The Original He-man, Rustom-e-Hindi, DARA SINGH    

                                                           

The original he-man, champion wrestler and the incredible hulk with a golden heart DARA SINGH is no more.   Born in 1928 in a small village near Amritsar, Punjab his journey to stardom in wrestling, then film industry, business and to the Parliament is incredible.       Dara Singh is truly to be credited as the person who made wrestling as a profession in India by scaling dizzy heights; he has become the torch bearer to many wrestlers who followed him.    He was the first truly global Indian wrestler with winning Champion of Malasia in 1947, Common Wealth Championship in 1959 and Champion of the World in 1968.   He successfully challenged many wrestlers from Asia, Far East and America.     Few people must be knowing that it was Dara Singh who introduced exhibition wrestling bouts which are akin to the now famous WWF championship on TV.        He used to tour small villages in the nuke and corner of India with his exhibition wrestling matches.   I distinctly remember having seen posters and listen to publicity over mike mounted on rickshaws in my childhood in Vijayawada about Dara Singh bouts with foreign wrestlers with funny sounding names like King Kong and Tiger Choocha and those matches used to jam packed and runaway hits.    I also remember having read incredible stories about his huge diet consisting of 100s eggs, chicken, liters of milk etc., and his `uthak bhaitak and push up’ exercise regime.     

        

To encash his popularity he entered Hindi/Punjabi film industry in mid 1950s predominantly in action movies like Herclus, Samson, Tarzon, King Kong which could exploit his towering physique.    Much before Salman Khan and Sunny Doels have even born, it was Dara Singh who has popularized sporting shirtless body.   He was credited with giving break to Mumtaj as leading lady  in one of his movies and acted with her in 15 movies,  who later went on to become top heroein and acted with top stars like Rajesh Khanna.      He worked in more than 140 Hindi/Punjabi films and his last film was `jab we met in 2007’ in which he essayed very dignified role.    He immortalized the role of Hanuman in various mythological movies made in Hindi and regional languages (albeit with the help of dubbing his dialogues due to his heavy Punjabi accent) and also donned the role of Hanumaan in the famous TV serial RAMAYAN by Ramanand Sagar

He was nominated to Rajya Sabha in 2003 and served full term.   To his credit though he was associated with film industry for more than 50 years he managed to be an extremely non-controversial person and known to be a gentleman with a golden heart.

In India whenever one speak of wrestling it cannot go without taking Dara Singh’s name.  May the noble soul rest in peace.  

S. Prabhakar

12.7.2012