Hisar: In a bright pink kurta and white pants, 32-year-old Sonia Doohan surveys the room full of sari-clad veiled women. Twenty-four pairs of eyes peer back at her. When she has their attention, Doohan picks up her mic and thunders against “Haryana’s public enemies”. “The names are Sandeep Singh and Brij Bhushan. Remember them.”
Doohan is on a crusade, travelling from village to village in Haryana in her white SUV to warn women against state sports minister Sandeep Singh and BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh who have been accused of sexually harassing Haryanavi sportswomen.
“Till the time women don’t know what is happening around them, how will they fight for their rights,” asks Doohan.
She is their town crier—their news presenter— broadcasting information on the two powerful men to village women who rarely get time from their household chores and field work to watch the news. She gathers them under the shade of the village trees, in makeshift tents, under the open sky in their fields or in panchayat rooms. Often, the women are hearing of the charges against Bhushan and Singh for the first time.
“Can you repeat the names? Were our wrestlers protesting because of them?” asks Phool Kumari, who is among two dozen women who have gathered in the panchayat house of Badchappar village in Hisar. They adjust their ghunghats, pulling them across their mouths as they whisper to each other. They start chanting the names of the men—Sandeep Singh and Brij Bhushan Singh—over and over again, as if committing them to memory.
“I’m hearing their names for the first time. I knew that our wrestlers were protesting in Delhi but had no idea who they were protesting against. I can’t read and have no time to watch television,” says 50-year-old Ram Pyari at the end of the speech.
When Doohan started this mission seven months ago, around the time Vinesh Phogat and Sakshi Malik were protesting at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, she was the lone crusader. Today, she claims to have mobilised a small army of dozens of women from Jind, Hisar and Kaithal districts in Haryana to her cause. With their help, she has organised over 300 mahila panchayats. Her speech never changes.
“In the early days, many women would slam their doors in my face,” says Doohan. Men would stop their wives from gathering around her. Others would listen to her with scepticism and get on with their day.
Till the time women don’t know what is happening around them, how will they fight for their rights
– Sonia Doohan
Now, word of her arrival spreads from household to household before she pulls up at a village thanks to her supporters. Women surround her and take selfies as she checks her Apple watch for messages.
“Panchayat is culturally embedded in Haryana’s culture but it is dominated by men. So I thought why not organise a women panchayat and use our culture as a weapon to spread awareness against these evils in our society,” says Doohan as she steps into her SUV.
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Hot rotis and drunk men
Doohan’s fight against this male culture is the product of a violent childhood and political ambition. Hot rotis, and one of her uncles kicking his wife is how she remembers her school-going years at Hisar’s Petwad village where she still lives.
Her father didn’t want a daughter and gave her to one of his four brothers who lived in the same village.
“As soon as the men wake up, they want hot tea and a warm breakfast. And then for the entire day, they are outside smoking hookah and playing cards. At night, they will come back home drunk, beat their wives and then ask for hot rotis for dinner,” says Doohan, who is accompanied by her brother, Lokesh Doohan (30). Lokesh now travels with her and takes care of logistical duties.
As a form of protest, she would dress up like the boys in her village. “I wanted my parents, relatives, and neighbours to treat me the same as they did them,” she says. Her goal was equality, her form of protest was her choice of clothes—shorts, trousers, shirts and kurtas instead of saris and suits.
Her father died when she was 16. “He was an alcoholic,” she says.
While growing up, she wanted to become a pilot, later an IAS officer, but didn’t have the means to follow up on this dream. She got her Bachelor of Arts through correspondence from Kurukshetra University.
“They wanted to marry me off. But I’m 32 and single,” she says with pride. Her uncles found a “good match” for her. But when she met him, he told her that she would have to drop her activism and political ambitions.
“I am not against marriage but I haven’t found any man who would accept a free woman,” says Doohan.
Her activism started when she was around 20, with educating young women in her village about the importance of education and financial independence.
She would sneak out of home in the morning and come home late at night with her aunts keeping her movements secret from the uncles. By 27, she built a real estate business with her brother, and now uses the profits to run her campaign.
I am not against marriage but I haven’t found any man who would accept a free woman
-Sonia Doohan
But she quickly learned that politics is the path to change. And so she joined Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in 2019. The party has an insignificant presence in Haryana, but Doohan says she’s not campaigning for votes but to “save women”. At the same time, she nurses dreams of becoming the state’s first woman chief minister.
In January, she confronted Sandeep Singh during the flag-hoisting ceremony at Kurukshetra on Republic Day. “Sir, stop! You can’t unfurl the flag. You are a tainted person,” she had said when trying to stop him. In return, she was bundled into the police jeep and detained.
Around two months later, she started the campaign against him.
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‘Difficult to control’
As the SUV approaches the next village, Narnaund, Doohan pulls out her iPhone and calls some of her women supporters who visited the village in advance to spread the word of her mahila panchayat.
The men look at her befuddled and bemused.
“Yeh apna ladka hai (She is a boy),” shouts an elderly man in his 70s.
Doohan doesn’t pay any attention to him. Unfazed, she smiles and enters the tent. Her brother has already set up the sound system and placed a massive poster. It has a photo of Dhooan in a pink kurti with the words, ‘Women demand justice panchayat’ emblazoned in red in the background.
She pulls out her prepared speech.
“Our wrestlers started the protest on 18 January at Jantar Mantar in Delhi. It’s October. Brij Bhushan is still a free man. And then in July, our coach from nearby district Jhajjar accused Sandeep Singh.”
A woman in the audience, Suman Devi (40), raises her hand, and the mic is passed on to her. “We should not let Sandeep Singh enter our village, sisters. He has violated our women,” says Devi. as her fellow The women around her started to hoot. She drops the mic and starts blushing.
Doohan uses Brij Bhushan and Singh to talk about women’s rights.
“For how long will you keep getting beaten up by men? You first get beaten by them and then you also serve hot roti. You should be out protesting for your women,” she says.
Her cellphone number is printed on every poster. Her brother is in charge of poster designing and printing. She points to it and asks women to call her when they are in trouble. Among women’s circles from Dhakal village in Jind district to Badchappar village in Hisar district, the ten-digit number has become an informal helpline.
“Sometimes, women would call when their husbands beat them up,” says Dhooan. And if she is in the area, she visits the police station for them to lodge a complaint.
After the panchayat, the women gather in the backyard of Mamata’s* house. Away from the collective excitement, many have already started questioning Doohan’s speech.
“We are women and we support wrestlers. But women can also be wrong,” says one of the women. A few nod in agreement, and a second woman chimes in: “Once a girl goes out of the village, they go out of hands. And it’s very difficult to control them.”
The women turn quiet as Doohan joins them for lunch. They surround her in a circle and load her plate with pakoras while congratulating her for the successful mahila panchayat.
I knew that our wrestlers were protesting in Delhi but had no idea who they were protesting against. I can’t read and have no time to watch television
– Ram Pyari, part of one women panchayat
When Doohan returns home an hour later, her four aunts are waiting in the backyard with garlands and sweets. They congratulate her quietly—they don’t want the men to hear their triumphant welcome.
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Political agenda
None of the men in Petwad village approve of Doohan’s crusade. They call her the “hot-headed woman”. A group of four men take turns smoking their hookah as they watch her return home. They’ve seen her grow up, and don’t agree with her cause.
“She will get our women to overthrow us as heads of our families. We need men to run our society,” says one of the men, Jagveer (65). The other men laugh at the idea of women taking charge. They think her crusade against Bhushan is an empty cause.
“Why did the wrestlers wait so long to take Brij Bhushan’s name? If he was guilty, they should have said it earlier? Doohan should think about this and educate women,” says 40-year-old Kartar who runs a small grocery store.
Even within the local sporting community, support for Doohan can be thin. The cynics claim she’s latched on to the wrestling controversy to further her political agenda.
In Jind district, where she has organised mahila panchayats in over a hundred villages, badminton coach Chirag Dhanda says that Doohan should refrain from making such accusations.
“The culpability of Sandeep Singh and Brij Bhushan Singh has not yet been established. So what’s the point of smearing these folks in each and every village,” asks Dhanda, who has been training both men and women for almost a decade.
Local BJP party members claim to have never heard of her before.
“We don’t know about the ambitions of Doohan and why she is doing this,” says Praveen Attrey, BJP spokesperson from Haryana.
But Doohan doesn’t care about what men say or think. Having fought her four uncles for her freedom, she’s developed a thick skin to criticism and resistance.
The culpability of Sandeep Singh and Brij Bhushan Singh has not yet been established. So what’s the point of smearing these folks in each and every village
-Chirag Dhanda, badminton coach
She regularly holds mahila panchayats in her own village as well. And though the women have heard her speech many many times, they look forward to the meetings. It’s a pleasant break from the drudgery of housework.
They gather outside Doohan’s new, pristine white bungalow that she’s building. The posters are up and her brother offers them tea.
But before she can launch into her speech on public enemies, the women break into a dance. They know who their ‘public enemies’ are. The village women swirl and twirl around in circles celebrating—this is their moment.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)