Kolkata (PTI): Having lived in a world of obscurity, devoid of any recognition from the government, India's first individual Olympic medal winner post-independence, Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav, in fact did not want his son, Ranjit, to take up wrestling.

But with Sushil Kumar on Wednesday earning India the second wrestling bronze medal after Jadhav bagged in 1952 Helsinki Olympics, things will hopefully change after 56 years, feels his son Ranjit.

Remembering his father's plight, Ranjit said, "People would not know my father till 1996. When Leander Paes bagged the individual bronze medal in Athens, press wrote about my father and people came to know that it was Khashaba Jadhav who had bagged India the first individual medal. He lived in a world of obscurity and penury."

"His feat is unparallaled... just for the fact that he had to face so many hurdles. The environment that time was very different. India was trying to stand in its feet, having just gained independence five years back... there was no encouragement for a sportsperson," Ranjit told PTI from Goleswar, hometown of Khashaba, in Karad district of Maharashtra.

Denied any financial help from the erstwhile chief minister of the then Bombay, Moraji Desai, who told Khashaba, "We don't have money to go to Olympics", the wrestler ran from pillar to post to arrange Rs 4,000, says Ranjit.