A Deaf Indian Female Athlete Was Dropped From World Championship Squad Because She Was The Only Woman In The Team

As a girl, and even now as a grown woman of 30, I still get asked by my parents pointed questions about who I am going with. No complaints there; I think that’s critical information that family member needs to know about each other, irrespective of age or gender. However, this question when asked to the females is more often a way of finding out the gender ratio of this group that they’re hanging out with. Too many boys? Not enough girls? You can’t go. Sometimes, it seems unfair. Sometimes, when you read the news, you have a crisis of faith. But what we’re talking about here is not some friend’s birthday party or a trip to Goa. It’s a world athletic championship, and the girl in question is a deaf female athlete, Sameeha Barwin, who was dropped from the India squad for the 4th World Deaf Athletics Championships in Poland because of her gender.

The 4th World Deaf Athletics Championships is scheduled to happen between August 23-28 in Lublin, Poland. 18-year-old Sameeha Barwin, who is from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, is a 100 m track athlete and a long jumper, who has previously won medals in three consecutive national athletic championships for audibly impaired athletes. However, Sameeha’s mother, Salamath, was informed by the All India Sports Council for the Deaf (AISCD) that the Sports Authority of India (SAI) had decided to drop Sameeha from the India squad because she was the only female athlete in the team, which comprised five male athletes.

Back in July, 12 hearing-impaired athletes were part of the selection trials conducted by the AISCD in Delhi. Of those 12, there were two females, Sameeha Barwin and Delhi’s Versha Gulia. As per a video of the trial event uploaded on YouTube, Sameeha cleared the 5m mark, which is above the qualifying mark of 4.25m in the Long Jump event for women. Versha, on the other hand, did not qualify.

Since that made Sameeha Barwin in the only female athlete to be chosen, her mother was informed that her daughter would be dropped from the squad for this reason!

“I was told that they cannot send my daughter alone as she is only a female athlete and also arrangements cannot be made for an escort due to shortage of funds,” Salamath Barwin told the media.

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There were many efforts made by Barwin’s family, and some are ongoing, to get the promising athlete back on the list. V Vijayakumar, who is the MP of Kanyakumari, to which Sameeha belongs, has written to Union Sports Minister Anurag Thakur in July, requesting him to add Sameeha’s name to the list. He even ensured Thakur that funds can be arranged to send an escort for her. However, the family has not yet received any response.

The team leaves for Poland on August 14, which is less than a week away. And yet, none of the sports authorities of the country want to address the matter. Questions are being raised about how the sports authorities are so low on funds that they cannot even afford to bear the cost of an escort for an athlete, and where all the money allocated for athletes is going if not toward bearing such costs. More importantly, when you see how India’s female athletes have been consistently bringing home medals, as we saw in the recent Tokyo Olympics too, it pains to know that Sameeha Barwin would be deprived of a chance at the medal because of such a regressive attitude of the sports authorities responsible fo this selection.

When Neeraj Chopra struck gold at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, everybody latched on to his success and wanted to claim it as their own. But where were all these people when he was just another athlete, struggling to get past a rigged system and trying to achieve his goals? If Sameeha Barwin wins a medal, all these authorities will want a share of that credit. So why are they holding her back now and not extending a hand to help when she needs them the most?

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