Sports Abjection in/and India: Contestation and Critique

Abstract

The notion of abjection places athletics and itself in close proximity, creating a forging connection. To fully explore the intricate relationships between sports and abjection in India, this research examines the complex dynamics of these connections. Abjects have been utilized in the past decade to show how women and girls develop their gendered identities. This study empirically examines the mechanisms of exclusion in Indian sports by evaluating media portrayals, institutional practices, and public narratives surrounding marginalized sportsmen. To expose the traditional rules of segregation and present them as a sense of self-embeddedness, this article draws on Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection as the theoretical ground to explore the regulation and conditional legitimacy of athletic bodies. This profile aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of India's extensive sports ecosystem, which offers much and boasts a rich sporting history spanning thousands of years and uses a qualitative, interpretive approach that combines media discourse and thematic case study analysis to examine the physical aspects of sports abjection. While Indian sports have been extensively analyzed concerning nationalism and development, the emotional and symbolic mechanisms of marginalization are inadequately theorized. This article addresses that deficiency by presenting abjection as an intersectional framework that connects caste, gender, class, and institutional precarity, such as funding, institutional abjection, and bureaucratic failure, through the lens of abjection. Thereby emphasizing athlete subjectivity in discussions of recognition and social justice.