A new weekly series celebrating Paralympic Champions on Revsportz, presented by Tata Steel.
It was in 2004 that Devendra Jhajharia travelled to his first Paralympic Games. Unlike in 2021 when the Prime Minister, Sports Minister, a member of the Sports Authority of India and many others wished Jhajharia and gave him a send-off, in 2004 there was one person who had accompanied him to the airport. It was his father. And as Devendra very pertinently recounted, “My father said to me that if you win a medal, toh badlao aayega. Agar haar jate ho toh kuch nahi badlaega [if you win a medal, there will be change. If you lose, nothing will change].” Devendra went on to win gold in Athens, and the very next year, the Government of India accorded recognition to the Paralympic Committee of India. Since then, it has been a long and difficult journey. Lack of support and facilities meant athletes would have to run from pillar to post to play sport. It meant they would have to struggle that much more than any able-bodied athletes could even imagine. And with Rio 2016, the struggle started to pay off when India won four medals, having sent a contingent of 19 athletes.
Never before had two Indians draped in the tricolour celebrated winning medals at an Olympic stadium in front of a near-capacity crowd. It was to this rarity that the country woke up on Saturday, September 10, 2016, when Mariappan Thangavelu and Varun Bhati won the gold and bronze in the high jump at the Paralympics in Rio. And in what was yet another huge moment for India, Deepa Malik followed up with a silver in the shot put on September 13, throwing 4.61 metres, a personal best.
Deepa’s is an incredible story. In 1999, she was given seven days to walk. Seven days. When she visited the Indian Army’s Research and Referral Hospital in Delhi on May 25, 1999, as a 29-year-old mother of two girls, that’s what the doctors said to the future Khel Ratna winner.
She was informed that her spinal tumour was at a critical stage, and the doctors were not confident enough to give her more than seven days. Her soldier husband was serving in Kargil at the time, and her in-laws weren’t keen on medical treatment. They preferred, in her words, “babaji’s botis or doodh-haldi [a Baba’s herbs or milk and turmeric]” to combat the growing pain. Her father was in South Africa, and Deepa had no option but to go to the hospital alone to get herself diagnosed.
“The pain was becoming unbearable and I was forced to go to the hospital,” she said. “They said I could walk for the next seven days and that’s all. I actually prepared myself to get paralysed, and never get up and walk again.” She had two options in front of her. The first was to give up on life and wallow in self-pity. Asking the why-me question wasn’t going to help, nor would it serve any purpose to blame fate. The second option was to go home and use the remaining seven days to get her house ready to deal with what was coming. “I got a customised bed made, had a ramp installed, bought a microwave so that my young daughters, 9 and 4, could heat their own food and have it, bought Tupperware, which were all microwave safe, and got ready for life on the wheel chair if I survived,” recalled Deepa. And from there, she went on to become the first woman to win a Paralympics medal for India.
Finally, it was Devendra, with his second Paralympic gold, who ensured India rounded it off superbly in Brazil.
However, compared to the national outpouring of emotion in the aftermath of the bronze won by Sakshi Malik and the silver won by PV Sindhu, the reaction to the gold, silver and bronze in the Para Games was muted at best. While the athletes were celebrated on social media by the ordinary Indian sports fan, politicians who joined the bandwagon in the Sakshi-Sindhu aftermath mostly kept away. State governments too, and in this case, many who had declared rewards for the two girls – justly so – were also silent.
This is what has finally changed, and it can only get better from here on. From the way para athletes have been given a send-off and then received when they returned to India, to the number of sponsors who come forward, Paralympic sport in India is finally getting its due. The 19 medals in Tokyo were a game-changer. The Prime Minister was personally involved and inspired the athletes, a sure indication of change.
It is essential to state in this context that our treatment of Devendra, Pramod Bhagat, Deepa and others, and our sensitivity and the affection showered on these super-achievers will go a long away to defining us as a ‘people’, and tell the world what kind of society we are. Are we celebrating our para athletes enough, or are we still going to discriminate between Olympians and Paralympians? Will Devendra be considered as much a national treasure as Neeraj Chopra or Abhinav Bindra? Will the awards and monetary rewards be the same for able-bodied and para athletes?
In the West, para athletes have for long been accorded the same respect as the Olympians. Medal winners have been feted in the same manner, and the para games receives similar prominence in the media. In India, however, this has never been the case. We have as a society tended to look down upon our para athletes, have invested little in facilities that would encourage them to take up sport, and done very little to decorate them and turn them into national icons. Such a mindset, appalling to say the least, betrays the very ideals of equality and civil liberty that the country stands for, and the Tokyo Paralympics served as a major platform to transform this trend.
Tokyo has given us the opportunity. To redeem ourselves and stand up to the test of our own conscience. Each of the 54 athletes in Tokyo demonstrated that it was never just about facilities and infrastructure, as it is often made out to be. It was always about the will and determination to succeed. It was about the fire in the belly and the conviction to make a mark on the biggest stage of all. Finally, it was about the burning desire to make the country proud.
Taking a cue from Neeraj, Devendra, Pramod, Sumit and a number of others led the charge. And in doing so, they enabled Indian sports to take a giant leap. We now know that it is possible. Eminently possible. It is time to become a sensitive, multi-sport nation.
Paris can only advance this trend. Help the process. And that’s why RevSportz, with support from Tata Steel, is launching the Trailblazers series. It will celebrate paralympic legends, and build up the champions of tomorrow. For the next few months, we will take a deep dive every Saturday. And we hope our viewers and readers will join us on the journey. It is time to support paralympic sport and, in doing so, enrich both the Indian sports narrative and the movement towards equality.
My sincere thanks to Tata Steel and, in particular, Shri TV Narendran, Shri Chanakya Chaudhuri and Shri Sarvesh Kumar for their support in launching this series on RevSportz.
It is fitting that we are doing this series in collaboration with Tata Steel, whose contribution to the growth and promotion of Olympic sport in India is immense.
More than a century earlier Jamsetji Tata advised his son, Sir Dorabji Tata, in his letters to “earmark areas for football, hockey, and parks.” The Tatas have continued to encourage sports ever since, and this is a part of Tata Steel’s culture. The support for sport is reflected in its ethos – ‘Sports is a way of Life’. Tata Steel has been one of the foremost corporate promoters of Indian sports – having built academies for football, archery, athletics, hockey and sport climbing. It was a tradition started by the company’s first chairman Sir Dorabji Tata, who financed India’s first Olympic team to Antwerp, Belgium in 1920. The testimony to Tata Steel’s efforts in adding value to the overall sports eco system of the country is that Tata Steel has produced several national level award winners and maybe that’s why a series on Paralympic Sports is a very natural fit with the Tata Steel brand.