Traditional and indigenous sports are living intangible heritage. Discuss the challenges in safeguarding them, and the role of multilateral platforms.

Traditional sports such as India's Kalaripayattu and Brazil's Capoeira circle count as living intangible heritage. UNESCO inscribed the Capoeira circle on its Representative List in 2014 [2]. These sports survive only while communities keep playing them and passing them on. Safeguarding them therefore needs continued practice, not just display. Multilateral platforms can help, but only if they go beyond one-off spectacle.

Challenges in safeguarding

• Breaks in transmission: UNESCO notes that traditional games are disappearing or being pushed aside by online games. Young people are the weak link in passing them on [3].
• Documentation gaps: rules, techniques and oral knowledge are rarely recorded. Even events that promise "documentation" do not say where the record will be kept [1].
• No incentive to train: these sports have no leagues, rankings or career paths, so they lose players to mainstream sport.
• Selective promotion: state support goes mostly to well-known forms. The Khelo India indigenous-games component identifies Mallakhamb, Kalaripayattu, Gatka, Thang-Ta, Yogasana and Silambam [4]. Lesser-known tribal games stay invisible.
• Disputed ownership: national claims can split a shared tradition. Azerbaijan's Pehlevanliq/zorkhana culture was inscribed separately in 2022, apart from Iran's related zurkhaneh rituals [5].
• Commodification: turning heritage into a show can strip away its ritual and community meaning.

Role of multilateral platforms

• Visibility and exchange: under India's BRICS Chairship, Ahmedabad hosted the non-competitive BRICS Traditional and Indigenous Sports Demonstration Games on 12 October 2026. Eleven member and partner countries showed forms such as Gorodki, Sambo and Mallakhamb [1].
• Setting norms: the Kazan Action Plan (MINEPS VI, 2017) links sport policy to the 2030 Agenda [6].
• Digital safeguarding: UNESCO's Open Digital Library on Traditional Games, running since 2015, records game rules and involves young people [3].
• Shared heritage: the two Koreas jointly inscribed Ssirum/Ssireum wrestling [3]. Tocatì, a programme run by five countries, was selected as a Good Safeguarding Practice in 2022 [7].
• Limits: a one-day showcase has no follow-up built in. Listing games by country can also feed ownership claims, as with Gorodki, which is listed for both Russia and Belarus [1].

Multilateral platforms can amplify heritage, but they cannot replace transmission within communities. BRICS should turn the Ahmedabad Games into an open archive, regular youth exchanges and joint UNESCO nominations. India should also use Khelo India to bring endangered tribal games onto these platforms. This would make safeguarding real, in line with the UNESCO 2003 Convention and SDG 11.4 on protecting the world's cultural heritage.