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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.

Selective Sacrilege

Kerala’s biennale outrage exposes how artistic freedom is invoked selectively and cloaked in liberal sophistry.

Kerala
Kerala

Good art provokes. Bad arguments excuse. The controversy around artist Tom Vattakuzhy’s reappearance at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale where he reworked the iconic Last Supper painting to replace Christ with a half-naked dancer flanked by nuns has produced both. The artist and the defenders of his painting have reached reflexively for the vocabulary of modern piety – namely that interpretation is ‘subjective’ and that his intent was benign and that art must be free. The objectors, notably the Syro-Malabar Church and Catholic associations, are speaking the older language of reverence and hurt. Between them stands Kerala’s self-image as India’s most literate, most liberal state, which is now revealed as a place where freedom is proclaimed loudly and applied unevenly.


The painting had sparked outrage in 2016 when a leading Malayalam literary magazine withdrew it after protests. The Biennale’s organisers insist the venue was closed temporarily only for crowd control. The artist says he intended no offence and sees Christ in suffering humanity. But art does not float free of context. A motif that believers hold sacred, when reassembled to shock, cannot plead innocence simply because the shock was anticipated and rehearsed.


Nor is this merely a Christian quarrel. Kerala’s cultural politics have long treated Hindu iconography as fair game to be parodied in theatre, caricatured in cartoons and inverted in gallery pieces often to applause as the ruling Communists and the Congress party bosses turned a blind eye to such antics. And yet, when a Christian symbol is reimagined with erotic charge, the tone noticeably shifts. Vattakuzhy’s painting has triggered a temporary police closure of the festival.


The larger point here is that liberals respond with their favourite manoeuvre of ‘moral equivalence.’ All religions, they argue, have been mocked; therefore no religion may complain. This syllogism collapses under scrutiny. In practice, not all faiths are treated alike by cultural gatekeepers. Hinduism, which is diffuse and lacking a single clerical veto, has become the default canvas for transgression. Christianity, with institutions capable of sustained protest, is tested more cautiously; Islam, hedged by fear and law, is often avoided altogether. To insist these asymmetries do not exist is to confuse theory with practice. Freedom that operates by calculating who will object least is not freedom; it is opportunism.


There is a second equivalence at work: between criticism and ridicule. Art that interrogates power, exposes hypocrisy or reconsiders myth can be bracing. Art that swaps sacred figures for sexualised bodies to signal daring is a thinner achievement. The Biennale’s defenders say interpretation lies with the viewer. True enough. But artists, curators and institutions choose which interpretations they invite and which communities they repeatedly dare to absorb the blow in the name of progress.


Kerala’s liberals like to imagine themselves besieged by prudery. In fact, they enjoy a long indulgence. They speak for pluralism while narrowing its terms; they preach tolerance while demanding that some believers practise it more than others. When Hindus protest, they are scolded for majoritarian fragility. When Christians protest, the system pauses and reassures. When Muslims are involved, silence often prevails. This is not secularism. It is a hierarchy of sensitivity.


None of this requires censorship. The case for artistic freedom remains strong precisely because faiths are not museums. Symbols live, meanings shift. But freedom earns its legitimacy by consistency. If ridicule is allowed, allow it without favour. If hurt matters, let it matter across the board. And if institutions insist on provocation, they should at least drop the pretence that they are innocent bystanders to its consequences.


Kerala’s Biennale aspires to be global. Global standards cut both ways. In mature cultural spaces, artists defend their work on its merits, not by outsourcing accountability to abstraction. Curators accept that daring choices bring real disagreement. And liberals resist the lazy comfort of false equivalence. Until then, the state’s art wars will keep rehearsing the same drama of selective sacrilege dressed up as courage. 


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