India had a stellar performance at the Paralympics – now it needs to take the larger message aboard
Indian Paralympians have shown they are forces to be reckoned with in the sporting world, despite disability still being met with stigma in the country.
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This article originally appeared in The Field’s newsletter, Game Points, on September 11, 2024. Sign up here to get the newsletter directly delivered to your inbox every week.
In the banquet hall of a Mumbai hotel, Suyash Jadhav found a vacant chair. Before anybody could offer assistance, Jadhav used his elbow to scoop up the seat and carried it to where he had to sit.
A week later, Jadhav travelled to Brazil to compete at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympic Games. A professional swimmer, he had lost both his arms just under the elbow as a child after being electrocuted by a stray wire.
Jadhav was also a part of the 84-member Indian contingent that competed in the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games, from which the country returned with a record haul of 29 medals – seven gold, nine silver and 13 bronze. The tally included 17 medals from athletics alone, along with India’s first gold medal in archery and a first medal in judo.
This was a rather successful campaign. And for India, this was an important campaign.
In most parts of India, social stigma is still attached to disability.
According to a 2019 report by the National Statistics Office, about 2.2% of India’s population has some form of physical or mental disability. That number is...
