The National Sports Day of India (Rashtriya Khel Divas) marks the birthday of one of the greatest sports legends ever to have taken birth in the country -- hockey king Dhyan Chand. While the occasion marks a major significance already in the history of Indian sports, August 29, 2016, also has turned out to be a great moment for everyone to celebrate the rich heritage of sports in the nation.
The major reason being the just-concluded Rio 2016 Olympics, where India sent her largest ever contingent of sports athletes for the games this time around. It was not a very-impressive Olympic campaign for the sportspersons, but to see it from a positive perspective, many barriers were broken in Rio de Janeiro.
The first being a major notion that women can't perform like men when it comes to sports. Ground report from Olympics 2016: A complete hoax.
The second major barrier broken was that India can only prosper in the game of cricket and hockey, though in recent times, the latter has not really helped in bringing glory for the nation like it did in the past. Nevertheless, ground report from Olympics 2016: India can bring glory in other sports as well.
This was also the first time in history that only women sportspersons bagged Olympic medals for India and this isn't just for the sake of stating a fact. Rio 2016 can indeed turn out as the first step for many more future glory to come from the daughters of the country. It also gives out a very strong message to parents, both in urban and rural areas -- having a daughter is invaluable and worth one's weight in gold.
Earlier on Monday, the golden girls of India from Rio 2016 -- Sakshi Malik (wrestling), Dipa Karmakar (artistic gymnastics) and PV Sindhu (badminton) -- were bestowed with the highest sporting award of the country, the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, by President Pranab Mukherjee, at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Shooter Jitu Rai was also felicitated with the award while a host of other athletes and coaches were given the Arjuna Award and the Dronacharya Award.
On this special occasion, sports bodies across India, the government, various sportspersons and general sports aficionados took to popular social media platform Twitter to make it one of the top trends throughout the day. Let's take a look at the plethora of Tweets:
