Sona Chaudhary and the chaotic mess that is women’s football

Sona Chaudhary wants to be taken seriously as a writer, but it is as a former footballer that she has made news. Her latest book (she’s written three novels) is titled Game in Game and recounts true experiences of players from Chaudhary’s era. Early media reports focused on the salacious parts of the book. Chiefly, she said the coach and secretary place their beds in the players’ rooms on foreign tours and women footballers enter same-sex relationships in order to avoid being raped. She’s also alleged that officials insisted players “compromised” themselves in order to be selected for the national team. In an appearance on IBN7 on May 10, Chaudhary did not seem to deny the latter, although in an interview to PTI published a couple of days later, she said she did not write anything about lesbian relationships.

If Chaudhary’s claims about women’s football are to be believed, it was a den of vice and harassment in the 1990s, with officials exploiting the women relentlessly. There’s just one slight problem. Chaudhary describes Game in Game, as “90 per cent fact and 10 per cent fiction”.

Chaudhary has maintained throughout is that, while the names are changed to protect the privacy of people, most of what is described is based on what was narrated to her by other sportswomen as well as what she witnessed during her playing days.

The problem is that Chadhary’s tale is twistier than a mountain road. While Chaudhary maintains she has represented India at the senior level during the 1990s and also captained the side, there appears to have been no “Sona Chaudhury” who played let alone led the Indian national women’s football team.

Adding to her air of mystery is the fact that no former footballer, from that era or otherwise, recalls any one of Chaudhary’s names or her face. “I have never seen her play,” said Maria Rebello, who represented India around the turn of the century and went on to become the first woman referee from the country to be listed by the world governing body FIFA. “I have never even heard her name before.”

There could be one explanation for this: Sona Chaudhury is just a nom de plume. The person holding the pen is Babita Bamal, who (prior to getting married) was was Babita Rathi. Chaudhary claims that in her footballer days, she went by Babita Rathi. As if all this wasn’t enough, there’s another twist: although Chaudhary, who is technically Bamal nee Rathi, has certificates to prove she’d been an active footballer, there’s no record of either Babita Rathi or Sona Chaudhary in football’s governing body.

Curiously, that doesn’t mean Chaudhary is lying. Rather, it’s an indicator of just how messy the world of women’s football is.

While refusing to come on record, a source in All India Football Federation (AIFF) told Newslaundry, “Our enquiries have revealed that she changed her name and was earlier called something else. There was a parallel federation at that time, so she might have been their player.” This parallel federation was Women’s Football Federation of India (WFFI), which was set up in 1975 and is effectively defunct now.

“Most probably, she belonged to the other federation,” said our source in AIFF. “We asked players from that era if they knew her but no one could recollect the name.” Sources added that no official enquiry was taking place because Game in Game is fiction, no one has been named in subsequent interviews and no written complaint has been filed. “If someone claiming to be a former employee of an organisation makes these allegations without naming anyone, who does the organisation investigate?” asked someone at the AIFF who requested anonymity. “More important, how can an investigation take place when the organisation is not sure of the complainant’s credentials to begin with?”

The parallel governing bodies of women’s football in India are the final twist in this tale. Rival federations claiming legitimacy is nothing new – be it hockey at the national level or badminton in the capital. The situation in women’s football, however, is particularly complicated.

Historically, the national associations under Fédération International de Football Association (FIFA) only controlled the men’s game. Women’s football, on the other hand, was governed separately. Women’s football was governed by WFFI until1991, when the AIFF took additional charge of the women’s national football team. WFFI, despite not being an officially recognised federation any longer, continued to exist and conduct tournaments of its own at various levels. It is under the aegis of WFFI that Sona Chaudhary alias Babita Bamal nee Rathi played, allegedly.

As far as Chaudhary is concerned, she is a former India footballer and has no doubt in her mind that she captained the national team “between 1996 and 1998”. “I went for some of the matches, someone else went for the others,” Chaudhary told Newslaundry. “But state was fixed – I was Haryana captain from 1991 to 1995, (which is when) I left (the state for Uttar Pradesh).”

The reason why she switched allegiance at the state level is startling. The Haryana state body, she said, was less of a sports organisation and more of a “business of minting money by selling certificates, making a cut from railway concessions, getting money from sponsors and asking players to pay”. Chaudhary also said, “Certificates without names were sold to somebody going for admissions and jobs… I could not sign on papers that lied about all my players having received kits. I could not see the injustice.”

Asked for evidence, Chaudhary showed this writer copies of certificates on her mobile phone but refused to share those photographs, saying she did not want to drag anyone into any controversy. The certificates seemed to be issued by state associations affiliated to WFFI. Newslaundry could not independently verify them.

When it was pointed out that AIFF and not WFFI is the official governing body, Chaudhary said, “When we represent the state or the country, we don’t say we are from this body or that body.” However, every sportsperson must know that there is one official body in the country that is responsible for the national teams? “We were not told that they (AIFF) were the official body,” claimed Chaudhary. “We started playing with somebody (WFFI) and always considered them to be official… (AIFF) never came to the tournaments. Why didn’t they stop them?”

While it is surprising that after all these years, the difference between a recognised federation and an urecognised one is still unclear to Chaudhary, there is no denying the serious nature of the allegations in the book. Yet here, Chaudhary backpedalled by insisting her book is a work of “fiction based on fact, like all fiction is”. There was a conscious attempt by Chaudhary throughout the interview to distance herself from the 90 percent facts behind the 10 per cent fiction.

Surprisingly, Chaudhary is adamant that she does not want any action to be taken against the officials in her book. “What has happened has happened,” she said, adding that she wants action to be taken going forward so that future sportspersons, especially women, do not face harassment and can concentrate on their game.

With no names being taken and no one else coming forward, one cannot possibly be sure about the level of truth behind the allegations. However, women’s sport does tend to get the short shrift, especially by a male-dominated administration. Harassment, whether mental or sexual, is not exactly a well-kept secret – think the four in Kerala or the one in Odisha. The Pinki Pramanik case showed the lack of gender sensitivity.

If women’s sport is in a bad state, unrecognised governing bodies are no better. Combine the two, and it’s a recipe for disaster. It isn’t much of a stretch that as a teenager from a farming family in Haryana, Chaudhary was led to believe that her federation was the official federation. In any case, there are many who ply their trade in unrecognised sports set-ups. Not everyone is as lucky as certain male cricketers.

The author can be contacted on Twitter @causticji