Friday was a very memorable day in Indian badminton history as PV Sindhu became the first Indian shuttler to win a silver medal at an Olympics. While her achievement was a matter of great pride for all Indians, what wasn’t were some of the searches made concerning her and in particular, the curiosity regarding her caste.
Yes. As you type the words, “pv sindhu’, on the search engine Google, one of the top topics that emerges is “pv sindhu caste’. If one goes even deep into the analytical aspect of the whole issue, then it gives an even more disturbing picture.
It is seen that just after Sindhu won the silver medal, the search spiked from 2 to 100 between 6:30 P.M. in the evening – when the match hadn’t begun yet – to 100, when it had been close to an hour since the game had concluded.
It was also observed that Andhra Pradesh topped the charts for the state with the most number of searches, followed by Telangana.
It is quite disheartening to see that at a time when an Indian had made the country proud by succeeding at the Olympics, the focus wasn’t on her achievements but on her heritage. Casteism continues to remain a big problem in India, and it seems no amount of successes by the country’s citizens can take away that aspect of some people’s mindset.
Does it matter in any way whatsoever to which caste Sindhu belongs? Her individuality lies in her badminton, not in her ancestral line. One of the things holding modern India back from progress is the unquenchable thirst among many of its citizens to categorize people and their abilities based on what they were born as.
But here’s news for all those people who contributed to the Google search trend: PV Sindhu was born an Indian, and not as a member of any caste. She is now making the country proud with her performances, and we should be more interested in that than her roots.
It’s time to shed our tendency to indulge in caste-based discrimination, particularly when it comes to our sports idols. The sooner we do that, the better it would be for the country’s progress as a whole.
