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By:

Bhalchandra Chorghade

11 August 2025 at 1:54:18 pm

Applause for Cricket, Silence for Badminton

Mumbai: When Lakshya Sen walked off the court after the final of the All England Badminton Championships, he carried with him the disappointment of another near miss. The Indian shuttler went down in straight games to Lin Chun-Yi, who created history by becoming the first player from Chinese Taipei to lift the prestigious title. But the story of Lakshya Sen’s defeat is not merely about badminton final. It is also about the contrasting way India celebrates its sporting heroes. Had the same...

Applause for Cricket, Silence for Badminton

Mumbai: When Lakshya Sen walked off the court after the final of the All England Badminton Championships, he carried with him the disappointment of another near miss. The Indian shuttler went down in straight games to Lin Chun-Yi, who created history by becoming the first player from Chinese Taipei to lift the prestigious title. But the story of Lakshya Sen’s defeat is not merely about badminton final. It is also about the contrasting way India celebrates its sporting heroes. Had the same narrative unfolded on a cricket field, the reaction would have been dramatically different. In cricket, even defeat often becomes a story of heroism. A hard-fought loss by the Indian team can dominate television debates, fill newspaper columns and trend across social media for days. A player who narrowly misses a milestone is still hailed for his fighting spirit. The nation rallies around its cricketers not only in victory but also in defeat. The narrative quickly shifts from the result to the effort -- the resilience shown, the fight put up, the promise of future triumph. This emotional investment is one of the reasons cricket enjoys unparalleled popularity in India. It has built a culture where players become household names and their performances, good or bad, become part of the national conversation. Badminton Fights Contrast that with what happens in sports like badminton. Reaching the final of the All England Championships is a monumental achievement. The tournament is widely considered badminton’s equivalent of Wimbledon in prestige and tradition. Only the very best players manage to reach its final stages, and doing it twice speaks volumes about Lakshya Sen’s ability and consistency. Yet the reaction in India remained largely subdued. There were congratulatory posts, some headlines acknowledging the effort and brief discussions among badminton enthusiasts. But the level of national engagement never quite matched the magnitude of the achievement. In a cricketing context, reaching such a stage would have triggered days of celebration and analysis. In badminton, it often becomes just another sports update. Long Wait India’s wait for an All England champion continues. The last Indian to win the title was Pullela Gopichand in 2001. Before him, Prakash Padukone had scripted history in 1980. These victories remain among the most significant milestones in Indian badminton. And yet, unlike cricketing triumphs that are frequently revisited and celebrated, such achievements rarely stay in the mainstream sporting conversation for long. Lakshya Sen’s journey to the final should ideally have been viewed as a continuation of that legacy, a reminder that India still possesses the talent to challenge the world’s best in badminton. Instead, it risks fading quickly from public memory. Visibility Gap The difference ultimately comes down to visibility and cultural investment. Cricket in India is not merely a sport; it is an ecosystem built over decades through media attention, sponsorship, and mass emotional attachment. Individual sports, on the other hand, often rely on momentary bursts of recognition, usually during Olympic years or when a medal is won. But consistent performers like Lakshya Sen rarely receive the sustained spotlight that their achievements deserve. This disparity can also influence the next generation. Young athletes are naturally drawn to sports where success brings recognition, financial stability and national fame. When one sport monopolises the spotlight, others struggle to build similar appeal. Beyond Result Lakshya Sen may have finished runner-up again, but his performance at the All England Championship is a reminder that India continues to produce world-class athletes in disciplines beyond cricket. The real issue is not that cricket receives immense attention -- it deserves the admiration it gets. The concern is that athletes from other sports often do not receive comparable appreciation for achievements that are equally significant in their own arenas. If India aspires to become a truly global sporting nation, its applause must grow broader. Sporting pride cannot remain confined to one field. Because somewhere on a badminton court, an athlete like Lakshya Sen is fighting just as hard for the country’s colours as any cricketer on a packed stadium pitch. The only difference is how loudly the nation chooses to cheer.

Backward March

Kerala’s Marxist mandarins mock a sacred Hindu tradition yet again in the name of progress.

Kerala
Kerala

The Marxists of Kerala are at it again, peering through their fogged ideological spectacles and seeing menace in the most benign of Indian traditions. This time, the ritual in their crosshairs is guru puja, the age-old custom of offering flowers or washing the feet of teachers to mark Guru Purnima, a day revered across Hindu and Buddhist communities for honouring those who impart knowledge.

 

In a normal society, this would pass as a graceful act of gratitude. But in Kerala, where Marxist dogma masquerades as progressivism, it is deemed a “feudal relic” and an affront to democracy.

 

The trigger for this controversy was when Governor Rajendra Arlekar, addressing a gathering organised by Balagokulam (a cultural outfit with links to the RSS) mounted a calm but firm defence of guru puja. Arlekar delivered a stinging rebuke to V. Sivankutty, Kerala’s combative general education minister after the latter condemned the symbolic washing of feet at two CBSE-affiliated schools as “undemocratic” and “violative of progressive thinking.”

 

“I don’t understand from which culture these people are coming,” Arlekar had remarked, referring to the naysayers.

 

In the name of ‘reason,’ Kerala’s ruling party seeks to delegitimise one of India’s most ennobling cultural practices. Marxism, which has long treated religion and tradition as bourgeois constructs to be dismantled, finds itself instinctively recoiling at anything vaguely spiritual or reverent while conveniently forgetting that its acolytes themselves have elevated Marxism to a religion and Marx and Engels as their gods.

 

That the ritual took place in schools affiliated with the Bharatiya Vidya Niketan, an organisation inspired by Hindu ideals, was enough to invite the wrath of both the CPI(M) and the Congress.

 

The act of devotion, naturally, became yet another opportunity to accuse the BJP of saffronising the classroom. That the governor’s critics also dragged in caste and feudalism is telling. To the Marxist mind, every cultural gesture must be interrogated for class oppression. Thus, a student offering a teacher flowers becomes symbolic of ‘slave mentality’ as CPI(M) state secretary M.V. Govindan indignantly put it. It is an argument both threadbare and deceitful. The ritual in question is voluntary, spiritual and performed by children across castes. That Marxists see domination in every bow or folded hand says more about their historical insecurities than it does about Indian culture.

 

Kerala’s self-proclaimed reformers are fond of invoking the ‘renaissance’ that the state underwent in the 20th century, as if it absolves them of understanding or respecting what preceded it. But cultural renaissance does not imply civilisational amnesia. Nor does the expansion of literacy require the eradication of reverence. Education in India has never been a purely instrumental affair. It was, and still ought to be, a sacred enterprise with its purpose not just to inform but to transform. In many Indic traditions, the guru is not merely a conduit of curriculum but a remover of darkness, a guide through moral and intellectual uncertainty.

The modernist impulse to level all hierarchies has confused humility with servitude. In flattening every institution to fit the template of Western-style secular rationalism, the Left has stripped Indian education of its soul. What remains is a mechanised pedagogy - utilitarian, joyless, and allergic to meaning. That is the truly backward path.

 

Governor Arlekar deserves credit for defending what few in Kerala’s public life dare to: the cultural integrity of India’s traditions. Ironically, it is the Marxists who are most disconnected from the material history of the land they govern.

 

One would think that a government genuinely invested in ‘scientific temper’ and critical thought might spend more energy improving Kerala’s learning outcomes or investigating the appalling politicisation of its college campuses. But ideology, not education, is the CPI(M)’s first love. And so, in the name of democratic values, they attack guru puja. In the name of liberty, they deride voluntary expressions of gratitude.

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