Sports to empower rural youth in India: the Sondara Gurukul school

Abstract

The Indian Government’s landmark initiative Khelo India (Play, India) seeks to infuse a sports culture in the country and promote excellence through investments in sport infrastructure and coaching.1 There is general interest in increasing mass participation in sport, including indigenous sports. Indeed, India hosted the first World Cup of the sport Kho-Kho in January 2025,2 and in March 2025, England hosted the Kabaddi World Cup, another traditional Indian sport.3 The United Nations also proclaimed 21 June as the International Day of Yoga, recognising its universal appeal to promote physical, mental and spiritual health.4 Despite these important events, little trickles down to promoting sports participation at the grassroots level. In fact, only about 50% of children and adolescents in India meet the global physical activity guidelines, and less than half of schools provide the necessary facilities and training for sports.5 The realities on the ground, particularly in remote and rural communities, present many challenges to advance youth sports. Thus, it takes vision, committed leadership and community resilience to foster physical activity and sports participation in rural India. One initiative to foster youth physical activity is brewing at Sondara Gurukul—a school for children from farming communities in one of the most deprived, drought-prone regions of central India. Sondara Gurukul is a boarding school started over 40 years ago by a dedicated teacher who believed in the traditional Gurukul philosophy, that is, learning by example. Children learn from their teachers by example of good values and actions, moment by moment. The school started with only a handful of students, but now enrols over 250 boys between 10 and 15 years, and has recently started day schooling for girls. These children are mostly first-generation learners. This region has often been in the news for high rates …