When India lifted its first Women’s Cricket World Cup this month, there was a moment that went beyond the scorecard. As Jemimah Rodrigues stood unbeaten after a magnificent, record-breaking run chase in the semi-final against Australia, she said, “Today, I was not playing for a 50 or a 100. I was playing for India.” It was the kind of statement that makes you pause — the kind that reminds you what collective belonging feels like.
Moments like these reveal something deeper — the way an individual’s grace can echo a nation’s promise, reminding us that the spirit we cheer for on the field is not so different from the one imagined in our founding document.
When I first read the Constitution of India years ago, I felt something similar — a quiet thrill at its assurance of fairness, equality, and dignity. Article 14, for example, promised that every citizen, regardless of faith, gender, or background, would be treated equally. It was my fangirl moment with the Constitution. But much like cricket, reality often turns out to be more complex than the rulebook. And when rules lose their moral resonance, stories take their place.
In today’s public life, narratives have become powerful instruments. From election rallies to television studios, most speeches these days revolve less around ideas and more around identities — who belongs, who doesn’t, who threatens, who protects. The language may differ across states and seasons, but the subtext remains the same: To divide before persuading, to simplify before solving.
Sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann once wrote that reality itself is socially constructed — that facts become meaningful only through the interpretations we collectively attach to them. When numbers about demography, economy, or religion are used to evoke anxiety rather than understanding, they cease to be data and become symbols of division. Through repetition — in speeches, headlines, and hashtags — they take root in public consciousness and reshape how we see one another.
That is where the media, often called the fourth pillar of democracy, becomes more than a storyteller; it becomes a constructor of social truth. Alongside the executive and legislature, it influences what a society believes to be real, moral, or patriotic. But if the narratives it amplifies fuel suspicion instead of solidarity, then even the most robust constitutional ideals risk being hollowed out.
The Constitution gave political leaders and citizens alike the freedom to speak — but not the license to fracture. Freedom of speech is meant to sustain deliberation, not domination. When dissenting students, journalists, or activists face censorship or intimidation while public figures use the same freedom to polarise, we encounter a troubling dissonance between law and life.
That dissonance is why stories like Jemimah’s matter. Here was a young woman who, only months ago, was trolled and sidelined — for her faith, for her smile, for not fitting into the stereotype of “seriousness” in sport. Yet when it mattered most, she played not for applause but for belonging. And before walking onto the field for the final against South Africa, she said in an interview, “We told ourselves, this is our home ground, and we are not letting anyone take it away.” She voiced something larger than cricket — a vision of India that includes, not excludes.
In her victory, we glimpse what a living Constitution looks like: discipline without division, pride without prejudice, diversity without fear — and above all, a celebration that leaves no one behind. That is the sportsperson’s spirit our political and media leadership could learn from — the recognition that you win only when everyone plays together.
As the country moves deeper into another electoral season, perhaps we need to ask what kind of culture our narratives are building. Do we want to raise a generation of girls who can take to the streets with bats and dreams, or one where citizens are too busy resenting each other to look up? Do we want to speak the language of exclusion, or rediscover the grammar of equality that the framers of our Constitution imagined?
Because in the end, just like in sport, democracy is a team effort. The rules are only as good as the players who uphold them — and the spirit, as Jemimah reminded us, is everything. Maybe it is time our politics took a cue from our players: To play for India, not merely for the scoreboard.
Olly Mohanta is a Delhi-based writer and researcher
