Asian Para Games: With 111 medals, India has recorded best-ever performance

However, compared to the outpouring of emotions in the aftermath of the Asian Games medal haul — a record 107 medals for the first ever time in Indian history — the celebrations over the Asian Para Games success have been muted all across India.

The ongoing cricket World Cup could be a cause, but the truth is para-sports is still not celebrated enough in India. While some athletes, like Sumit Antil who has yet again shattered his own world record with a gigantic 73m throw, have been celebrated by the fans, coverage in mainstream media has been poor. The Prime Minister has been a standout supporter and thanks to his tweets, the athletes have received significant traction in social media.

This is important. These athletes should be celebrated and feted in the same manner as we do for their ablebodied counterparts. It is necessary to go beyond sympathy and convert it into empathy. It is essential that they are treated as sportspeople rather than objects of sympathy.

All these things are necessary for us to become a better, inclusive and sensitive society. Sometimes when I ask people about Murlikant Petkar, I am confronted with blank stares. But when I ask if they know Karthik Aryan, many hands go up. When I tell them that Aryan is playing Petkar in his biopic, there is a sense of awe. And then when I explain that Petkar is a war hero who had sustained multiple bullet wounds and thereafter went on to win India’s first Paralympic Gold medal in 1972, there is hushed silence in the room.

As a country which is now taking big strides towards becoming a multisport nation, why are para-athletes not celebrated? Why is the media coverage lukewarm?

In the western countries, para athletes have for long been accorded the same respect as the Olympians. In Paris, for example, the stadium was nearly full during the world para-athletics championships in August. This is because people and fans treat them as sportspeople and go to stadiums to watch them perform and not just celebrate them as men and women of disability. Disability is not a calling card. Can never be.

Poverty is nothing to be celebrated. Being born into privilege, for example, doesn’t make anyone’s achievement any less. Just because Abhinav Bindra had a shooting range in his house doesn’t make his Olympic gold medal any less. To celebrate poverty and treat athletes as subjects of sympathy is something we can do without.

Antil, Yogesh Kathuniya (discus throw) and Nishad Kumar (high jump), to name a few, have given us the opportunity. To stand up to the test of our own conscience. Antil, who aspires to breach the 80m mark in javelin, is determined to compete with able bodied athletes in the months to come. He isn’t satisfied with a Paralympic gold. And that needs to be celebrated. The medal haul in China is proof that it was never about facilities and infrastructure as it is often made out to be. Rather it is about the passion and commitment shown by the athlete. It was about the burning desire to make the country proud.

111 medals in Hangzhou have the potential to be a watershed in the history of Indian para sports. If Antil and Ravi Rongali (shot put) are treated as heroes on their return to India, it will be indicative of a major societal transformation. It will stand as proof that India respects diversity and is now ready to embrace sport in all its myriad richness. This is imperative for a country aspiring to be a global player in every respect.