EDITORIAL · AMRITSAR DA AKHARA
The Last Pit
In the south of Amritsar, under a tin shed beside a gurdwara, fifty wrestlers still train on earth. One man has given his life to keeping the ground under them.
The pit
Akhara Bajrang Bali sits near Gurdwara Shaheedan Sahib in the south of the city. There is no mat here and never has been. The pit is earth — dug, turned and dressed with mustard oil, turmeric and neem, the way pits have been kept in Punjab for longer than anyone here can date. The wrestling is freestyle only. The bouts are short; the grip is on skin and soil.
Around fifty members train here, most of them working-class men from the neighbourhoods nearby. They arrive before the heat, strip to the langot, and go to the earth two at a time while the rest stand at the edge and wait their turn.
The room
Behind the pit is the room: a mirror, a bench, plates and bars that have been lifted by more men than anyone has counted, and the mugdar — the wooden clubs swung by the hundred, the oldest training tool in the house. Nothing in it is new. Everything in it is used every day.
The ustaad and the ground
The akhara is run by Ustaad Kuldeep Pehalwan. He never married; the akhara has had his whole life instead. Keeping it, he says, has been a fight of its own. His account is that the ground has been eyed for years, and that holding on to it has taken more of him than the wrestling ever did. ISJ has not independently verified the claims about particular parties, and names none.
What is on record: a 2024 study by Guru Nanak Dev University, published in ShodhKosh, surveyed five akharas in Amritsar and found this one standing on a historic temple compound whose land is “not permanently secured”. It counts urban encroachment among the gravest threats to the city’s surviving akharas.
The ones who came after
The young men in these photographs are why the fight matters. The jobs that once came to a pehalwan hardly call any more, and the city keeps pressing in. But the pit is turned every morning, the elders still take their chairs at the edge, and the boys still wash at the tank when the session ends. The old photographs on the wall of the weight room show the men who came before. These are the men who came after.
Photographs and reporting: Madhav Singh Dogra for Indian Sports Journal · Amritsar. No wrestler is named in this story. The claims about the land are the ustaad’s account and are reported as such.