Bhartiya Sports initiative: 'Gilli danda', 'langdi', other indigenous games to be pushed in schools

New Delhi: This Friday (July 29) marked the second anniversary of the implementation of the National Education Policy launched by Union Home Minister Amit Shah. During an event to mark the anniversary of the 2020 policy, Shah launched a series of initiatives in the education and skills development sector to mark the occasion. 

One of them was the introduction of 75 Bharatiya Games in schools including 'gilli danda', 'kabbadi', 'posham pa', and 'kanche' under the Education Ministry's initiative titled Indian Knowledge Systems.

According to reports, several games from different states have been listed to be incorporated in schools. In fact, a version of 'gilli danda' is included which is exclusively played by Odisha's Santhal tribe to which India's President Droupadi Murmu belongs.

Talking about the initiative, Ganti S Murthy, national coordinator for IKS told Hindustan Times, "The idea is not just to simply promote Indian games in schools. The actual idea is to make sports more inclusive at the school level. For instance, the schools in rural areas don’t have infrastructure for popular school games like basketball or badminton. Why should we restrict their participation?"

He further explained that the purpose is to introduce local games which are less resource intensive and encourage creativity.

Elaborating further, Sangeeta Goswami told HT that many of these games are historical and have roots in ancient scriptures. 

"For instance, ‘gilli danda’ is more than 5,000 years old. It was also mentioned in a verse in Mahabharata which says that Krishna, Arjun and Bhima are playing ‘gilli danda’. Many regional games have almost similar rules but have different names," she said.

Apart of this, Amit Shah also launched initiatives such as the establishment of Indian Knowledge Systems-MIC programme for technology demonstration, launch of Kalashala initiative in 750 schools to promote and support local arts, partnership with Indira Gandhi Open University (IGNOU) to provide upward mobility to students and help them attain higher education and more livelihood opportunities- opportunity to join the three-year degree programme are among these initiatives.