Jaswant Singh is one of our more refined government leaders, always urbane and well-groomed and sane, even if his diction is a bit scary in its stentorian boom. So shy did he lose his balance and announce that the Indian cricket team’s World Cup earnings will be tax-free? The decision is financially unwarranted, politically unwise and socially discriminatory.If victory justifies a waiver of tax, defeat must attract an imposition of tax. But there is no word of any punitive imposition when the same team lost so humiliatingly to New Zealand and then to Australia. For that matter, why is only a cricket victory worthy of such adulatory generosity? Are tennis and hockey and athletics un-Indian?Has Ronaldo and Beckam ever received any largesse from their governments? Have the Australian cricketers been given millions by advertising sponsors and then tax exemptions by their government? Even the other sub-continentals do not seem to have moved their finance ministers as our men have.Other countries have punished defeated players, sometimes ominously. A football hero who performed badly in a World Cup match eight years ago was shot in a pub in Columbia. Saudi Arabia sacked its coach when its team lost. (Whether it beheaded any of the players is not known.)From a mood to punish, we quickly moved to the other extreme of the Finance Minister’s lavishness. He did not even wait for the World Cup series to end. If an in-between match makes the government react with such knee-jerk excitement, what will happen if India lifts the World Cup? Perhaps Jaswant Singhji will donate a profitable public sector company to each player. Tax-free of course.Actually, this is no laughing matter. The Finance Minister did what he did precisely because it was Pakistan that was beaten. And that is what makes his action unfortunate. In effect he was proclaiming that the match was not ‘‘just another game’’ as a wise Saurav Ganguly had said beforehand, but a political fight against a hostile neighbour.Even after the victory, the Indian captain kept his cool. ‘‘Beating Pakistan does not mean we have won the World Cup,’’ he said. ‘‘A lot of work remains.’’ This was in line with his pre-match call for no emotionalism over the game.It’s the politicians who have tried to cash in on emotionalism. In this case, they received unexpected abetment from a really unexpected source. Chief of Army Staff N.C. Vij thought it fit to use the Indian military attache’s office in Pretoria to tell the team, ‘‘you have done the country proud.’’If the General had been in the habit of congratulating the Indian team each time it won a match, this would have been in order. But if he singled out this match against Pakistan for special mention, he did not do the country proud. By contrast, Rahul Bajaj said: ‘‘I congratulate both the teams — Pakistan for playing well and India, of course, for winning.’’ That is true sportsmanship gilded by statesmanship.Pakistan is indeed a bad neighbour. Its hostility is something we should confront and crush. But we do our cause no good by mixing up cross-border terrorism with cricket. It will be justifiable if India decides, as a matter of national policy, not to play cricket with Pakistan as long as the proxy war lasts. But to decide to play and then treat it as an extension of the war is to bring ourselves down to Pak’s level. It only encourages the mobs to clash in the streets. It’s not the stuff of leadership.
