New Delhi, Jan. 31 -- Cricket has remained one of the few arenas of sustained regional interaction in South Asia, even as formal institutions weakened. It survived wars, regime changes, border crises, and diplomatic freezes. When formal diplomacy failed, cricket carried the emotional residue of regional belonging. It allowed South Asia to imagine itself, however briefly, as a shared cultural space. Bangladesh's recent decision to step back from playing scheduled T20 World Cup games in India, therefore, cannot be dismissed as a sporting or administrative matter. It is a rupture and the weakening of a cultural grammar that sustained South Asia in the past.

One of the immediate triggers for Bangladesh's hardline stance was the controversy s...