An eye for eye!!

Lately, the English contingent turned its back on the World Badminton Championship and returned home citing security reasons. Earlier this year Australia withdrew from Davis Cup for the same reasons.

Now instead of learning from our mistakes and ameliorating the security, some of us are advocating for a global agency examining sport security issues. These people reckon that all of a sudden the Australians and English have turned racist and thus feel that these decisions are racially provoked.

Perhaps, there allegation is just but certainly the solution that they propose is not only run of the mill but outrageously quixotic. Moreover I sincerely fail to see any problem. These people who are propagating this nonsense idea are projecting it as an issue of national pride. The only problem that I see is of cardinal dearth of common sense in some of us.

National pride is a very emotional issue and cannot be debated but we cannot attach every second thing with our national pride. This way we will end up isolating ourselves with the rest of the world and this may culminate in obliteration of the very reason of our pride, our nation.

If we think pragmatically, we lose nothing when some nation backs out from a tournament. Let me elaborate why?

There could be only two reasons behind this, either the players really found the security wanting or they are racist or biased, they loathe our country and want to disdain us.

In the first case, they have all the right to back out and we have all the need to improve and introspect while in the second case, I just don’t understand why we are so hell bent on playing with few individuals who don’t revere us and our nation.

For a moment, let us assume that there is an international body looking after these matters and the body adjudicates against us. What will then happen to our national pride? Who takes the responsibility that the body will be totally efficient and unbiased? I don’t remember many international bodies taking decisions in favor of India or the other poorer nations for that matter for reasons very palpable. And I just cannot imagine the amount of controversy it will cause when the guest nation refuses to comply with it.

This can happen with us too. We all know how paranoid we turn when it comes to wellbeing of our stars. We did refuse going to Pakistan citing security reasons.

These kind of bizarre suggestions only turn matters worse. These agencies, if anything will complicate the matters. We must realize that going fanatical about a decision taken by a body which doesn’t represent even a fraction of the nation’s population will fan the flames of the state of affairs gratuitously. Instead of getting fanatical on this issue and taking irrational decisions we must harness our vigor to fortify ourselves and pick up our game.

Gandhiji once said- “An eye for eye makes the whole world blind.”

Goofy (Guest Author)