Well ... let me get it straight, I am in no way supporting Shiv Sena tactics and their politics for this matter or otherwise. Being one of the biggest fans of SRK, I was actually deeply hurt when Saamna made irresponsible and immature statements of calling SRK a traitor asking him to leave India and go to Pakistan. Very few will have doubts over SRK's Indianness, or infact would be very silly thing to discuss that aspect. He's undoubtedly one of the biggest global Indian icon, and makes millions of Indians proud across the globe by his work.
Coming to the topic of whether or not we should include Pakistani players in IPL, it was firstly very sad to see noone in media debated this fundamental point and jumped the gun as usual on silly side stories like freedom of expresion (for SRK in this matter), screening of the film and news around it.
Well it's not possible to discuss the IPL issue keeping politics aside, as I believe it's essentially a political issue. Saying that 'sports, arts, etc should be completely left out of political relations between two countries' is a very nice view to have, but practically it is just not feasible to follow when the other nation almost openly allows its territory to be used to perpetrate killings of hundreds of innocents in our nation, and morever their leaders simply do NOTHING after that to bring those perpetrators to justice. It doesn't go down well on ground how much ever nice things we keep on saying. It's very hard to IGNORE this reality and move on as if nothing happened.
We must understand one fact that any sport, sportsmen, leaders or common men are not decoupled from the nation. We don't see Israelis enjoyably playing football with Palestinians when their soldiers may have to battle with each other anytime, it just doesn't happen. There's no logic when we say 'hey what will pakistani people do wrt cross border terrorism in India, it's their leaders who're doing it, not people (or cricketers)'. Exactly, but then the question squarely becomes 'who have elected these leaders ?'. Indians have not elected them, they're there because pakistani people have elected them and given them power of doing what they are doing with India today.
On the other hand, if we allow good people-to-people relation with Pakistan, and hence allow their people to get 'benefited' from India in many different ways IGNORING the cross border terrorism, it would be EXACTLY what their government would want. As for them it's a win-win situation, as their leaders can continue to pressurise India through terrorism to resolve Kashmir, and there's no impact on their people also as their people can cotinue to grab goodies from India through various ways (playing in IPL, ICL, working in Bollywood, etc etc, the list will only grow). It's needless to mention what India gets from Pakistani resources :-) (a thumb).
So if we cut those ties, and when their people will start feeling the heat, perhaps they'll pressurize their leaders to stop doing nonsense against India if they realize that there's more to loose than gain in 21st century if we try to screw India.
Noone had opposed when IPL did not pick up Pakistani players in 2009 keeping similar views in mind. Can somebody explain me what has changed since then ? The political positions of both India and Pakistan have remained unchanged over this period. It has infact become more strongly evident that Pakistan does not want to punish 26/11 perpetrators. So I am failing to understand why suddenly there's a U-Turn from India to try to restore normalcy with Pakistan in any possible way (in IPL for this matter). Merely because memories of 26/11 have blurred a bit ?? India must take a firm and consistent stand as far as any dealings with Pakistan is concerned. This kind of flip-flops in our policies will not take us anywhere.
Well, I don't want to sound radical here. I am a huge cricket fan, and many pakistani bowlers have remained my all time favourites, and I am genuinely pro good relationship with Pakistan. But the problems between two countries are largely political, and decoupling anything from that including a sport will not get us anywhere. Unless the governments of both the countries sort them out, just a feel-good people-to-people relationship will not help in any manner, and surely will not be in India's interest, the terrorism is only bound to grow this way. History has witnessed that ignoring the problem is never a solution of the problem. It's high time for our government to stop ignoring various problems and diverting people's attention on side stories.
And finally, to keep the record straight, I think this is exactly what SRK meant to say. He said we would like to have Pakistani players, we don't have anything against them personally. But it would be wrong to say that there are no problems between two countries, there are, we can't deny it, and hence it is difficult to take Pakistani players. He never said like .. no matter what, I want to have Pakistani players.
Rajiv
