Google honoured Hamida Banu, who is regarded as the first female wrestler in India, on Saturday.
In honour of the woman who entered a sport that was dominated by men in the 1940s and 1950s, the massive search engine changed the logo on their homepage.
Banu, who was born in the early nineties, was from Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh.
According to Google, “This day in 1954 saw the reporting of the wrestling match that brought Banu worldwide recognition and praise; she had defeated renowned wrestler Baba Pahalwan in just one minute and 34 seconds, following which the latter withdrew from professional wrestling."
Born into a family of wrestlers, Banu grew up watching wrestling. Between the 1940s and 1950s, she won more than 300 competitions during her enthralling career. Women's participation was strongly discouraged in the early 1990s due to prevailing social norms; however, her success was the pinnacle of women empowerment as she broke free from the constraints of patriarchy.
She publicly challenged the male wrestlers, offering her hand in marriage to the first to defeat her. Banu's career also included competition abroad, where she defeated Russian female wrestler Vera Chistilin in under two minutes.
Banu was referred to as the "Amazon of Aligarh" a lot. Her training schedule, nutrition, and victories in fights were extensively reported.
Hamida Banu was a wrestling pioneer in her own right. Her bravery is still widely recognized in India and around the globe. In addition to her athletic achievements, Banu will always be honored for being authentic and pursuing her passions without regard to social conventions.
The Google Doodle's creator, Bengaluru-based artist Divya Negi, claimed that Banu's struggle against the era's conservative norms served as inspiration.
"While doing research for my doodling, I went into Hamida's world. Finding out that she battled valiantly against the conservative conventions of her era was encouraging. One of the hardest things to do is to challenge groupthink, and being a woman makes it even more difficult. Negi stated, "Hamida persevered and prevailed in spite of that.
