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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.

Borderline Justice

Himanta Biswa Sarma’s deportation drive lays bare the moral bankruptcy of India’s secular pretenders.

Assam
Assam

Assam has long been a state drowning in decades of demographic anxiety. Recently, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s uncompromising drive to deport illegal migrants despite their inclusion in the error-ridden National Register of Citizens (NRC) has earned him both fury from the usual quarters and applause from a weary public. That his actions have rattled the complacent consensus of India’s ruling class, judiciary and professional hand-wringers is evidence not of overreach, but of long-overdue resolve.


The NRC, updated under the direct gaze of the Supreme Court and released in 2019, excluded over 19 lakh names yet was never notified, never ratified and remains legally inert. This judicial Frankenstein was supposed to be the gold standard for citizenship verification. Instead, it has proved a monument to institutional indecision. The Registrar General of India has left it in limbo. The Supreme Court, having once micromanaged the process, has now disowned the consequences. Into this vacuum has stepped Sarma.


The Assam CM’s assertion that mere inclusion in the NRC cannot be the sole determinant of citizenship is logical. He has pointed out that manipulation, fraud, and the meddling of so-called activists like Harsh Mander compromised the exercise from the outset. Mander, a darling of Delhi’s liberal elite, allegedly spent years seeding the process with sympathetic cases and encouraging backdoor entries.


Opposition parties including the Congress, the AIUDF and the Raijor Dal have raised a predictable hue and cry by turning legislative assemblies into theatre stages while ignoring their own past flirtations with identity politics. For decades, these parties paid lip service to the fear of infiltration while profiting electorally from vote banks built on precisely such ambiguity. It is not Himanta Biswa Sarma who is communal but the opposition’s selective secularism that reeks of opportunism.


Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, after having played midwife to the NRC’s birth, now shirks its responsibility to oversee the aftermath. The Court has yet to ensure the issuance of rejection slips - basic legal documents that would allow the excluded to appeal. In their absence, nearly 2 million people are trapped in a Kafkaesque purgatory, neither citizens nor aliens. And yet, it is Sarma who is accused of undermining due process.


The deportation drive, operationalized under the long-forgotten Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950, may be legally controversial but it is constitutionally backed and procedurally sound. The Act empowers district commissioners to identify and remove illegal immigrants. The Centre has done nothing to repeal or update this law.


Some pushed back to Bangladesh have returned. The latter country has long refused to acknowledge the problem, let alone cooperate. But this does not mean India must absorb undocumented migrants by default. When confronted with a neighbour’s intransigence, sovereignty demands assertiveness, not surrender.


The emotive images of women and children left in no-man’s-land make for painful viewing. But to reduce the entire policy to a handful of anecdotal injustices is wilfully dishonest. Every state has the right to defend its borders. Every government has the duty to protect the integrity of citizenship. And every democracy must distinguish between sympathy and statecraft. Human rights cannot become a smokescreen for illegal settlement.


Nor can one ignore that some of the ‘victims’ possess identity documents of dubious provenance. In Assam, voter IDs, Aadhaar cards and even land records have been forged at scale.


It is no coincidence that minority rights organisations have closed ranks in coordination. The convention held by AAMSU and 18 other groups in May was less about justice and more about narrative control. Their resolutions are loud on emotion, but silent on infiltration. They seek an Assam without borders.


For decades, Assamese politicians oscillated between denial and deferral. Himanta Biswa Sarma, for all his polarising methods, has offered something else: decision. It is imperfect, at times messy, but it is something that bureaucrats, judges and moralists have consistently lacked – courage. And that is precisely why they fear him.

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