Google Honours India’s First Female Wrestler Hamida Banu

Hamida Banu, the first professional female wrestler from India, is being honoured by Google today. Divya Negi, an illustrator from Bangalore, drew a picture of Ms. Banu surrounded by local plants and animals. It also remembered the first female athlete in a male-dominated sport in the 1940s and 1950s. The Google Doodle description said, “This Doodle honors Indian wrestler Hamida Banu, who is regarded as India’s first professional woman wrestler.”

Hamida Banu was born in the early 1900s in the Uttar Pradesh region of Aligarh. She is regarded as the first female wrestler in India. Over the course of her career, which spanned the 1940s and 1950s, Ms. Banu won over 300 events.

Since Ms. Banu challenged and defeated renowned wrestler Baba Pahalwan on this day in 1954, May 4 was selected as the day to honor her. After which Baba Pahalwan gave up on professional wrestling.

“On this day in 1954, the wrestling match that earned Banu international recognition and acclaim was reported – she had defeated famed wrestler Baba Pahalwan, in just 1 minute and 34 seconds, after which the latter retired from professional wrestling,” Google wrote in the description of the doodle.

In the early 1900s, Hamida Banu was born into a family of wrestlers in the Uttar Pradesh region of Aligarh. She started wrestling during a period when social conventions largely prevented women from participating in sports. But she was “passionate and she competed with men anyway, issuing an open challenge to all male wrestlers and wagering her hand in marriage to the first to defeat her,” according to Google.

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