Karnam Malleswari

#63/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Before September 19, 2000, Karnam Malleswari was passed off as another nondescript weightlifter. After September 19, 2000, she became a household name, a celebrity whom news reporters chased for story bytes. After all, she had won a bronze medal in weightlifting at the Sydney Olympics. It's been over seventeen years since she achieved this feat but she remains the only weighlifter ever in India to have won an Olympic medal. With that, she had also become the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal.

Malleswari was born on June 1, 1975 in a small village Voosavanipeta in Andhra Pradesh. She has four sisters and all are well trained in weightlifting. She started her career when she was 12 and was trained under coach Neelamshetty Appanna. She practiced weightlifting in her village gymnasium. Her younger sister Krishna Kumari is also a national level weightlifter. Karnam Malleswari did her schooling from ZPPG High School in Amadalavalasa. Her father was a constable in the Railway Protection Force. She moved to Delhi with her sisters and was soon spotted by the Sports Authority of India. Then in 1990, Malleshwari joined the national camp and four years later, she was a world championship winner in the 54-kg class. Malleshwari was coached by Leonid Taranenko, a renowned weightlifter, who holds a number of world records.

Malleswari won the world title in the 54 kg division in 1994 and 1995 and placed third in 1993 and 1996. In 2000, Sydney Olympics, Malleswari lifted 110 kg in the “snatch” and 130 kg in the “clean and jerk” for a total of 240 kg. She won the bronze medal and became the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal. By her incredible achievement, she lifted the sagging spirits of not just the Indian contingent which had accompanied her at Sydney but also those of everyone back home. This amazing lady had made every Indian chest swell with pride. That was the only medal India had won in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The feat achieved by Malleswari was much applauded and was celebrated widely among all the sections of the nation transcending regional boundaries that often limits us as a country. This victory was different; this victory brought glory not only to one region or a particular class of people but to every section of the society. This victory was merely not against the competitors but was also against all those detractors and that section of society who looked down upon her for taking up sports as her career and that too for specifically choosing weight lifting as her area of interest. The victory of Karnam Malleswari was a tight slap on all those people who thought she would never win as weight lifting was a ‘Masculine’ sport.

Prior to the Olympics, in 1994 she won gold in a World Weightlifting Championships in Istanbul and in 1995 she won the Asian Weightlifting Championships in Korea in the 54 kg category. She won the World Weightlifting Championships title in China, in the year 1995 with a record lift of 113 kg. Even before her Olympic win, she was a two-time weightlifting world champion with 29 international medals, which includes 11 golds medals.

Along with the national and international medals, she was also awarded with the Arjuna Award in 1994, Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna in 1999, India's highest sporting honour, and the civilian Padma Shri in 1999. In 1997, she had married a fellow weightlifter Rajesh Tyagi. Just after her 2000 Olympic win, she gave birth to a son in 2001. She had planned to return to competitions at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, but withdrew eventually due to the death of her father. She retired after failing to score at the 2004 Olympics. She currently lives in Yamunanagar with her husband and works at Food Corporation of India.

True to her name ‘Karnam’ which in Sanskrit stands for Pride, Dignity, and Fame, India’s Weightlifting champion proved that if a woman desired, she could become physically as strong or even stronger than men. Malleshwari is known as the "iron girl of Andhra Pradesh". Karnam Malleswari is an epitome of inspiration for the simple reason that she did not let the social conditioning prevent her from chasing her dreams and for the dedication she has shown and sacrifices she has made to reach to the top spot which was left vacant until she announced her entry into world of sports and for boldly speaking against the shortcomings in the process of selection of players. We salute this lady for the passion she has for sports and for her unwavering determination to prepare the next champion who will carry on the legacy left behind by her.

Source: Wikipedia and Google search.

Rangu Souriya

#62/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” a quote by Mahatma Gandhi clearly explains Rangu Souriya’s fight against human trafficking. 

She had grown up in tea gardens where her father was an employee and had as a child witnessed many children going missing from tea gardens. These incidences created awareness of human trafficking racket rampant in Darjeeling. Her close association with social activists at college gave her the foundation for becoming a full-time social activist in future. She studied at the Darjeeling Government College, and a senior there told her how he had met a woman by the name of Anuradha Koirala, who was a huge anti-sex trafficking activist in Nepal. She remembered Anuradha mentioning once that she often rescued girls from the Bengal area, but because they were from another country, she was limited in how she could help them. While in college itself and inspired by Anuradha Koirala, she decided to take action, and started an organization called Kanchanjunga Uddhar Kendra in 2004 with the help of friends and family. Word spread quickly throughout the community about what they were doing an many more parents started to come to Rangu reporting their children were going missing.

The determination is fine, but every activity demands financial stability. Rangu worked out a model of dairy farming to fund her activities. For which she borrowed savings of her parents and also took 1 lakh INR as the bank loan. Through this diary, she managed to sustain her missions needs. But later on, she was so busy with her social activist role that she couldn’t concentrate on farming. So she sold off all the cows and invested that money for this social cause. In this process, she had to cross several obstacles, face life threats, ignore the offer of bribes in the form of a huge sum of money to stop her fight against these mafias. Also on many occasions, she had to spend lots of money from her pocket to rescue these victims.

First Rescue operation from Rangu was a small girl who was hired by a tout as a maid and sent to Delhi. When the parents of the girl couldn’t know whereabouts of their daughter for nearly one year, they approached Rangu to trace her. Rangu successfully traced the girl and she was in a locality near Rohini area of Delhi in such a pathetic condition that she was made to sleep with a dog in its kennel and had to work marathon hours without any breaks. This gave confidence to Rangu to take up more such cases and save children from such mafias. Another rescue operation she often recalls is of 2005, where she went to Pune in search of two missing girls from Darjeeling and succeeded in nailing down a brothel despite no proper backup. She had an expectation of saving two girls but for her surprise, there were six girls pleading to get them out of that hell. This success she rates as her best effort.

A lot of their information came from tips, and with the help of local police and various organizations, Rangu and her team were able to rescue some of the victims caught in this trade. However, one of the most frustrating aspects of her work since beginning 12 years ago is that they have had no understanding or help from the local government, which means they rely on donations and even use their own money to keep this important mission going. Rangu says her organization is not only focused on helping the victims re-integrate into life after being rescued, but also spreading awareness in order to prevent it from happening to others.

“Once the children are rescued we keep them with us till all the legal formalities are completed, and till the child is given proper counseling. So we stay with a case till the missing children are properly repatriated with their family. Once a child is rescued from somewhere, that child is at her/his most vulnerable stage… by the time we have rescued them, their self-esteem, their will to live is already lost. So these children and youths need all the help and support that they can get,” she said.

Their efforts, despite the lack of financial help from the government, has not been without success. “In the past 11 years, Kanchanjunga Uddhar Kendra has rescued over 600 children from brothels of Pune, Mumbai, Bihar, Kolkata, Siliguri, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Haryana, and also child traffickers and bonded labour situations from almost all the north Indian states. Though some of the children we have rescued have been male, almost 95% of the children we rescue are female. Just goes on to show how vulnerable our girls are,” she said.

She has received death threats, pressure to drop her cases in court and even physical abuse from traffickers who she is actively working against every day, but counts her faith in God as a reason for not giving up despite the danger. “I was threatened by goons and mafia on several occasions and even lured with handsome sums of money, but my aim and vision is to free women from their bondage. It would be unwise for me to say that I do not fear for my safety, however, I believe that since God showed which path to walk on, God will take care of my safety as well. Having said that [I get] threats on an almost every day basis,” she said, but also adds this is not the biggest threat to her work, the indifference and ignorance from the government is.

Rangu has already saved more than 8000 children and grown up girls from these rackets and ended their lives as sex slaves. Till date, she has saved over 20,000 children and girls (under 18 years of age) from getting trafficked along the Nepal border and different parts of North East India. These girls and children are usually trafficked from North Bengal, Assam, Sikkim, and Nepal to get them sold for mainly as sex slaves or bonded labors. She has always told that fighting for the cause of children and women gives her immense satisfaction. She often recalls one particular rescue operation of 2005, where she went to Pune in search of two missing girls from Darjeeling and succeeded in nailing down a brothel despite no proper backup. She had an expectation of saving two girls but for her surprise, there were six girls pleading to get them out of that hell. This success she rates as her best effort.

Obviously, it requires a lot of courage to become an activist against crime like trafficking, and Rangu Souriya has exhibited that by overcoming various obstacles. Rightly she has been recognized with numerous awards; she has nearly 20 awards of recognition from various organizations. Prominent among them are Godfrey Phillips Social Bravery Award (The year 2011) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s Women Achievers’ Award (The year 2009). She has received Prestigious 100 Women Awards given by President of India for the year 2016. 

When asked how she feels about being a woman in her line of work, Rangu says she is proud and believes her feminine perspective enables her to sympathize with the victims of this grave injustice. “As history is our witness, there is nothing that woman cannot do… we can do what any man does, and in a better way… I think the inner interest, courage, bravery and sense of responsibility towards my society is perhaps because I am a woman. To be honest, I am thankful that I am a Woman,” she said. 

Source: Google search.