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The generic popularity of Hindi sports films has been overwhelming in recent years. The article examines this genre of Hindi films through the thematic construction of the sports‘man’ and its evolutionary manifestation from a masculine figure symbolising India’s national unitarian ethos to a megalithic, tradition-backed, orthodox patriarchy post-2010s. It elaborates this seemingly linear transformation through decade based phases, starting from the social-emancipatory athletic phenomenon of the pre-globalisation era to the neoliberal Hindi sports films of the early millennial phase. The study then explores the slow dissolution of the ‘composite masculinity’ that considered the ethnic variegation of Indian nationalism, and the emergence of sporting cinema on patriarchal and athletic superheroes. The article further discusses how it was nurtured within deeply insular, and ethno-religious gaming traditions of antiquity like the  akhara  wrestling, in fictional/biographical sports films like  Sultan  (Zafar 2016) and  Dangal  (Tiwari 2016). While commenting on this transformation of the ‘national athlete’ into the ‘heritage’s surrogate’, the article attempts to provide a detailed methodology of understanding the expanding canon of Hindi sports films so far and how it aligns itself with the re-ethnicisation of India’s polity in the last two decades.

Playing it the nation’s way: tradition, cosmopolitanism, and the native-masculine of Hindi sports films