New Delhi:
Mangte Chungneijang Mary Kom, the most celebrated female boxer in India, grew up fighting.
She fought convention as the eldest child of a landless farmer in the fractious northeastern state of Manipur, where she drove steer across rice fields, work that boys in the village let her know, derisively, belonged to men.
She fought lack of means when she trained in the state's capital as a teenager - buying knockoff sneakers in a black market bordering Myanmar, making do with two meals a day, shadowboxing her reflection in a mirror.
She fought her own body after undergoing one cesarean section for twin boys, then another for a third boy, then going back to train through postpartum sluggishness and her legs' sudden unwillingness to bounce step.
It is perhaps not surprising then, that Kom, 32, who goes by the name Mary, cannot seem to give up the fight.
She is a five-time world champion, was the Olympic bronze medalist at the London Games, and gold medalist at this fall's Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea. Her autobiography, "Unbreakable," was released in 2013 at a ceremony hosted by the Indian actress and former Miss Universe, Sushmita Sen, who called it a story of "a woman's road to emancipation and empowerment." She was the subject of an operatic Bollywood biopic released in September that was a commercial success, perhaps the chief indicator of having arrived in India.
But her rise has been punctuated by deep grievances, often against what she describes as a sports bureaucracy stacked against her and fellow boxers. At the Asian Games medal ceremony in October, another Manipuri boxer, Laishram Sarita Devi, tearfully refused her own bronze in the 60-kilogram category, protesting the judges' decision to award the victory in a semifinal match to her Korean opponent. Devi was suspended by the International Boxing Association for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Her colleagues, including Kom, stood by her, and India's sports minister wrote a letter to the amateur boxing federation pleading for the revocation of her suspension.
For Kom, a devout Christian from the tiny Kom tribal community, who has remained somewhat of an outsider in India and who has railed against bias in judging, Devi's suspension reflects deeper fissures in the sport.
"Of course she won the bout," said Kom, in a hotel suite not far from the presidential palace in New Delhi, asserting that the referee cheated, wanting to advance a Korean candidate to the finals. "We are always facing the same problems. Sarita was facing internationally. I was facing nationally."
Some say Kom has used her grievances to her advantage, and they have certainly added color to her underdog story. But they have also isolated her, limiting her impact on India's sporting culture.
"What is the use having a women's boxer like Mary Kom?" said S. Sabanayakan, a sportswriter who has followed Kom's career. "I hardly see Mary Kom talking to other boxers, giving tips. She only wants to be Mary Kom. Mary Kom is an iconic figure in Indian women's boxing. Why can't she motivate all the boxers in India? Why only Manipur?"
The Indian Boxing Federation suspended Kom for unsportsmanlike conduct in 2009, after a tied bout was awarded to her opponent, Pinky Jangra, from the north Indian state of Haryana. Kom used "foul language" with the judges. She lost to Jangra again in 2014, in a qualifier for the Commonwealth Games.
Her opponent, she said, had "never, ever beaten me. But the referees don't favor me, they don't give any points to me."
Kom added, "In India, there is this problem facing most of the boxers from the Northeast."
India has struggled to contain multiple insurgencies within its cluster of northeastern states, thinly tied to the mainland by a 14-mile stretch of land in West Bengal. Most of the states are dominated by tribal populations with ethnic ties to their Southeast Asian neighbors. When they come to Delhi or Bangalore for school or work, many complain of discrimination.
© 2014, The New York Times News Service