Part One: Gama: An Anti-colonial Icon Who Happened to Be History's Greatest Wrestler

In this reverse episode, author Shiv Ramdas tells Margaret about Gama, the Indian wrestler who never lost.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to cool People. Did cool stuff your
weekly reminder that only good things have happened in history.
Nothing bad has ever happened in history. I'm your host,
Margaret Kildre, and I have a guest today. It's sort
of not really a guest. It's actually instead of having

(00:21):
a guest, I have a person who's taking over for me.
His name is Shiv Romdas and Hi, Hiv. How are you? Hey? Mac? Bye?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Thanks for having me? Wait can I say Mac?

Speaker 1 (00:33):
But yeah you can? Oh? Okay? Nickname still? Oh cool?
That's how you know that Shiv has known me for
a long time. Yes, I first met Shiv through the
science fiction world. I don't remember what year, probably twenty
sixteen or something, I don't know. Shiv is a science
fiction author and apparently a professional funny man by Twitter.

(00:58):
Is that a way to describe your fame?

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, it's it's accurate. It's interesting but accurate. It's very interesting.
Even science fiction conventions, people want to like talk about
my Twitter. It's it's it's gratifying.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, Shiv, I was so jealous I have had fewer
followers than me, and then made a really good tweet
thread and then had like approximately ten times as many
followers as me like three days later. Yeah, it's it's
quite weird, like it's very surreal. Yeah, anyway, but we're
not here to talk about Twitter. We are not. Shiv

(01:36):
has been someone that I've been hitting up for weird
history about Indian revolutionary stuff for a long time, and
so I'm really excited to pass this off to him.
But first, also on the line of Sophie Hi, Sophie Hi, mac.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Pie, it's all I got for you her usual cave. Yeah,
it was getting real dark in the basement. That it's
a record upstairs today where their sun.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
So if he's in the sunshine. Yeah, and our editor
is named Ian, everyone has to say Hi Ian, Hi, Ian, Hi, Ian,
Hello Ian. That's close enough.

Speaker 4 (02:17):
We'll take it.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah. Our theme music was written by Aun Woman. And
today we're talking about Gama, who's Gamma. Gama is my
childhood hero.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Well not exactly pretty it's like someone I've thought was
very really cool and the closest thing to a superhero
India has, which also I think if you think about
it as pretty appropriate because Gama is like pretty close
like Gamma. It's like a superhero name. Anyway, Uh, uh huh.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Okay, so like Gamma Rays, that's that's what people call him.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Well, that's the part we leave out right because then
you're talking about someone being green and we're going in
a whole different direction there. Okay, it's a nice snappy name, right,
like it's it's like a cool superhero name.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Does he have a last name, Well, he has a
lot of names.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
So he actually was born with the name of Gulam
Mohammed Bucksh. But so his nickname in childhood was Gama
and he's one of those people who's famous enough that
his childhood nickname becomes the world's name for him.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Hell yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
So it's a very very small, rarefied amount of people
who ever got there. But the fun part about this
guy is it's totally appropriate that he has a superhero
name because if you look at like his life story
and his resume, it's basically like a superhero story.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
He's also a wrestler, by the way.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
The wrestler. The wrestler, I'm not kidding. He's a guy who,
in a professional career of over fifty years, is said
to have never lost a fight. This is a sport
where everyone has a narrative of their own. Everyone has
a favorite of their own. Sometimes everyone has a winner
of their own, and in that sport, this guy is
acknowledged universally as the greatest there has ever been. He

(04:05):
was the greatest ever at one kind of wrestling. He
was really really influential in an ancillary sense in another
kind of wrestling. His lifestyle inspired Bruce Lee. He went
from man to hero, to myth to legend back to man.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
All this is true.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
He became part of a reverse propaganda campaign against the
British Empire. He was so successful that papers in England
during the occupation of India were bemoaning the effect he
was having on the morale of people in India, and
they were really unhappy about it.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
The positive impact on the morale of the.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Positive and negative impact on like white people in India.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Ah yeah, yeah, so yeah, there was that as well.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Even that was like really complicated though, like Gama epitomizes
the phrase man of his time better than almost anybody.
And this is one of those rare times. I don't
mean it as a pijob. Usually we say he was
a man of his time, were talking about him being
racist or something, and this is not the case.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Yeah, Oh good, Yeah, yeah, I just.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Mean that, like I have a whole theory about the
era he lived in, which we'll get into, and I
just think he's very very well. I think the right
word is the epid to me of it. And honestly,
I'm a short guy and the fact that this man
has done all this at five foot seven is inspirational
to me personally.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Okay, okay, wait, I have a question about the wrestling.
You say he's undefeated in fifty years. Is Indian wrestling
like American wrestling where it's fake and scripted? No?

Speaker 2 (05:36):
In fact, that is a very good question because we're
going to get into a whole bunch of that because,
as it turns out, these two kinds of wrestling met
back when this kind of American wrestling was the British
kind of wrestling.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Okay, but so the British were fake also, but he
was actual real wrestling. Well, Europe, we'll get into it.
Lets say, no, great, great, great, no spoilers, awesome. I
just want to know because, like, if you're like the
undefeated wrestler, I'm like the guy who has cast as
the winner every time, Like, but actually winning a competition
of sports is cool.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Okay, well put it this way, right, Like it's the
best thing I can say about this is like there's
this saying in India. I think it's by Puff and Care,
but don't quote me on the courte is that in India,
whatever it is true, the opposite is also true.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
The thing about like things like true and false for
a podcast, especially of this nature and like talking about
these things, is to put them in their proper context
is actually like way harder than it sounds, because essentially
that time period like between the late eighteenth and about
like early to mid nineteenth century, sorry a late nineteenth
early to mid twentieth century is it's just a really

(06:49):
wonky period of history. If you think about.

Speaker 5 (06:51):
It, it's like a time where we actually went from
So like put this, when Gama started his career, you
if you wanted to follow a match, you had to
hope that someone sent a correspondent to wherever the fight happened,
and then that person would telegraph back to you in
moscode or whatever his summary of what he saw, and

(07:12):
you would read about that in.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
The paper locally.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, by the time he retired, you theoretically could have
watched him live on color team.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
That's cool that Yeah, fifty year careers hell yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
And that's a lot actually for fifty years to think
about the history of like humanity, Like that amount of
change in the verifiability or the veracity of information, let's
put it that way, is a lot hard like prior
to times like that. Essentially when you talk primary source,
so you're saying, I believe the person.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Who wrote about this, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
By the end of it, you're saying, I have to
see pictures of it didn't happen. Yeah, So that it's
just a very interesting time in that context. So in
terms of there are lots of times during our conversation
where we're going to end up at the point of
like there is this version of events and there is
possibly this version of events, and the truth could be
anything in between these two.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
Oh I love that shit, that's what. Yeah, Yeah, it's
all about it.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
And so the other part of it is that, like
I don't really subscribe to the great Man theory of
history in general. So like, one thing that is true
everyone is that like even someone who is like as
superheroesque as Gama is essentially a confluence of being time
and talent and situation and context, right, circumstances happen, and

(08:35):
in fact, what happens in this person's case is that
he is sort of like the best way to basically
understand his life, I think is to view him as
like this central character in this largest saga, which involves
a lot of people and events and happenings and politics
and machinitions, a lot of which he had nothing to
do with. But yet he becomes like this central, almost

(08:56):
mascot like figure in it. And yet you cannot take
away from the fact that it required a certain amount
of talent, et cetera to be the.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Person who was there.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
But yes, yeah, but no one is like the writer
of the entire history they figure in, so to speak.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Right, Yeah, So essentially, what.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
We're going to do now is we're going to, like
hear a long chronological story in which this man shows
up at various points. And I am in no way
suggesting that he's some kind of Jacy Forrest Gum.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
But he was there were a lot of really interesting things.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Happened, Okay, cool, and he does sort of in his
own way, influence a lot of these events. So let's
begin with what he did or who he is and
I think another way we have to like look at
this to kind of kind of make sense of the
whole thing is that if you want to understand Garma,

(09:50):
you've got to actually understand like the time and the
events they were in. And to do all of this,
you basically have to understand the guy's life. And to
understand the guy's life, you basically have to understand a
little bit about what his life was about, which was wrestling. Okay,
so we're gonna spend a lot of time talking about
wrestling on this podcast.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
I am. I'm very pro context. Everyone who listens to
the show regularly knows that this is a pro context show,
so I'm excited for context.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
So I realized a lot of people listening to this
may not be wrestling nerds. So what I'm going to
try and do is I'm going to keep actual descriptions
of like matches and stuff short, because when you get
into this stuff, people will you will find people have
written entire chapters about two moves in a fight.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
M hm.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
So I'm going to try and not subject most of
you to that, and we're going to like sort of
breeze through the matches. But we need to go through
the understand the context of why they mattered. Okay, all right,
so let's start with his name, right, Like, he was
known as Gama the Great in the West, but in
the subcontinent he's basically known as Gama.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
Pel One and.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Hell One is essentially a practicer of Pehlwani, which is
the style of wrestling we have in India that Gama
was a practitioner of. And from the name, it's pretty clear, right, Like,
you can't really separate this guy from wrestling, So we're
going to have to go through one to get to
the other.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Now. So it'd be like if his name was like
Gama Karate or whatever.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah, exactly Karatega, okay, so to speak, yeah and okay,
the word pelwan itself has like a deeper meaning. It
means like strong man, but it also has like a
deeper context, which I'll get into. Wrestling might actually be
the oldest competitive sport we have along with racing, like
food racing, it.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Is probably the oldest sport.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Like I'm sure the food trace is right up there,
but wrestling is pretty much there. The thing about wrestling is, though,
it's a word that actually covers like an entire spectrum
of sports, and a lot of them are extremely different,
but they have like some kind of common thread throughout them.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
M hm. So for instance, you.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Know you have freestyle wrestling, you have cat just catch
can you a Greek or Roman?

Speaker 1 (12:05):
You have peloanion.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Of course, you have professional wrestling, which is the kind
we just talked about.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
In America, it's called professional wrestling. I'm a fan, by
the way, I think it's like a fantastic art, Like
it's just yeah, no, totally. Yeah. So theeter theater's.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
Great, absolutely, and like those guys are great athletes. It's
just like, yeah, their objective is different from anyone else.
And yeah, if you've watched a lot of wrestling, you
can see why it exists, because like a lot of
like actual wrestling can be supremely boring if you're not
really into it.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah, anyway, I mean, okay, So it's interesting to me
that wrestling. It makes sense and it makes me feel
good about humanity. That wrestling is probably older than stand
up and punch each other in the face back and forth,
which is what I would have first come up with.
If someone were to ask me what the oldest sport is,
I would have guessed boxing. And it makes me happy
that the foot race and wrestling pre date. And now

(13:00):
I say this as someone who is I know a
little bit about boxing and I don't know as much
about wrestling.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
I don't think it's very interesting in the sense of
like even if you remember like when you were a
kid and you got into like a playground fight, Yeah,
there is something different when someone is sitting on your
chest and smacking you as opposed to and they just
like get you from a distance. Yeah, that's true, and
so I can see why it happened first, you know

(13:26):
what I mean.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Like, also, it's just like it's more about control and
less about destruction. I'm not trying to make a statement
about the sports, but the concept of stand here and
punch each other in the face versus like who can
physically wrestle to the other the ground and dominate I
don't know whatever anyway, Okay.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yeah, I don't know enough about boxing to like get
too deep into that, but I totally agree with you.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
There's like a whole there's like a fan mad at.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yeah, a fight podcast could probably like do a whole
series on like this whole thing.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yeah, okay, so what style is he? So he's doing
this particular style. So he's doing the style which is
called Pelwani.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
Now Pelwani even among all the selves of wrestling is like,
it's really really fascinating, partially because like its history is
barely documented in English except by a few people. And
anyone who's like interested in what we talk about today,
I encourage you to Reades Majumdar. He's like the probably
the greatest historian in the history of Indian wrestling.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Say his name, Islower, because people are gonna ask me.
His name is Majumdar, s majum Dar. Okay.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
You could also read this guy called Joseph Alter, who's
an American professor, I believe. And there's also this English
writer called Graham Noble who's done a lot of really
good work. Okay, in fact, a lot some of what
we discussed about Gama in England has been beautifully documented
by him in the series of essays called Lion of
the Punjab, which which essentially goes deep into Gama's time

(14:54):
in England.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Okay, which we're gonna learn about, which we're gonna learn
about now.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
Now, Perelwani has this long history in its own right,
and yet it's extremely interesting that it itself is like
a combination of like two even older styles almost so,
so you know, like Indian Malayada at some point met
Persian Koshti and it became what we now know as
Pelwani till today. Kushti from Koshti is the Hindi word

(15:24):
and you're the word for wrestling, okay, So it is
basically almost one thing now in India. Also, obviously you
had you know, the history of Gurukul's in a certain
manner of like traditional education, there was the akara that's
a system that's been around from like five hundred and
something ce five thirty seven.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
I would say, okay, wait, what's a kara an.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
It's it's basically like a living ashramo school for martial arts.
Like think of it as a dojo where you live
and work, like you don't just go home, you like
live then serve the master as well as you know
that whole thing. Yeah, So at some point this merged
with like how wrestling and Telivani wrestling. So now wrestling
in India is essentially conducted through the akara system.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
Okay, Which so if you want to become a wrestler,
you go live at your school among other things.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yes, Like, so if you take the best way to
actually picture Bilani for those women encountered, it is like
we're going to sort of quadrangulate from other things. So
if you take like the the tradition and the ritual
of sumo, and you take like the straight up intensity
of like mixed martial arts, and if you take like

(16:37):
you know that all those stereotypes you have a warrior
amongst from shaolin, and you take like all the theatricality
and you know the history onics from professional wrestling, and
you married them all into one bastard child, you would
probably have to Havelani.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Wait, this sounds like the best sport. It's incredible, it's incredible,
sounds awesome. Oh, it's incredible.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
And if you watch, if you watch a fight like
you see the similarities to sume ball. Most immediately, like
the partismans will approach each other and salute each other
that comes through the crowd. The arena is basically just
like this mud ring, and you know they'll they'll rub
mud over themselves and stuff. They rub the hands and
mud and then they'll start the fight. The referee is
basically mostly there to prevent legal blows like you can't

(17:20):
kick to the groin and things like that. And the
objective is basically pin the other person's shoulders for the
cow that you win. And it's really that simple, except
that it's not, you know, like bouts can go on
for hours like and rules yeah, and rules can vary
a bit with tournaments, like sometimes we will go on

(17:41):
till there's a victor. Usually there'll be like a set
time and by then you haven't figured one out. It
will be like a draw or something.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Okay, But.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
With nuanswers that's the situation. And like with all things wrestling,
there's a lot more going on, like beneath the surface.
So just for instance, like give you an example, like
just take the surface, the literal surface. These guys fight on,
like I called it, like a mud earth and ring.
But the earth is prepared like with great amounts of care,

(18:14):
almost like a xelatory, Like the right amount of oil, milk, water,
spices will be added because it has to be soft
enough that someone can fall on it repeatedly and not
get some lasting injury. But it has to be hard
enough that feet will find purchase and they won't slip. Okay,

(18:34):
A lot of places have their own recipes for preparing
just the earth which they will guard. Okay, so essentially
what I'm trying to say is that, like if you
decide to become a wrestler, like it's not a career choice,
it's not a lifestyle, it's like your whole life.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
You will go there.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
You will live, you will work there, you will clean
the place, you will learn to prepare, you will train.
Like the training is a thing all by its own,
Like they use these rustic training techniques that they've used
for literally hundreds of years.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
M hmm.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
They use no modern equipment till today. Like you won't
find a single dumb bell, barbell or traditional weight in
the place you might find a tractor tire.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
All right, all right, some swim concessions to modern CrossFit, right, oh, Like.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
The traditional thing is they have something like a doughnut
which you wear around the neck while doing squats, which
is made of stone or whatever. Like the endurance and
intensity training is actually.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
Like extremely hardcore, as we will see.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
And they've been doing this for hundreds of years, and
like nobody's only been like interfering with them in the
sense that like they've just been doing that thing for
hundreds of years at the time we get into this story.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
Does I mean the British are going to suck it
up a lot of things?

Speaker 2 (19:50):
But yes, always the case. Well, yeah, there's their actual
daily schedule. Is like like it's all it's a public
people talk about it publicly because.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Such a wild thing.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
The other thing that cricket is probably the most popular
sport in India, but wrestling is easily the second most popular,
irrespective what anyone says, Like TRPs don't really measure how
excited people get for a local wrestling event in the
villages and how many people come, but wrestlers are like
local heroes, like big time.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
Literally, all I know about cricket is from reading your
tweets and a movie I saw about anti imperial cricket
in India.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Oh you mean Lagan, Yeah yeah, oh that that film.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
That's all I know about cricket is those two things.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
That that that film is like a hot mess in
a whole different way.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Okay, we don't talk about that.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Like I could rant for a really
long time whether film.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
Anyway, So you're average wrestler, right, get somebody like three
in the morning, you start your day off, you perform
squats and push ups and like I'm talking about like
probably thousands of each. You'll run for five miles, then
you'll swim. Then you'll swim, spend some time lifting stones
and sandbags. Then about eight o'clock the teachers will watch

(21:10):
as you do actually like wrestling practice for about three hours,
maybe twenty five matches in a row. Then this usually
works in seniority, so like the most senior guys will
start first, so they have kind of shorter days than
the trainees. Obviously, like the grind is everywhere, you know,
at about ten o'clock, these guys will start chilling. They'll

(21:31):
eat food, they'll be gett like a full full on
oil massage, and then they'll go to sleep. Then they'll
get up again in the evening, get another massage, wrestle
for another two hours, have another meal, go to sleep.
Things maybe slightly more or less like somewhere, depending where
you are. But one thing I should mention here is
I've just like mentioned food a couple of times, and

(21:52):
the food is going to play an integral part.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
In a way.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
The only reason where having this discussion is because of
the food. As I'll expels in at some point. Okay,
let's just put a pin in the food because it
really matters.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Okay, wait, but but speaking of food, what food should
we be sponsored by?

Speaker 3 (22:13):
Oh that's like good, Yeah, that's like the hardest question
you could ask somebody of the spot.

Speaker 4 (22:19):
But also answer it.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah, sorry to do it all right, okay randomly pop Darts?

Speaker 4 (22:28):
Great, great choice, great choice.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
We are sponsored by pop Tarts, only not the actual
brand they have not actually given us.

Speaker 6 (22:36):
Yes, pastries, not Kellogg because uh, don't don't look into
the history of that guy.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Is there a bastards on Kellogg? Oh? Yeah, there is
bagpie boy, howdy is there? Well? Like toaster Strudle, all
of our sponsors contain multitudes. They can be good or bad.
They wake up each morning like all of us, and

(23:09):
choose what actions they take. And here's those ads, and
we're back and we are learning about food. Well, we
put a pin in food. I'm just kind of hungry,
is what's happened? I've realized I am yeah, I.

Speaker 4 (23:29):
Need you need you need a pop Dart.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
I know I wish I had popped Arts, but not
actually a pop Dart. No, yeah, yeah, no, non Kellogg brand,
and all people and people there's really cool recipes to
make homemade pop charts.

Speaker 4 (23:44):
Really yeah, then a lot of them are vegan to magpie.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Oh excellent, Okay for later, So what are we learning next?
All right?

Speaker 2 (23:54):
So, so we were talking about the culture of wrestling
and the kind of lifestyle and our pelvani in general.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
So the thing is like the popularity of.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
The more accomplished guys, like you cannot understate it, like
they and especially in the time we're talking about, they
were like local and national superstars for one culture, like
the wrestler has generally been like kind of a folk
cultural local hero and you know, like the that whole
like perception of them as like a warrior among who's
like this noble person who will stand up for right,

(24:26):
protect the weak and innocent from forces, etc. Like that
whole thing was very much existent. It's gone away now,
but he'll still like it is not a coincidence that
when the big Teamy TV version of the Ramayan was made,
the choice of guy to play Hanuman.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
And for those I don't know, I'm sorry. So Hanuman
is like the monkey god.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
He is known as an asthetic who is like again
someone who does a lot of really cool physical SUPERHEROI ish.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
Things in the cost of Hayan.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
But you know, he himself never married, like he was
just devot put it to his guru is like Lord
Drama and that kind of stuff. So he's again the
vision of like the noble warrior monk in the context
of the Ramain itself. It is not a coincidence that
the guy chosen to play him in that was Dara Saying,
who was essentially another really super famous Pelwani wrestler.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
Oh awesome, Okay, so there's that overlap.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
So wrestling has had its effects on Bollywood back and
forth over the years, and we will touch upon some of.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
Those, okay as well. I'm making a lot of promises,
but I'm going to keep all of them all right now,
this is your fiction writing, is showing you know you
that's what you do. You like lay the groundwork. No,
I'm excited. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
So another part of this is that Pelwani, like it
really in a big way, was promoted by a lot
of Muggle emperors and not least ball like the guy
at the very top of the food chain. And I'm
talking Barber who founded the Mughal Empire.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
I am completely ignorant. Can you tell me roughly when
that was. Oh yeah, I think I think they was
like rough with centuries. I don't know anything about so
if I know, if you're a little about Indian history,
I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
So the Mga Empire was founded, whether like either twelve
or four or fifteen something.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
I think it might be fifteenth first Battle of Pontyputh.
But okay, now I feel bad for putting you on
the spot.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
Oh no, it's fine, it's fine. I actually feel bad.
I used to like know the exact year, and I
have somehow forgotten it. So I need fifteen twenty six. Yeah,
I had it on the tip of my tock.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
It was fifteen. I should have gone with it. You know,
it looked cool. I know, opportunity we could do it again.
Yeah yeah, so I said, you go.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
So fifteen twenty six was the year, yeah, yeah, long yeah,
all right, yeah, so that's when he comes down from
a place called Summer, so essential. Barber claims lineage from
both Jengis and Timur on either side, claims being the
operative word.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
I am going to be the stand in for the
American audience that doesn't know anything about this. Well, who
are they? Okay? So Jengis Khan.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
I know Jengis Khan is Okay, you know Jengis Khan, right, Okay,
So yeah, another real skurt so to speak, occurred to
some people, and he was like a pretty evil guy
in a lot of ways, especially tow places he took over.
Was a guy known as Timur du La or Tamalalayan,
depending on where you learned about him. They also consider
two of the great Mongol conquerors of all time of

(27:41):
the Mongol Empire, and as is probably customary, now, Barber
was from royal family. He claimed he the senate from
both of them. But long in the short of it,
this kingdom is called summer Kan. Then he and his
people get chased to Wa. He doesn't get to be
king there.

Speaker 7 (27:54):
So Baber decides, I will go and found my own
empire somewhere and some way he finds all the way
down in India where he defeats this guy called Ibrahim
Lodi to take over the throne of Delhi and found
what came to become the Moughal Empire. Okay, so Barber
is actually that super rare empire empire I'm saying, emperor

(28:17):
who is genuinely a tough guy and leads his guys
in the battle himself and stuff like that. And Barber
also had really yeah, he's also old school in the
sense that by virtue probably of being a leader on
the battlefield, he understands the value of theatrics and messaging
and propaganda. So, for instance, when on the on the
eve of the Battle of Banipath, where he's going to

(28:38):
face Abraham Lodi and all, you know, and he is
definitely the underdog. Let's say in this fight, he's come
all the way, he's facing this big ass established emperor
of India.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
And what happens is, this is how the story goes
that Barber used to enjoy a good drink. So what
he does is he has all these many fancy drinking
vessels made of gold, silver, emeralds, whatever, whatever, and he
gets his army together and he tells them that if
we win this battle, I will never drink again. And
I'm so sure we'll win this battle, I'm going to
smash all my drinking cups right now in front of

(29:09):
you all. So that's what he does, and the next
apparently it worked because they won, so they stick to it.
I'm not sure, but I think he did, because there's
not too much talk of Barber drinking after that. But
then he was also an emperor of India and he
could excize whatever he wanted, So yes, they choose your story, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
Okay, and on.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
So this guy, actually, if you think about it, is
a perfect match for wrestling, with his combination of actual
toughness and theatrics. Yeah, and he's said to have been
like super enthusiastic about it to the point he used
to participate himself, and he was apparently really good. But
the same accounts, many of them also say that Barber
could tuck a man under each armpit and run so

(29:54):
fast that no one could catch him. So you should
decide how much of this you want to believe.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
It is just like Mark Zuckerberg who hires fancy MMA
fighters to pretend like they're teaching him, and then he
does videos where.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
He's like, I don't know, I don't know how this works.
Actually in the sense that do you remember this Roman
emperor called Domitian I think he was called It.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
Makes if I also don't know the names of the
Roman emperor's either.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Now, this guy actually feel like it's very sad we
don't talk enough about him, because Kaligila gets like such
a lot of the press being like the psycho emperor,
which one.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Like fought the sea. I'm gonna get everyone's gonna be
so mad at me that I haven't gone this far
back yet.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
Wasn't a canoe too fought the sea?

Speaker 1 (30:42):
I don't, I don't know. I took three years or not.
I don't know how to say. Yeah, maybe not, maybe not.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
But Domitian used to take part of races in a.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
Bunch of Wait, you told me at the beginning that
I'm we're getting completely off track.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
We should go back right Okay, wait, wait Notitia, we
heard talk about if.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
We're talking about we're too far gone. This is true.
This is true, all right.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
So Barber was a great ruler, okay, great patron of
wrestling and so on and so forth, and it carried
on and it became a really big deal, right like because.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
During the empire, during the Mogul Empire.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah, and then things go on this way for hundreds
of years, and then everything changed when not the fine nation,
when the British attack, which is pretty much the same
thing in a way. Yeah, So the British come visiting
as the British were wont to do. And then the
British stopped visiting and decided to stay, you know, as
the British want to do. And then they decided that

(31:38):
they just run the whole place as the British we
want to do.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
And yeah, they're like good at it, why not let
them kick it wrong. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
So in the case of India, all this in the
context of our wrestling community overlaps with this one gentleman
by the name of Thomas Babington mcaulay.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
That is the most English fake name I've ever heard.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah, and it's an interesting character in the sense that
he's a Whig. So the Whigs were generally reformists.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
And apparently McCaulay was.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
Quite active in the anti slavery movement in England, so
that's a plus for him. But on the minor side,
he was also very into Western culture and he didn't
actually believe in anything else, so he kind of led
a movement to like defund every single college that only
taught like Indian subjects in Indian education and Eastern stuff

(32:29):
and didn't teach like the British curriculum.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
You'd think if he didn't like anything but Western culture,
you'd go back to the west.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
But that's actually like very much a British thing I've noticed,
and I noticed in the pop culture till today, like
till today, like shows made in twenty twenty two. We'll
talk about like communities that live in France, like in
rural France and judge local French people because he doesn't
come to the pub. But well, why should he come
to the pub, Like go back to England and go
to the pub. No, yeah, like you you want him

(33:00):
move everywhere else and naked your island, Like I don't
understand this trip.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yeah. Unfortunately Americans didn't inherit that from the British. We
totally are famous for.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
That either, right, right, Well Americans kind of went the
other way, right, Americans go everywhere and say it's better
at home.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Yeah, yeah, that's true. Well anyway, okay, so.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
The British so and part of like this Western education
in India takes the form of like basically propagandizing the
Indian population about how Indians are generally inherently physically weaker
compared to the western white man.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
You know, like a lot of this you never had
a chance stuff. So no, it was like a whole thing.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
And it's interesting to think that this suddenly gets a
bunch of pushback in terms of counter propaganda. And the
people leading this charge are like the most unlikely people.
If you think about contextually, it's like the Maharajas and
the powerful people of India.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
Okay, and if you think about it.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
Like it is their collaboration at various stages, we'd enable
the British to gain a footoo to begin with.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
Okay, but this rankles for some reason.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
So a lot of stuff starts happening, Like you know,
people start writing.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Can you give me like that, what decades we're talking about?

Speaker 2 (34:14):
So now we're talking about the eight so mccallaugh, and
stuff starts in like the eighteen forties, as did the
Telegraph around that time.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
I think.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
So essentially everything we're going to talk about is going
to be covered basically the time period between say eighteen
forty and nineteen sixty. Okay, So now we're talking about
like eighteen forties on eighteen sixties probably at this point.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Okay, and moving on.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
So you start you start having these counterpropaganda movements, like,
for instance, in various ways like Ramamurti the professor, he
wrote a whole thing about the ways of physical education,
and he went around the country lecturing on the subject.
You know, there's a whate are prince who mission this
history of divine figures of Karnataka but and his region essentially,

(35:02):
But within that he sneaks like one and twenty two.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
The yoga poses like a lot of the modern you know, a.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
Lot of the modern yoga forms and like positions we
see now are like developed in various ways around this time.
Like there was a lot of no, we have it
too kind of stuff happening.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, that makes sense, you know, And.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
You can figure out how much of this was like
personal pride versus like genuine national interest or anything of
that sort. I guess there's probably a combination of it
like everything else. But here's the thing, Like the natural
progression of this was like a lot of in a
lot of places, like a focal point or a really
like important counterpropaganda messaging tool for these guys was wrestling,

(35:47):
like our you know, our indigenous traditional wrestling, like I
say indigenous with their coach because it's indigenous and as
indigenous everything else, like the indigenous populations of India are
really separate from this conversition.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
Honestly, they're the tribes of India.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Okay, but anyway, so this whole stuff is happening right, Like,
so a lot of Maharajas at this point actually have
their own court wrestler or wrestlers, like some will have
several wrestlers and want will be like their main champion.
And there's tournaments all over the place. A lot of
them are holding their own tournaments. They'll be holding other
kinds of like physical contests. So that's an environment at
this point. Now you fast forward a few decades with

(36:25):
this entire like thing happening in this counter movement sort
of happening, and we finally arrived all this time into
our discussion at Gama's birth.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Yeah, I love, I love a good thirty plus minutes context.
I'm not joking. That sounds sarcastic, except unless you've listened
to the show before, in which case you know, if anything,
you got to it sooner.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Well, well, a lot of this is still context to
this point. Now, Okay, it's typical for Gama and for
the era. Really we have three separate years, which I
given has his year of birth. So even for this
more basic of fact, you get to choose eighteen seventy eight,
eighteen eighty and eighteen eighty two. These are the three
years generally given.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
Okay, even year, that's what's important here.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
Definitely even yere Usually eighteen eighty is taken as the year,
although you know the fact that lies neatly between the
other two, and like, if you take it as the year,
the fact that we know for a fact Gama died
in nineteen sixteen means that everything his age, death, year
of birth, everything becomes a nice round number. So I'm
sure that helps with the convenience. Yeah, and it's so

(37:32):
convenient that I'm going to do exactly that and say
he was born in nineteen eighty.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
Great, I can't believe there was any doubt. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, So when he was born, his name was Mia
Gulam Mohammad Bucksh. But as I said, you know, he's
from a Kashmiri Muslim family and they were settled at
the time I think in dat. Yeah, his father was
like his whole family. He was born into a family
of wrestlers.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
How how common. I only know a little bit about
the religious I know there's a lot of religious tension
in India at various points like how common is how
common is it? How likely was it that he was
from a Muslim family? Was that like fairly integrated at
the time or like.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, absolutely, there were lots of Muslim in fact, like
a lot of the leading wrestlers in India at the
time were Muslims.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
Okay, cool, so as we'll see, like yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
There's both, Like for instance, on his famous tour to England,
there were a lot of Muslims, but there was also
a Hindu on the trip.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
Cool. So much like that sports movie that is clearly
good and you have no qualms about about cricket.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
Oh yes, yes, that that incredible film.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
I liked the songs. I thought the songs were good.
Let's I like music anyway.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
So Gama was essentially born to be a wrestling I
mean that like pretty much literally like from a family
of belwan's. His grandfather was one. His father, whose name
was Aziz, was one. He was a very renowned wrestler.
He was the court wrestler I think in Datia. His uncle,
whose name is Ian, was a wrestler. His brother whose

(39:11):
name I'm going to give you his name, whose brother.
His brother's name is Imam Bucksh. Like we should remember
that name. It's going to come up a lot. His
brother was like, is a seriously renowned wrestler, Like if
Gama had not existed, this is the guy who we'd
probably talk about, what is the greatest of all time? Okay,
So essentially he comes from a really really star like

(39:32):
star studed lineage of wrestlers. So the question of what
he was going to do with his life, I don't
think was in doubt for a second.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
He's going to do thousands of squats today, That's what
As soon as he was born, they were like, yeah, kids,
you're going to do squads. Now.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Having said that, like being born into a family of
wrestlers happens to a lot of people, and becoming the
greatest wrestler ever has happened to one person.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
So there's a bit of a gap there. Okay.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
They say that like he was obsessed with wrestling from
the moment he could talk, But he was five years
old when they started training him, So I don't know
how much like obsession of five year old actually shows
for wrestling. So again it's choos whether the family decided
he was obsessed to he was actually obsessed or whatever

(40:16):
at that point.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
Yeah, he wanted to be a paleontologist, but they were
like wrestling wrestling.

Speaker 6 (40:22):
So it.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
The part that's not really debatable is like almost immediately
he shows like super great aptitude for the workout part
of it, which is all he gets to do. Like
the training would start with like any other like any
other apprentice, you.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Know, sweeping, cleaning.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
In time, learning to like you know, prepare the fighting surface,
doing like strength and endurance training, working on like essentially
learning the discipline and getting used to like living your
life in a super regimented style. Yeah, which is required
to be a wrestler before you even become like so,
for instance, like Gama never actually wrestled an opponent in

(40:58):
competition till he was fifteen years old, even though even
though like so, he never competed against someone outside his
own training spaces till ten years after he started training. Yeah,
well that's how much time he was spent like essentially,
like you know, it's like while you were having fun,
I was studying the blade.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
Yeah, he was studying the wrestling like like literally, no wonder.
I know very little about Comma going into this, but
one of the things I know to spoil some part
of is I think a lot of Western wrestlers didn't
want to wrestle him. No fucking wonder.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's fascinating like to like listen
to the story and the way it worked.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
And there was this very old joke about golf.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Like essentially like there's this group of guys who like
you know, the amateurs, and they play at their golf
club or whatever. They play like there's four people play,
you know, they team up into a team and you play,
and they get them there's only three of them.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
One day, they really need.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
A fourth to blade. And there's this guy who they've
never seen. He's like, I join in the golf club today.
I don't know anyone. So they're like, why don't you
play with us? And then on the way out to play,
they ask him how long have you been playing? And
he's like, oh, today's my first day. So they're like,
bloody hell, you know, like this guy's going to ruin
it if you're playing with a guy who's never played before.

(42:16):
And they go there and essentially like he's so good,
like he's lapping them, all of them. And then at
some point his partner asked, like I thought he said
you just started playing today and he's like, yeah, today's
my first day.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
I was learning for eighteen years.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
Yeah, so that's kind of like how Gama shows up
at fifteen.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
Yeah yeah, all ought to be fair. A lot of
them who show up like this is the systems to say, like,
imagine the pressure. You've been spending two thirds of your
life doing this and it's your first competition. But so
has everyone else. Yeah. I didn't like the competitions I
had to enter as a kid after like three.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
Months, and in all honestly, the fifteenth thing is because
he's like a prodigy, like usually didn't make you wait longer.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
So like when I say he goes into competition at fifteen,
he's not fighting fifteen year olds.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
There are no age groups in this stuff. Wow, Okay,
so that's a cool.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
That's an important thing to keep in mind, Like there's
no like fifteen to seventeen age group. It's like, if
you're willing to fight, you'll fight everyone, Okay. Otherwise wait
till you're ready, Like we're not doing this like make
exception for like a juniors league.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
And that's hardcore, all right.

Speaker 2 (43:27):
Yeah, it's it's hard go Like I mean it's it.
It's genuinely like dogg eat dog and then that dog
eats its own tail.

Speaker 1 (43:34):
Yeah, but you know a woney ear tail. H Yeah. Stuff,
This is the worst one I've ever done. This is
instead of the greatest of all time, this is the
this is the vote. This is the worst of all time.
Vote unlike these products ads. And we're back, and we've

(44:02):
all forgotten what came before the path break, the part
where I was talking. We didn't forget about how hardcore
this fifteen year old is.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
Okay, so so anyway, So an aspect of like Gama
like the human being as opposed to Gama the wrestler
or Gama the superhero that doesn't get talking enough, is
like a lot of his personal life was basically marred
by a constant tragedy. Okay, and it starts really early,
so like his training starts when he's five. When he's
about eight years old, his father dies and it's away

(44:32):
from home and his grandfather takes away his training. And
the reason I say this first is because at some
point the decision was made that we to spare this
child from dealing with death at such a young age.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
We won't tell him that his dad's dead. Okay, yeah,
that doesn't usually go well.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
All right, Yeah, it went as about as well as
you'd expect, because apparently, like the kid used to sneak
out at night and run through the streets looking for
his dad. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, it was pretty messed up.
So anyway, the plan to like protect him from the
reality of dad didn't really work out, because a year later,
the grandfather died.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Okay, what are they dying of? I'm just guessing to
break so I'm not really mentioned. I don't know. Then
I must be to bur It's nineteenth century. They died
of TV. Okay, he's a grandfather.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
I was ressumys old. The father, I'm sure is like
something certain and unexpected.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Yeah okay, fair enough. Okay, So at this point the
uncle takes over the training.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Okay, okay, And so they're a very close knit family
and all that.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
But his uncle appears to have been like some kind
of reverse.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
Iro all right, because his idea was moral support, and
he constantly tells the kid, like, all, your dad really
wanted for you to be the greatest wrestler in the world.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
You must make your father proud by becoming the greatest
wrestler in the world.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
So with the result, this kid gets even more obsessed
with the whole wrestling thing. Yeah, you could probably make
the case that he was essentially gaslight by his family
into becoming the greatest of all the time.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
Yeah, it doesn't sound it also sounds like myth making too, right,
Like you know, like, oh, yeah, of course this kid
was the most obsessed kid in the world and that's
why he was the best. It's like, you know, like
I wonder how much that was true and how much
that's myth making, you know. Yeah, I mean he was
previously obsessed. He was very good at it, and he

(46:26):
spent all his time doing it.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
Yeah, and I would believe this part about it because
like pays parenting, welcome to but nineteenth century dacy parenting,
I'm sure was even more intense. And I get it
because like it's the kind of like emotional sort of
blackmail that like happens a lot in India.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Yeah, but yeah, okay, again, like I'm.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
Sure this happened to a lot of people, Like this
was done to a lot of people. Like I think
all the stuff that we discuss around what this person does,
I think should in one sense be considered separate from
like what this person themselves is done to like end
up as the recipient of all these accolades. It's like,
I'm sure a lot of people got gas lighted by

(47:15):
their family. Do you must be the greatest ever? Your
deceased uncle would have wanted only this whatever, Like, but
at the end of the day, I'm not saying working
it working is a good thing either. So it's a
whole complicated conversation. Yeah, but I guess it takes a
specific combination of like gaslighting and obsession and circumstances and

(47:36):
so on and so forth.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Yeah, yeah, Okay, so uncle's teaching him.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
Uncle's teaching him and anyway, so he's always been pretty
obsessive apparently about being very good, but now he becomes
like super obsessive, and he starts getting this reputation like
locally and like within the community and even in the
area of being like this like legendary level workout warrior.
And Okay, so at this point, like he's still on
a pure plant based diet most for the most part,

(48:03):
apart from milk, Like, so he's basically having fruit, milk,
and almonds at this point, Like he did not add
meat to like several years later, at which point they
start having this thing called Yucky. A lot of Muslim
wrestlers swear by it in terms of building strength. It's
a drink which is made from boiling bones, bones, joints
and tendons.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
Okay, and.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
Anyway, at this point, like our guy is still doing
pit digging and stuff like that. You know, you turn
over the earth ring conditioning, strength training, et cetera. And
as it turns out, like these workout habits are about
like put him on the map quite spectacularly, because what
happens is you're the Maaje of Jodpur has this physical
conditioning Splash Endurance tournament when Gama's about ten years old.

(48:52):
Now this is the part I've never actually been very
clear about. But somehow this ten year old kid finds
himself in the tournament along with about four hundred others,
we like, full grown men, like you know, if you're
writing the movie, if you're writing a movie, this just
the part where you ran away from home to get
into the tournament or whatever.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Yeah, yeah, totally. But he's in the tournament. We know
this for a fact.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Like, but all we know uncles like go show you know, like,
we don't know how it happened, but he's there.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Yeah, you can't come home until you win. See that's
the other way you'd write the Bollywood story, wouldn't you.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
I have no idea, Like anyway, So this tournament is
basically essentially what's going to happen is they're all going
to do squats, okay, And the way it works is
like they're all going to start doing squats, and I
guess they have some like counting mechanism and guys are
basically going to drop out as they drop out, okay,
it's like last man standing or last man still squatting.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
Whatever. Yeah. So anyway, like four.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Hundred of these full grown men, well three ninety nine
full grown men and one ten year old kids start
after like after like a certain amount of time, like
there's fifteen of them left. One of them is the
ten year old kid, at which one in the mara
and this Maraja is like blown away. So he's like
he just stops the whole tournament and he declares the
ten year old kid the winner.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
Just shame on.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
Your men, holy shit, all right, all right, all right,
and then he like he takes the kid under his wing,
he's like, you will train in my court.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
All right. So now like this ten year.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
Old kid is basically part of like he's got like
he's got like a progression plan.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
Is this is there already movies about him anyway? All right?

Speaker 2 (50:28):
So the interesting about the movies about him is that,
like I think one was made which generally drew very well.
He's the the film rights in India at least are
owned by a certain actor who's sitting on them. But like,
I don't know, maybe you'll watch our podcast and make it.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
Yeah, yeah, anyway, so.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
We're talking, all right, the wing, So the Maraja takes
him under the wing and he's there. I mean, this
is basically more about like how stubborn and dogged the
kid is, because like it turns out that we don't
actually know how many did, but by his own country,
did thousands of these squats. Yeah, and uh he was
apparently bedrooms.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
There's so many orders of magnitude more than squats than
I can do. Like, that's just there's there's multiple orders
of I don't consider myself. I consider myself a little
out of shape, but I like exercise, and that's just
it's not in the realm of things that's not a
number that's real to me, of a number of squats
to do that's amazing.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
And these are like the and these are like those
Indian squats which are like him. They're really drawn out
and stuff, so they kind of like the harder. You
don't get to like quickly get it done.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
Yeah, yep.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
Anyway, So anyway, so apparently he was like bedridden for
like a couple of weeks after this. Yeah, he just
kept going yeah, like I gotta do this anyway. But
like when he recovers, there's no respite because when he
recovered that Maraja is waiting for.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
His protegees, saying, you will stardy, you will study here. Now,
let's see you do some squats. You know.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
That whole stuff happened. So now he spent the next
few years training here at he is about fifteen.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Meanwhile, in the outside world, like the whole indoor Western
wrestling worlds, they're like about to meet like so for
the first time in like eighteen ninety two, the English champion.
His name is Tom Cannon. It's a very interesting name.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
This thing is made for Bollywood.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
The names are also like so snappy.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
It sounds like someone making fun of an American name.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
Yeah, Tom Cannon comes to Indian and they said, up
a match against this twenty one year old local wrestler
whose name is Kareem Bucksh, who's not related to the
He's not related to the Bucksh family. We've talked about
the Gama family. There are a lot of Bucksh's around,
like it's a fairly common Kashmdia name, and a lot
of Kashmi Muslim wrestlers around.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
Anyway, So Kareem bucks takes on.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
Tom Cannon and I don't know whether there was supposed
to be a squash match, you know or whatever, like
they just brought in a local gate they thought. But
Kareem bucks makes short work of the English former champion, like.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
In time, because he does thousands of squats every day
and then trains across the ocean and then fights five
more people anyway, anyway.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
So Korean BUXISTI remember as a great hero for this,
Like when people talk about him, they talk about how
he like he's the first Indian to beat a non Indian.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
Yeah, try the first non Indiana tribe. But yeah, yeah
that is true. That is trueway.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
So this starts and then in nineteen hundred, this gets
put to the test like full on, where a guy
called Gulam who's There's the World Exposition in Paris and
they take this wrestler from India. His name is Gulam,
which is extremely highly regarded wrestler. Like till today, many
people regard Gulam as one of the highest like expressions

(53:51):
of Indian wrestling. Ever like, he along with Gama's brother,
are considered basically the two most technically perfect wrestlers the
sport has seen. Okay, well we'll talk a little bit
more bad later. Anyway, So he goes to the World
Exposition where he, according to the records, fights someone called
variously court dell Or, which is a bizarre name. And

(54:13):
it took it a really long time when I first
got international subject like and then I went kind of
like batty trying to figure out who this guy was
till I realized that these are like Anglo writers, and
the guy's name he was Turkish, his father Ali.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
Wait, okay, then, when what was what was the other
name that you gave the first name?

Speaker 2 (54:31):
Well, the core derell c O are hyphen d e
R E l l I. The French version is c
O U r T court like a tennis court hyphen
d E r E l l I. His name is
carther Ali, Like it's an extremely common name to anyone
who's like familiar with like any kind of Muslim community anyway.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
Yeah, So anyway, so apparently Gulam kicks this guy ass. Yeah,
even though this guy is.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
Very well regarded, And basically what ends up happening is
these guys end up on the ground and this guy's
unable to like flip him and get the win, and
some weird stuff happens. But like Edward dspone has got
like this whole account of the match, and according to
his account, like basically this guy was like it is
clear to everybody that he was like way superior at
every level. Okay, And he in fact eventually said that

(55:24):
the two greatest wrestlers he's seen are Gula and this
guy called is smell Us or use of his smell, respectively.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
Who was known as the Terrible Turk. Yeah, you.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
Terrible Turk was one of the most colorful characters in
any history. Like, so he towards the end of his life,
he goes on this tour of the United States where
he does a bunch of matches. People toil are not
sure whether the matches were like rigged or not.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
He took a.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
Bunch of money, took a bunch of money, demanded it
in gold. This true, by the way, he demanded in gold,
had the gold forged into a belt, which he wore everywhere,
including the trip home by boat, where his boat collided

(56:14):
with an extremely colorfully named British ship called the Cromarty Shirt,
at which point nobody on either boat was into women
and children first.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
Apparently there was a free for all. During this free
for all.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
The Terrible Turk, a wrestler was throwing people out of
his way from both sides to make it to the
site to get out the ship. Having thrown all these
people off, he leaps off and drowns with the weight
of his belt.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Hell yeah, fuck him? All right? Yeah, so you history, Yes, yeah,
I mean I have researched this.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
But that big gold belt design and professional wrestling that
exists from about the eighties onwards, I've always wondered if
it's like in a context to the belt this guy
came up with while in the United States.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
Yeah, huh, that would be cool. I've not looked like
symbolism and stuff, you know, but.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
It also means that who has this will will sink.
So maybe yeah exactly. Yeah, Yeah, you're a marked man
if you wear the belt.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
Yeah, especially if you throw people overboard.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
Oh yeah, there was quite the story. Like I mean,
there's like it was quite the story. Let's put it
this way. Like the reporting. Also, it was pretty racist.
A lot of Italians on the board. It's interesting to
read that and see how the Italians are.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
Yeah, I know, you're right. Yeah, like of course, the
terrible turk through everyone. No, you're right. Now, I feel
guilty for having Well, you told it to me like
it was true, so I believed you. You can believe
whatever version you want. I told you right up front,
all right, all right, But.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
Like I I don't doubt that he pushed people out
of the way to get off the ship, Like I
don't doubt that at all. But I also don't fault
him for it because I would try to do that
to get off a ship where if you're on a
ship where everyone's trying to get off for themselves and
there's no order, then either you choose to be noble
and die or you try.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
Right, Yeah, I guess it depends on who else is
on the boat for me anyway. Anyway, that's a whole
different yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
Anyway, So, so as a result of this fight where
Gulam doesn't do it, a budge of things happen, so
at least in the eyes of the promoters, European crowds
would now be eager to see more of like these
surprisingly great wrestlers from India.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
Yeah, because surely they must be more guys like this.

Speaker 5 (58:27):
Right.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
On the other hand, like the finances at home, who
like were specifically into this because of the counterpropaganda value
mm hm h. They were not like superhapp like sati
Is fight yet because they wanted like the victory, so
like they wanted more of this because hey, we got
the better but we didn't get it done, so like

(58:49):
they would. Basically, an entire pipeline was being laid out
for this.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
In order to have Indian wrestlers beat Western wrestlers in
order to help show that India is not actually some
like place that should be colonized or basically not a
nation of weaklings. Essentially, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
So essentially the stage of being set, like everyone was
ready for the emergence of like a new champion to
have like a Gulam type status who could then like
go there. India was basically eager for a hero at
this point. Yeah, and very soon a hero presented himself.
Except it's not the one you're thinking of. It's not Karma,
it's not Gama. It's this guy called Raheem Bucks sultaniaa okay,

(59:34):
who actually trained under Gulam, so he's like Gulam's protege,
which helps. Yeah, he was essentially helped a lot by
the fact that he basically looked the part very much,
much more than Gama, who remember is five foot seven
as a grown adult. Yeah, yeah, whereas ruim Bagh Sultania was,
depending on the source, you believe, somewhere between six foot

(59:56):
ten and seven feet tall, okay. And like there's this
famous poster of his where in you know, giving off
shades of barber. He's posing for it, holding up a
guy in each arm, like standing up there picking up
two guys. So that's like a famous poster of his
promotional poster of the time.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
I've seen it. It's quite cool.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
So you know, like he's essentially the front righter now,
so he wins this thing called rustam In, which is
like the champion of India. So he's the known champion
of India this point of time. Now, meanwhile, Gama had
started competing at about fifteen, and he had started like
developing a reputation of his own in a whole different
kind of way where I remember when I said that

(01:00:36):
fights go hours and hours sometimes, Well, Gama was like
finishing fights like the if you see the reporters with matches,
it's kind of like it's wired. It's like one minute
two when it's four minutes, three minutes, six minutes, nine minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Like you don't you well see it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
There's no ten minute fight there, Like no one ever
went ten minutes for Gama.

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
And he was like this yeah, yeah, so everyone's like mad,
a like messing up their sport. They want to spend
all afternoon like watching this and then he comes in
and just throws the person down.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
It's like it's like almost think of a guy who
like maybe in baseball, like every time he comes there,
he just like whacked like the first pitchases for a
home run. It's like you're not supposed to do this,
like it doesn't work this way. Yeah, the sport was
designed for you to not do this. Yeah, anyway, so
that you know, so there's that whole this in conjunction

(01:01:28):
of the fact like he's doing these like absolutely insane
workouts that like nobody seemed like as a kid, and
also like there's this whole aura developing around this kid.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Is he like built? Is he like a barrel? Is
he a skinny kid? Like, what's the what's the bill
of fifteen year old Gama?

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
I mean he's probably built because he was pretty much
built when he was older.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
Yeah, so I'm sure you fieled it out. He was
always like stocky and stuff. Yeah so yeah, but.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
He's also the usually this got a reach and high
disadvantage in every fight, like and get me eoboxing right,
Like that stuff is massive in all combat sports.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
This is exaggerating that, I know boxing, but yes, yeah, okay,
all right, Like he'll take it, he'll take it EXPERTI.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
So, like a really basic thing about like combat sports
is that like it's almost unheard of that if someone
knows what you're going to do, you can just keep
doing it over and over and over again to opponent
after opponent, and like it's just like nobody can stop
you like, it's sort of like if you follow mixed
martial arts, like Khabib used to do stuff like that
before he retired, Like he was just doing the same thing.

(01:02:30):
In the fact, if you think about it, Kabib's story
has a lot of parallels to the Gama story. They
trained in isolation for a long time, they came along
and then nobody had had a clue what to do. Yeah,
and then anyway, Okay, so this guy is doing this
stuff now. It always comes to a head in about
nineteen and four in a way for Gama where he
goes into this tournament and like destroys everybody in it,

(01:02:51):
like completely, and he wins the whole tournament. By this point,
he's basically a coad wrestler at the year, which is
a position his father used to hold.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
Okay, is this the same guy who had taken him
under his wing? Marja I mispronounced that. That's embarrassing.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
No, No, that was jodpur So Datia is where he
was as a kid, where his father was the quart wrestler.
So he's now the quart wrestler back there, like he's
holding his dad's old position. Like there's a bunch of
wrestlers there and he's like the shining star of the
wrestling stable so to speak. Okay, and at this point,
like now the cries are starting right, like we wanted
to see Gama versus Rahem Bakstana for like the national championship.

(01:03:31):
Trust mehen like these are the two guys. Yeah, so
as the record goes there, their first meeting is that
Datia itself.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
So it's on Gama's home turf. Okay, and some sources say.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
This happened around like as late as I think nineteen
hundred and seven is the date Masunga has recorded the
fight and it was for about twenty minutes and it
was a draw, which in itself is kind of significant
for like both these guys like apparently are the giant
and went very aggressive when he found that he could

(01:04:04):
not beat Gama, which is unusual for him.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
Yeah, Gama's point of view, this is.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
The first time that a someone has gone over ten
minutes and b he has not won the fight.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
Yeah, so for him this is unusual.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
So both of them like are grumbling about I should
have done this, I should have done this. In the
fight is done, yeah, ok So they meet again indoor
in nineteen hundred and nine in a fight which is
supposed to have no time to meit. They were like,
fight to the finish was the thing. The Maharaja of
Indoor organized it. And then at the three hour mark
he called it off because he got tired. He's like,
this is not going anywhere, so it's another draw. So

(01:04:37):
it's another draw, all right. And then like a little
bit later they meet in Lahore and.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
Guess what happened? They draw? They draw this time in
two hours and ten minutes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Yeah, so Gama is basically unbeatable, but he's also unable
to beat this guy. So this is basically the greatest
rivalry of career, like against this guy, these two guys,
this might be the greatest rivalry in the history of
Helwani wrestling.

Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
Yeah, so fourth.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
About Everyone's like, okain, the fourth boart has to happen, right,
Like three draws have happened. Yeah, everyone wants a result
at this point and some probably they would have scheduled
it also, But like what basically happens at this time?
This English promoter whose name is Rs. Benjamin appears and
he's insistent on taking a bunch of Indian wrestlers to

(01:05:30):
England like to London and.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
Doing shows up and still okay, h yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
And there's been several attempts since the Gulam incident like
them to do stuff like this. But this time there's
this Bengali millionaire who's called Saraji who thought of this
was a fantastic at the moment where you know, you
could go and strike a blow at English superiority in
the heart of the empire, like in London, we'll do
it in their capital. So they managed to actually talk

(01:06:01):
Gama into like going on this. So Gama, his brother,
another guy called Emma Buksh and the interestingly almost similarly
named Gamu. Okay, all of them set sail on this
boat in nineteen hundred and nine to go off to
London to strike this blow at the heart of the empire.

(01:06:22):
Because Benjamin has promised them that the English crowds are
really eager to see this fight happen. Oh, these fights happen,
So they said off. And as for how that happened
and what happened there, we should probably get into it
after break.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
Oh no, you may never ask to wait till Wednesday
in order to hear the other half is that what
you're saying, that is what I'm saying. Did you do
a suspense Yeah, Cliffang I told you she's a fiction writer.

Speaker 4 (01:06:50):
Ah, it was so spicy. I loved it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
I'm excited. I hope none of them are wearing a
golden belt while they're on the boat. And then also,
I'm gonna have the years wrong, but this is right
around the same time we did an episode of Muhammad Ali.
And this is right around the time when a black
heavyweight wrestler finally got the heavyweight wrestling championship not wrestling, sorry,

(01:07:17):
boxing championship from Uh, you didn't talk from talking about
Jack Johnson. God, I already forgot the names. I forget
names as soon as I'm done writing them. But it
was like the same year, wasn't It was like it
was like right around the same time when it was
a similar time. And it's interesting, like I wasn't actually
going to talk about it, but are we off wax right? No? No, no,

(01:07:39):
we're still recording. Okay, that's cool, that's cool. Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
It's interesting because at one point, like the English audiences
when like these guys weren't getting traction, the Indian wrestlers,
there's those an English paper who started writing But how
dare you cheer for a black man? But you weren't
cheer for brown Indians and there's a white man writing it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
By the way, Yeah yeah, p's are subjects of the Empire.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
He's already been a British subject.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
Fucking old timey racism anyway, not speaking of old time,
do you have anything you want to plug here at
the end before before people come back on Wednesday.

Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
I mean I don't really have a book due right now.
I have some stories out. I have a Twitter follow
my Twitter if you like stories like these, I'm hat
nameship on Twitter.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
Okay, Hell yeah, Sophie, you got anything you want to plug?

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
Uh? You could listen to sad olive Ark, cool zone
Media's newest podcast on all the apps. If you do
not wish to listen to ad bricks, you can subscribe
to cool zones at free subscription channel at cooler Zone
Media on Apple podcast Android version coming soon.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
And my plug is that much like the man trying
to get off the boat with the golden belt, I
am preparing my life boat for leaving Twitter because Twitter
is a nightmare mess and my lifeboat is a substack.
It's at martyr Kiljoy dot substack dot com. I just
started it like a week or so ago, depending on

(01:09:16):
when you're listening to this, or I started it years ago.
It's far in the future and I'm on number five
hundred and ninety four. But half of it's free and
half of it that's like more personal is for paid subscribers.
But basically, I want a way to talk about shit
without doing endless Twitter threads because Twitter is just now
a nightmare full of anti trans people who have been

(01:09:40):
empowered by the richest man in the world who is
a wild anti trans bigot. So that's what I got
to plug. Okay on Wednesday.

Speaker 3 (01:09:54):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media.

Speaker 4 (01:09:58):
For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website

Speaker 3 (01:10:01):
Foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.