There were no big crowds and no television cameras, but something quietly historic happened in Samba on 25 and 26 July. The town hosted the first-ever Deaf Games in Jammu and Kashmir — a small, four-sport meet that put deaf athletes from across the UT at the centre of the arena for a change, rather than the margins.
Twenty athletes, spanning sub-junior, junior and senior categories, competed across badminton, 200m athletics, volleyball and judo. The games were organised by the All J&K Sports Association of the Deaf together with the J&K Sports Council, and — in a nice touch for the youngsters taking part — two international-level judo players, Vishal Khajuria and Rakesh Singh, turned up to mentor participants on the mat.
How it played out
The results read like any grassroots meet, which is exactly the point. In badminton, Arshit Chauhan took gold, Zeshan Ali silver and Rajinder Singh bronze. The 200m sprint went to Paramjit Singh, with Karanjit Singh second and Devkar Singh third. On the volleyball court, Samba beat Jammu 3-1 in a keenly-fought tie. Names, medals, a final score — the ordinary furniture of competitive sport, extended for the first time to a group of J&K athletes who rarely get it.
Why it matters
For a young deaf athlete in the Jammu region, the barrier has rarely been ability — it has been the absence of a stage built for them, with officials and organisers who understand how to run it. Communication, classification, and simply knowing where and when to show up are hurdles that able-hearing athletes never think about. A UT-level Deaf Games, however modest its first edition, clears several of them at once: it creates a named event, a set of results, a network of the people who make it happen, and a reason for the next cohort of deaf students to train towards something concrete.
It also fits a wider pattern of J&K's sports bodies slowly widening the door — from free academies to national-selection trials — so that the pathway into competitive sport is not reserved for the already-visible few. The mentors on the mat matter here too: a teenager competing in judo for the first time, coached for an afternoon by an international-level player, is exactly the kind of moment that turns a one-off into an ambition. A first edition is the hard one to pull off. Now there is something to build on — and 20 athletes who can say they were there when it started.
Sources: Daily Excelsior; Greater Kashmir (Sports).
