Dingko Singh
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The importance of being Dingko Singh
Dingko is often considered the start-up point for the boxing revolution in India,
Sports journalist Harpal Bedi, who had covered the 1998 Asian Games for UNI, told The Times of India. "We'd not won a single gold in boxing for 16 years until Dingko won. Nobody rooted for him since boxing was not our game; hockey and wrestling were," Bedi said.
Career highlights
Anshul Gandhi Meet Dingko Singh, India's Most Ferocious Boxer Who Made Sports Mainstream In The North-East, Tuesday, 16 Feb 2016, MensXP.com © Twitter © Reuters
A tiger cub is not a fierce hunter from the day he is born. The cub, many people say, possesses a killer instinct but always learns on-the-job, fighting and squabbling with animals almost two or three times its size. From an early age, the cub fends for himself and by the time he is four or five, his wounds make him learn the ropes of surviving in the wild. Dingko Singh, the ferocious Indian boxer, was born in a poor family in Lamlong, a remote area in Huidrom in Imphal district and learnt to survive in extreme poverty after he practically grew up in an orphanage. The Manipuri tiger faced such adversities since his childhood that it engraved in him a killer instinct which made him the most feared fighter in Indian boxing circles.
Dingko Singh shot into limelight at the age of just 11 years when he won the sub-junior national boxing title in 1989 at Ambala. For the first time, such talent had came to fore from the remote North-Eastern state of Manipur. It was hailed as the result of the Special Area Games scheme started by Sports Authority of India but to many, it was the fighting spirit of Dingko Singh, who could have done it all by himself because the wounds of surviving in the wild had made him a ferocious hunter.
For the next 10 years, Dingko Singh practiced and learnt from the best in India. He had been marked as one of the top boxers in India for sure but nobody knew if he had what it takes to perform on international stage. All the doubts, however, dissipated when he won the King’s Cup in 1997 in Thailand. He was adjudged the best boxer of the meet and thereby rose to prominence as the Boxing star India had been waiting for.
That final bout in King’s Cup heralded a golden period in his life. Dingko Singh became a well recognized figure in Indian sports and a champion player in his homeland Manipur. But all didn’t go as planned for Dingko. He wasn’t selected for the Bangkok Asian Games in 1998, which surprised all the experts and coaches in the Indian contingent. Dejected, Dingko Singh drowned himself in sorrow but as fate would have it, he was selected as a last minute entry on a ‘no cost to the government’ basis.
More determined than ever and out there to prove his worth in the Indian boxing contingent, Dingko Singh came out all guns blazing in the 54 Kg Bantamweight category of the event. He steamrolled his opponents before reaching the semi-final. In the semi-final, he defeated world number three and local favorite Wong Prages Sontaya, to cause a major upset. He went on to win the Gold by defeating world number five Timur Tulyakov of Uzbekistan.
The level of fame Dingko Singh experienced after that bout was insane and unknown in the world of Indian boxing. He kept fighting for another five-years but a hairline crack forced him to withdraw from various fights. According to him, the Asian Games Gold was a job half done but he would have to be content with an Asian Games Gold as his Olympic dream was shattered because of the hand injury.
Dingko Singh is now a service personnel and a renowned personality in the Indian Navy. He was awarded the Arjuna Award in 1998 and Padma Shri in 2013. Till date, he remains one of the most ferocious boxer’s India has ever produced in its entire boxing history. And that means a lot, considering the list now includes some big names like Vijender Singh and Manoj Kumar.
A man ahead of his time
Tushar Dutt, June 11, 2021: The Times of India
Pune: Dingko Singh was a boxer much ahead of his time, says the man who has witnessed the journey of the celebrated boxer from up close. Brigadier (retd) Muralidharan Raja, former secretary general of now-disaffiliated IABF and a retired international referee and manager, said Dingko’s career was a ‘short burst’ that changed things for boxing in the country in more ways than one.
Raja, who now lives in Pune, first saw Dingko at the Inter-Services boxing meet in 1996, where the then teenager shocked Olympian Debendra Thapa.
“Thapa had just returned from the Atlanta Olympics and there was no doubt that he was going to win the title. Dingko was drawn with him in the first round and nobody was even bothered about watching it. The Olympian was on the floor within the first 15 seconds. He got up but was down again within a few seconds. Dingko was playing for the navy and went on to win the championships that year,” Raja told TOI.
Raja said the Manipur boxer was a force that needed attention at that time. “He was a temperamental boy and also very sensitive. At the same time, there was no other like him. I wish we had people in power who could understand him better. After making the cut to the Indian team, Dingko came into the limelight by winning the Asian gold, however, his career ended within a few years,” Raja said. “It was like a short burst of energy. Strong and powerful, but couldn’t stay for long.”
“I feel Dingko was a little ahead of time. Had he been there after 2008, when boxing became a priority sport, he would have won many more medals,” he said.
Raja added that he was however happy that the federation stood behind the boxer even when the then government didn’t support him.
Reportedly, he had to sell off his house to meet the expenses of his treatment. But the bantamweight boxer challenged all those adversities with the same agility and spirit that he was famous for.
A fearless challenger in the ring, Dingko beat two Olympic medallists — Sontaya Wongprates of Thailand and Timur Tulyakov of Uzbekistan — en route to his Asian Games gold in Bangkok, which bolstered the Indian boxers’ belief in their ability at the global arena. However, Dingko wasn’t the original pick for the Games and made the cut following a fierce protest he raised himself.
“My sincerest condolences on this loss May his life’s journey & struggle forever remain a source of inspiration for the upcoming generations. I pray that the bereaved family finds the strength to overcome this period of grief & mourning #dinkosingh,” tweeted India’s first Olympic-medallist boxer Vijender Singh, now a professional in the ring.
Another boxing legend from Manipur, MC Mary Kom, too, was shocked and wrote on twitter, “You were a true hero of our nation. You leave but your legacy will live among us. RIP #DingkoSingh”. Dingko was honoured with the Arjuna Award in 1998 and in 2013, he was bestowed with Padma Shri for his contribution to the game. An employee of Indian Navy, Dingko shaped many youngsters as a coach at the Sports Authority of India centre in Imphal after hanging up his gloves early. But illnesses came in the way of his association with the sport and he was mostly confined to his home in the later part of his life.
“Oja (teacher) Dingko Ngangom, you were my inspiration, my childhood hero. It breaks my heart into pieces that you are gone too soon. Your memory will never leave us and live long in our hearts. #Heartbroken,” another champion pugilist from the state, Laishram Sarita Devi wrote on social media, about a hero whose feat will keep motivating Indian boxers long after his exit from life’s ring.
Controversies
2014: assaulting a lady weightlifter
Asian Games gold medallist boxer turned coach Ngangom Dingku — more popularly known in the sporting world as Dingko Singh — was on Friday sent to judicial custody for 15 days on charges of physically assaulting a teenaged weightlifter in Imphal.
The ace boxer, who scripted history by winning a gold medal in the 13th Asian Games in Bangkok in 1998, was arrested on Thursday for allegedly assaulting the 17-year-old girl, a Sports Authority of India (SAI) trainee.
Singh, a SAI coach, was booked on charges of physically assaulting and outraging modesty of the girl.
The 35-year-old Arjuna Awardee allegedly assaulted the girl on January 13 after she reportedly scribbled ‘I love you’ before the word ‘Oja Dingku’ (teacher Dingku) with her finger on his dust-covered car at Khuman Lampak sports complex in Imphal
The girl claimed she had written only ‘Oja Dingku’. She is undergoing treatment at a hospital in Imphal. Doctors described her condition as serious but stable.
Singh allegedly assaulted two of the weightlifter’s fellow trainees as well.
Singh, who joined SAI in his home state in December last year, was produced before chief judicial magistrate (Imphal West) RK Memi’s court around 3.30pm.
“This is not the final. The final verdict will come only after the formal trial,” his lawyer Mani Sharma said after he was remanded in judicial custody.
Olympian weightlifter Sonia Chanu said the assault on the girls was very unfortunate.
Mapi Council Manipur, a social organisation, has urged the state to change the name of Dingku Road, which was named so after Singh’s achievement in the Bangkok Asian Games.
Love story
Dingko Singh is married to Babai
The couple break out in laughter when asked how they met.
“Bahut ladkiyan peeche padi thee, bahut There were so many women who were crazy about me. But I had already decided,” Dingko says. The couple had promised to marry each other in their teens. As of 2017 they had been married for sixteen years.
2017: Dingko fights his toughest bout
Mar 08 2017 : The Times of India (Delhi)
`Need a walkover in this bout'
Siddharth Saxena
Sekta (Imphal East):
Cancer Brings Dinkgo, Arguably India's Greatest-Ever Boxer, Back Into Focus
Dingko Singh is peeling pomegranate when we arrive. Even in normal times tackling the fruit is quite a task, he's doing it with the resigned patience of someone who doesn't have choice. If he wished he were elsewhere, he is not showing it. Home does this to even the most tempestuous of characters.
Once Dingko was one. The angeras-an-awesome-weapon-wielding Asian Games boxing gold-medal winner who arrived as a whirlwind in the mid-1990s and was, just as swiftly , relegated to an afterthought.The catchy name had some recall but no one really complained once he slipped from away from our fleeting consciousness. If somebody at all missed him, it was in across the country's few SAI boxing training, where every hopeful thereafter was told to train to be like Dingko and imbibe his technique, perhaps not so much his head.
A framed citation of a Padma Shri hangs forlornly on the outside wall of his village home. Reflected on the glass is the image of a slight, bent man in the courtyard and it merges with the photograph behind it, of a handsome young man in Naval uniform receiving the award. Who is the real Dingko Singh, the then or the now? The now is an impostor, trapped in that once-awesome body , when the chest was puffed out and the nose forever high in the air, looking larger than his lithe bantamweight five-foot-something frame.
It is only later that you realise that you have seldom seen Dingko bare-handed before, not strapped in tape and bound in by gloves. These are commonplace, everyday hands today . When you are forced to panicsell your apartment in the city to meet your medical expenses, your exis tence becomes ordinary . Cancer is fast becoming so commonplace, like someone said, it's losing its gravitas.Dingko is a common person today .He's now just a shade over 60 kg, having lost 25 kg during the course of his illness. “I don't like it,“ he says to himself, shaking his head and looking away . In his prime, he was a sharp 54 kg, but that's another story .
His wife of over a decade-and-ahalf, still has a bit of a fan-girl about her. “`Don't take off your shirt before the mirror these days,' I tell him,“ Ngangom Babai half-laments, half-giggles. “It is torture to see him half his size. Even years after he had retired, he had this terrific physique,“ she says.
In a sense, his cancer -he underwent his third round of chemotherapy in Imphal last week after surgery in the Capital last January also exhumes the man and his legend and only adds to the twisted irony of the whole thing.
Back then, Dingko's immediate appeal lay in his being a hero by his own rules. Aggression was a rare virtue in Indian sport, even frowned upon and far from being immensely marketable as it is today . And here was this strange phenomenon scripting it as he felt fit. “Street fighter tha. Rare quality hota hai. Mary Kom too had that. Maybe extreme adversity makes you that,“ says Ibomcha Singh, Manipur boxing's Masters Oogway and Shifu rolled into one, who gently moulded Dingko into channelizing his inner rage.Ibomcha is alluding to the extreme poverty Dingko saw as a child, being sent to an orphanage as as adolescent because his widowed mother couldn't afford to feed eight mouths.
Much before Bhiwani became the cradle for Indian boxing, Dingko was the unsaid reference point. At the 1996 Nationals in Calcutta, they chanted the name of the little-known, lightning-fast Services boxer who had everyone floored with rarely-seen talent. A year later, he was `best boxer' at the traditional scrap that is the King's Cup in Thailand. After he beat American Gerald Tucker in the semifinal, Dingko tells us how he was asked by Tucker's coach to forgo the final with Russian Ilfar Riazapov and prepare for life as a professional because that's what he was cut out for.Dingko simply laughed it off.
The following year, a first-round exit at the Commonwealth Games seemed no more than a mere blip, but it was to have life-altering ramifications. Based on that reverse, de spite being India's best boxer, he wasn't picked for the Bangkok Asian Games. The story goes that he knocked off a bottle each night for a week in blind fury following the rejection. The Services stepped in and made the officials see sense. We all know the Bangkok story . Seven gold medals were a typically poor return, only made heartening by a famous gold won by a hockey team riven by dissent and a Jyotirmoy Sikdar double win on the athletics track. But it was that last-minute entrant's shock gold that continued to reverberate, the story gaining in mystique and legend each time it was repeated.
And just like that, Dingko fell off the map. There was a long-running wrist injury which just didn't seem to heel. “I remember only cutting the plaster in the early days of our marriage,“ remembers Ngangom, who secretly wishes daughter Arina, 12, takes up her father's sport. “Waisa hi aggression hai,“ she laughs.
“Self-promotion nahin hai hum logon mein. Shayad yeh saare Manipur ki baat hai,“ says Dingko. He doesn't tick today's pre-set boxes of what a story-selling hero should be, but is happier, perhaps, assisting Ibomcha in training youngsters who swear by Dinkgo's name. “Dingko Sir bahut strict hain, lekin training key baad poora joker,“ says Grace Chingnaihlian. Grace, 20, uses her tiny arms and oversized gloves to illustrate what her `Sir' teaches her, shoes squeaking on the wooden floor as she demonstrates the correct footwork. She is shadowboxing to the tune of Dingko `Sir,' who himself says he's fighting the toughest bout of his life.
“I never got a walkover in my career,“ he says. “I have three rounds of chemotherapy to go. Maybe, this time, in this fight, I'll finally win a walkover this time. Bahut mushkil hai, par jeetna hai...“
“After the medal, he became so popular, but he didn’t forget me. I admire him for that,” Babai says.
