My IPL is Bigger Than Yours

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The glee that quite few Indians have shown over the IPL saga is understandable—to quote from one of India's most popular bloggers, Great Bong, the reasoning goes something like this: “Now since we are talking about a country who about a year before butchered our citizens and who allow the perpetrators of that crime against humanity to walk their streets amidst adulation and approbation” what the IPL has done is perfectly allright. Hell, it’s super.

Which is a fine sentiment.

But the thing is, does this, in any way, actually help in preventing further instances of terror, or even punish those in Pakistan who are responsible for this sort of thing?

Well, no.

Hiring or not hiring 5 or so cricketers from a nation of 170 mln is going to make no practical difference to anything, least of all the foreign policy of that nation.

Of course, not all foreign policy need be purely practical; India might make a symbolic point. Fair enough, other than the fact that India did not make a symbolic point. A symbolic point would have been made if the Pakistani cricketers would not have been allowed to participate from the outset and it would have been made clear as to the “issue”, in Shahrukh’s words , behind the ban. In fact the Government made in unequivocally clear that there was no “hint or nudge from the government ” in this matter.

Even explanations such as “it is business decision” do not stand up to scrutiny. As Offstumped explains:

IPL as a private business has the right to do what it wants but that right is not beyond the ethics and values how any business must conduct itself. Tacit collusion by a cartel to discriminate against individuals based on origin doesnt speak highly of IPL’s ethics and values as a private business.

This whole episode was an exercise in bad judgement—no two ways about it.

Of course, not be left behind in the stupidity stakes, some in Pakistan have erupted in near-hysterical rage, as if 5 players not earning some money in a private league is a national disaster.