagar joined the Indian Army. When World War II broke out, he was serving under the British in Egypt. In 1941, Ujagar was captured by the Italians and deported to Germany as a prisoner of war. There, he met the nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose, who had come to raise a unit of his Indian National Army (INA), urging Indian prisoners of war to join. Ujagar signed up, though he never got to see action in the war again. After independence, Ujagar struggled to make ends meet in his village and, in 1965, moved to England to work in a metal factory. In 1967, he moved his wife and 15-year-old twins to England.
“The 1960s were a time of intense racism,” Baldev says on the phone from Toronto. “We were fighting every day in school. We learnt boxing for self-defence. And we have always loved football, so we played football as well, and that actually helped us integrate.”
Community club
With boxing and football playing such an important role in their lives, the two brothers, who moved to Canada in the 1980s to set up their own businesses, also founded a community football club.
“We used to come to our village every year, and every year we saw more drugs, more violence, things falling apart,” Baldev says. “And for a long time we thought we have to do something. It was only natural that we started an academy for football and boxing.”
Sher-e-Punjab began life in 2006 with a football and 20-odd boys. Within a couple of years, with the help of people like Balwant Singh Sandhu, a Chakar resident and Punjab University teacher, and other villagers, the centre was thronging with budding footballers and boxers, both men and women.
“We always knew women’s boxing was going to be big here,” Baldev says. “This was always an aggressive, combative village, both men and women.”
Yet, it was not easy to get girls into the sport.
“Initially my father was reluctant in letting the two of us start boxing,” Simranjit says, referring to her older sister. “But when then village panchayat honoured some of the village girls who had won medals at the national championship, my father got inspired.”
That day came when Simranjit won her World Championship medal in 2018, but her father, who worked as a farm labourer, died just a week before her triumph.
“It was a very tough time for me, but my father wanted me to be a champion boxer,” Simranjit says. “Hopefully, I will live my father’s dream in Tokyo.”
