Watching Australian sport embrace Modi broke my heart – and showed inclusion is still just a strategy | Rana Hussain

For most of my life, being Indian, Muslim, Australian and devoted to sport has never felt like a contradiction. Until now.

When I saw AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon and Australian cricket legend Steve Waugh smiling alongside Indian prime minister Narendra Modi last week, I wasn’t simply watching a diplomatic engagement. I was watching two institutions I love celebrate a leader whose name carries deep pain for many people like me.

It broke my heart. It made me wonder whether these organisations wanted my identity on paper – but not what came with it. Some of my family hoped I wouldn’t write this. They fear the backlash that comes with publicly criticising the Modi government. That isn’t hypothetical. It’s our reality.

Cricket Australia used Modi’s visit to announce the Big Bash League’s first match in India as part of a broader Australia-India trade and cultural delegation, while the AFL showcased its own ambitions to grow the game across India. Both organisations see India – and the Indian diaspora – as central to their future.

Modi is the democratically elected leader of the world’s largest democracy and one of Australia’s most important strategic partners. That is true.

But for many Indian Sikhs, Muslims and Christians, Modi’s name represents a decade of growing fear. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have repeatedly criticised his Hindu nationalist government over discrimination against religious minorities, crackdowns on dissent, pressure on journalists and civil society, and the erosion of democratic freedoms. Australia has also publicly dealt with allegations of Indian government interference on its own soil.

Both realities exist. That is exactly why this moment in sport mattered. Not because sport should refuse to engage with governments. International relationships are complex, and sport has always intersected with politics. Cricket Australia’s (CA) relationship with India is significant. What troubled me was whether anyone had considered what that relationship would communicate to the Indian Muslims, Christians and Sikhs who also call Australia home.

Sport understands symbolism. It knows that who stands beside whom sends a message. Both CA and the AFL have active multicultural strategies targeting India and Indian Australians. Yet this embrace of the Modi government risks sending a message that the Indian voices worth engaging are only those that reflect the majority. For minority communities, that isn’t an abstract political point. It’s what it feels like to be overlooked twice – first as a minority in India, then again in Australia.

When organisations celebrate diversity but don’t listen to the people most affected by their decisions, people notice. Trust begins to erode. You start to wonder whether you truly belong – or only when your perspective is convenient. It’s a painful place to live.

And yet these organisations are often left asking why diverse talent is hard to attract and retain, why our national teams don’t reflect modern Australia, and why diaspora communities don’t feel the connection to Australian sport they are working so hard to build. The answer is partly in moments like this: you cannot build belonging through strategy while eroding it through your decisions.

I still believe Australian sport can be one of this country’s greatest forces for belonging. I formerly led diversity, equity and inclusion at CA, and remain part of its Indian ambassador group and a matchday host. I also sit on the AFL’s equity, inclusion and safety committee after more than 15 years working across Australian football as an employee and one of the AFL’s original multicultural ambassadors.

I’ve stayed because I know what Australian sport is capable of. At its best, it is one of the few institutions that can create genuine belonging – and perhaps the closest thing we have to a shared national identity. But as photos from “Modi Mania” filled our CA Indian ambassador group chat and my social media feeds, I was struck by whose voices were missing: anyone who carried a different experience of Modi’s India.

This isn’t about believing I should have had a veto, or that one conversation would have changed the outcome. But if these organisations wanted another perspective, they could have just picked up the phone. Consultation communicates something. It says: “We know this affects you differently and we care.” That is what belonging feels like. When institutions tell us we belong, do they mean all of us? Or only the parts of us that are uncomplicated?

I’ve spent years helping organisations understand that belonging is not a slogan. It is a practice. It is tested when values collide with commercial interests, political realities or institutional convenience – when you choose to hear the perspectives that are hardest to hear.

The contradiction I keep returning to is this: these organisations have celebrated my identity for years. They have asked me to shape their thinking, stand on their stages and publicly represent their values. But identity isn’t something you can selectively engage with. You don’t get my expertise without my experience. You don’t get my credibility without my complexity. Don’t ask me to be the face of your values if you don’t want all of me.

The Modi visit brought this into sharp focus. But the bigger question is whether the sporting institutions we love truly practise the inclusion they ask the rest of us to believe in. Belonging isn’t something you parade. It’s something people feel. Last week, many of us didn’t.