It looks as if Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa had resorted to UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence). She runs her state according to her whims and fancies without caring two hoots about the writ of the Centre. India is urging Sri Lanka to respect human rights—quite rightly so—but regrettably it cannot even safeguard Sri Lankan cricketers’ right to play on its soil! Jayalalithaa has banned them from playing in the IPL matches to be held in Chennai. She has also thrown out Sri Lankan schoolchildren who went there to play soccer.

The so-called Indian model of devolution is being touted here as the panacea for Sri Lanka’s ethnic ills despite the fact that India itself has witnessed many a race riot like the ones in Mumbai and Gujarat in spite of its quasi-federalism. The manner in which Jayalalithaa has rendered the Centre impotent may be used by the opponents of the Indian model in this country to bolster their claim that devolution is inimical to national sovereignty and exerts a centrifugal force on the periphery.

Foreign policy had remained an exclusive preserve of India’s centre until recently, but today Tamil Nadu has effectively encroached on it and made a puppet of the central government. Kanwal Sibal, a former Indian Foreign Secretary, in a recent column which we reproduced on this page yesterday has this to say, inter alia: "If our foreign policy towards Sri Lanka should be based on the sentiments of the people of Tamil Nadu today, then sentiments in West Bengal should dictate our foreign policy towards Bangladesh tomorrow, and those in UP and Bihar should determine what we do with Nepal day after… Our neighbours are independent, sovereign countries, which requires that we control our domestic lobbies and prevent them from distorting our policies in our periphery. Moreover, when the states are today resisting strongly encroachment on their powers in a federal system, they should also respect the prerogative of the Centre to make foreign policy." He has put forth a very cogent, compelling argument. There is, however, another question that has gone unasked.

India has inducted its army here, backed US-sponsored resolutions in Geneva twice and interferes with Sri Lanka’s internal affairs, claiming that it is duty bound to heed Tamil Nadu’s concerns. If so, then since all Pakistanis are doubtlessly concerned about the plight of their brethren in India, will India allow Pakistan to interfere with its internal affairs? There cannot be two different sauces for the goose and the gander!

There is no way India with UN Security Council ambitions could justify its subservience to Tamil Nadu politicians and allowing them to dictate its Sri Lanka policy and whimsically declare Sri Lankan sportspersons personae non gratae. Such arbitrary action is possible only in a separate state.

However, in banning Sri Lankan cricketers, Jayalalithaa has unwittingly done Sri Lanka’s cricket a big favour. The Indian Premier League (IPL) tournament where famous cricketers get auctioned like camel jockeys in Arabia or sex workers in some countries may serve the purpose of greedy players, some of whom, not to put too fine a point on it, wouldn’t scruple to cheat their mothers if there was money in it for them, but it has manifestly ruined Sri Lanka’s de facto national game. Cricketers need money. They have families to look after and a future to plan for. But on no account should they be allowed to subjugate the country’s interests to the lure of dosh while wearing the national cap. As Sri Lanka’s World Cup winning skipper Arjuna Ranatunga has succinctly said, the rot in Sri Lanka’s cricket set in, the day players started playing for money. Today, the situation has taken a turn for the worse with players breathing and living not cricket but shekels and stooping to any low level to earn an extra penny. Only a tough guy of Arjuna’s calibre who brooks no nonsense and suffers no fools gladly is equal to the task of brining some order out of chaos at Sri Lanka Cricket, weaning players from the Indian cricket cabaret, making them fall in line and preparing them for the next World Cup tournament. Why he has not been given that onerous task defies comprehension. Is it that the government wants to let the gentleman’s game wither on the vine so that some other sport could be promoted in its place?

The only option Sri Lankan cricketers have been left with is to boycott IPL, the weak-kneed organisers of which have let them down badly, if they have an iota of self respect, which we doubt very much.

If India cannot tell a chief minister who has got too big for her slippers where to get off, how could it expect other countries to tackle seemingly intractable problems such as cross-border terrorism?