The militant attacks in Mumbai have shaken, saddened and angered people across the world, not just in India. It has thrown up so many issues which go way beyond winning and losing as seen on a sports field.

The Indian cricket board have worked hard to resurrect action on the field by persuading England to agree to return to complete a two-test series, offering all support to allay fears of their players for their safety.

The Indian media have been busy reporting the aftermath of the attacks and there has been furious debate in the British media whether it is proper for the England players to return to India this soon.

Whether sports should go on in turbulent times has been debated for ages. At the 1972 Munich Games, Olympics chiefs decided the show would go on despite Palestinian gunmen killing 11 Israeli athletes and officials.

Cricket teams are refusing to travel to Pakistan because of security concerns by teams in the wake of many suicide bombings.

Some even doubt whether the sub-continent can hold the 2011 World Cup.

Should cricket go on in India in the middle of the latest crisis? Can Indians turn their minds to their first love?

So some of the cheerleaders are going home, and some of the others are being forced to cover up? If you ask me, that’s a bit of a shame. More importantly, it’s an example of people getting worked up about the wrong things.

A female, feminist friend of mine, living here but born in England, was complaining to me about the cheerleaders, saying they were simply not appropriate in a country like India, and demeaning for women.

I am not sure. As anyone who spends too long watching ESPN will know, cheerleading is a serious business in the United States, a sort of synchronised gymnastics with some pretty impressive routines.

I doubt that many of the girls from the States, or Uzbekistan, felt like they were being exploited when they were invited to India for what promised to be a thoroughly enjoyable few weeks.

That is, until certain, male sections of the crowd, began abusing them.

“It’s been horrendous,” Tabitha, a cheerleader from Uzbekistan, told the Hindustan Times. “Wherever we go we expect people to pass lewd, snide remarks but I’m shocked by the nature and the magnitude of the comments people pass here.”

But who seems to be getting the blame? The men making those remarks, or the cheerleaders themselves?

As one Indian friend told me recently, blaming the cheerleaders is not far away from blaming a woman for wearing a short skirt if she is abused or raped by a man.

Politicians, or at least those from the left and right wings, are up in arms about something they seen as an insult to Indian culture.

But who is complaining that the men making the lewd comments are letting their countrymen down?

Earlier this month, a 12-year-old girl was reportedly bundled in a car in broad daylight in New Delhi and raped by a policemen and his friend.

The policeman has since been charged and sacked, but there has hardly been any outcry
from India’s politicians. Is anyone demanding a serious and concerted effort to clean up the police force?

That of course, would require a major political effort. Far easier to snipe at a few foreign girls making the cricket match just a bit more fun to watch.