Kila Raipur Sports Festival

Kila Raipur Sports Festival, popularly known as the Rural Olympics, is held annually in Kila Raipur (near Ludhiana), in Punjab, India. Competitions are held for major Punjabi rural sports, include cart-race, athletic events and rope pulling.

In February each year, Ludhiana becomes the destination for hundreds of sports enthusiasts, including foreigners. They come to Kila Raipur to see the special breed of bullocks, camels, dogs, mules and other animals competing in competitive events. The most prestigious winners have attended. In the year of the Olympics 2008, Hakam and Naib Singh Dhaliwal from village Kalsian, Punjab took the 1st place prize. They also won first in gujjaral and phalewal. They are known in Punjab as the men who hold the greatest passion in the sport

In 2014, the supreme court of Indian banned the Bull racing event after the complains of animal cruelty. The petition was started in 2012 by a Gau Raksha Dal—an organisation that works for the protection of cows—registered a petition against the use of bulls in these games. The Punjab and Haryana high court combined the petition with two others, one by the Malwa Doaba Bulls Welfare Association and another by the Rural Hult Race and Welfare Association, both of which claimed that the Kila Raipur races did not constitute a violation of Section 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty act, as the races did not qualify as performance or exhibition. The court ruled in favour of the these two petitions and allowed the races. The presiding judge observed, “At the cost of repetition, it is observed that the Bulls, which are being used for the sports, are well looked after, well nourished and are not treated with any cruelty.” This order constituted a defeat of the right-wing voices, until the 2014 Supreme Court order.

In villages which formed the first habitation of civilised man rural sports grew out of sheer necessity. The need for cultivating individual strength for labour on the fields, the interdependence within the community and need of defence, joint defence against onslaughts of a common foe and dangerous animals must have given birth to sports like wrestling, running, jumping, weightlifting and such performing arts as of measuring strength by holding wrists, twisting hands. Kabaddi which is another expression of the same spirit has become the mother of games in Punjab.

In order to toughen the frames and steel the minds of his followers Guru Hargobindji had started the tradition of holding wrestling bouts within the precincts of Akal Takht Sahib and it is mostly because of the fillip that he gave and the seal of ethics that he put on them that sports become a proud facet of life in Punjab. On the common grounds of villages, in the fairs, during the festivals, at the hermitages of pirs, graves of preceptors, wrestling became a part of high recreation. Villages adopt and feed wrestlers and also give prizes to them as a matter of honour in Punjab today.

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Wikipedia