Shashi Tharoor on SRK's KKR choosing Bangladeshi player in IPL: 'Cricket should not bear the burden'

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor reacted to the controversy over actor Shah Rukh Khan's Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) choosing Mustafizur Rahman, a Bangladeshi cricketer, at the Indian Premier League (IPL) auction, and said that cricket should not be made to bear the burden of attacks on minorities in the neighbouring country.

The IPL franchise, co-owned by Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, secured Rahman for ₹9.20 crore during the auction, making him the most expensive Bangladeshi player in the tournament’s history.

However, the move soon sparked a wave of nationalist backlash amid strained ties between India and Bangladesh following the death of Dipu Chandra Das, a Hindu man, in Mymensingh last month and several other incidents of violence against Hindus in the country.

The Congress leader said “cricket should not be made to bear the burden” for attacks on minorities in Bangladesh.

“We should try to insulate some areas from others. We are reaching out to Bangladesh and urging them to do the right thing to protect and look after their minorities, and this messaging must continue,” he said, speaking to ANI news aggency.

Tharoor said Mustafizur Rahman is a cricketer and has nothing to do with these issues. “He has not been personally accused of any hate speech or condoning or defending any attacks. Mixing these two things is simply not fair.”

He also warned against isolating neighbouring countries and said politics should not be brought into the decision.

“If we become a country that isolates all of our neighbours and say nobody is playing with any of them, how does that do any good? It is purely a sporting decision, and we should not let politics come into this. We surround Bangladesh on three sides. We cannot isolate them. We have to play with them,” the Thiruvananthapuram MP said.

Leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Opposition Congress party are locked in a political row over Rahman’s inclusion in the IPL team.

BJP leader Sangeet Som called Shah Rukh Khan a “gaddar (traitor)” and accused him of investing money in players “from a country working against India”.

“Despite all this, traitors like Shah Rukh Khan, I am calling him a traitor because everything he has is given by India, given by the people of India, but where do they invest this money? They invest it in players from a country that is working against India. I want to tell people like Shah Rukh Khan that they will not succeed,” Som was quoted as saying by ANI.

Meanwhile, Congress leader Bhai Jagtap said, “Shah Rukh Khan is being targeted because he is Muslim; we still play cricket with Pakistani cricketers after Operation Sindoor. This is the BJP-RSS’ double-faced policy.”