Rural India's rugby girls battle to keep playing

DW (English)

In West Bengal's tribal village of Saraswatipur, rugby once empowered girls such as Chanda Oraon to represent India. But, with financial support fading, so are the dreams the sport inspired.

Transcript

00:00In a remote tribal village in West Bengal, India, a quiet revolution began in

00:112013 with a rugby ball. Chanda Oraum was just 14 when she first encountered the

00:19sport. She had never seen a rugby match, let alone played one, but that moment

00:24changed everything.

00:28The unlikely catalyst was Paul Walsh, an Irish rugby enthusiast and coach, who brought

00:56the game to Saraswatipur, a village nestled among tea plantations and home to a tight-knit

01:03tribal community. What began as curiosity soon became a passion, especially among the girls.

01:10Well, the great thing was, when we went up there, we started coaching small children,

01:16having games, having little tournaments. And it was the girls, the women, that really embraced

01:21the game, embraced the idea of playing, and they really adopted it much quicker than the

01:26boys.

01:27But while they quickly adopted the game, girls like Chanda initially faced backlash from other

01:33villagers.

01:35So it's really a dream of a lot of people who played girls with sort of many different

01:46circumstances. And then the girls had made a lot of comments. And we thought that we had a lot

01:48of reliefs. And we felt like we had a lot of reliefs and as we had many of them, since we

01:52Chanda went on to represent her state and her country in tournaments, despite the opposition.

02:14But fame didn't bring financial security.

02:18She had to take up a sales executive job to support herself.

02:47Chanda's mother, Rakimoni, raised her while working as a tea plucker.

02:52She is concerned about her daughter's future.

02:55She was concerned about her daughter's future.

03:00She said that she was born in the family.

03:03She was born in the family.

03:05She was born in the family.

03:07She was born in the family.

03:09She is born in the family.

03:19In West Bengal, where child marriage is more common than anywhere else in India,

03:49rugby once gave girls a reason to resist, but as support dwindles, so does participation, and the progress it brought.

04:19In West Bengal, there was a change in the country, and there was a change in the country, and there was a change in the country.

04:31So, will the spirit of Saraswatipur's rugby girls survive?

04:53Only time will tell if Chanda's story inspires a new generation of women rugby players.

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