The best way to begin a dispassionate assessment of free India’s sporting odyssey across 75 years is by turning our backs on today. Or at least from the July promos of the 2022 Commonwealth Games, featuring flag-waving, rapid cuts of random athletes doing sporty things, and a lingering montage of Sports Minister Anurag Thakur striding purposefully hither and thither before delivering his piece to camera. They contain many contradictory narratives – the Empire-created Commonwealth identity, the statism of our sport – and only end up blurring objectivity.
Left on the back-burner
Navigating through Indian sport across the last 75 years does not only involve invoking a cavalcade of champions. Our sport is located in our political, economic and social histories. The India sporting nation also grew alongside the slow transformation of sport from the amateurism of the post-War era into professionalism in the last two decades of the 20th century.
