Lessons from Pakistan

Pakistan is a good example of what could go wrong in a nation when it fosters and promotes hatred as state-sponsored campaign. The hatred that Pakistan promoted was against India. They rallied all and sundry in their country to unify everyone (and to make them ignore other inadequacies and shortfalls in the government) and to create 'freedom fighters' (also, called terrorists by others). Now, the homegrown terrorists are striking the very nation which fostered them.

This should be a lesson to our supporters and sympathizers of Hindu fundamentalism who do not necessarily wear a saffron banner but provide ‘silent support’ to Hindutva groups and their ideologies. Most Hindu groups, their sympathizers and silent supporters coming from elite and educated Hindus, rationalize the rise in Hindutva ideology as a ‘reaction’ to extremism coming from Muslim and Christian groups. This is not very different from how Pakistanis told themselves that their hatred was in fact a ‘reaction’ to what India did to them during Partition, how vile Indians were when they resorted to sleight and deceit to capture Kashmir from Pakistan. All wars against India were waged to take revenge as a ‘reaction’ to what Indians did more than fifty years ago to Pakistan.

Pakistan focused the growing hatred in its country to achieve one goal – to get Kashmir from India. This hatred was not supposed to take different incarnations. It was not supposed to affect its own populace. The guns and bullets they prepared by taking donations from various people were supposed to be aimed at the enemy (India), not at their own people. [They did something similar to Afghanistan.]

Pakistan is paying the price for fostering, fomenting and promoting such hatred in their country. They thought they could control, monitor and direct it the way they wanted. They thought it was a tap they could shut it off whenever they wanted. Alas, now that Frankenstein monster is on the loose. The hatred is coming back to hit them hard, usurping their rights and freedoms, targeting every Pakistani for harboring a rational thought. The Islamization that was used to rally its people was only to unite its people under one banner to fight the enemy, it was not supposed to lead to Talibanization of their own country, where their girls have to stay home, where music will be banned, where all their rights will be stripped off. Democratic institutions are crumbling, every institution to protect the interests of all common men is being demolished.

Many Hindus in India contest that their support to Hinutva forces is only to stop or moderate the ‘appeasement’ of minorities. They believe that the present Indian governments and politicians, pseudo-secularists, pseudo-intellectuals and wily Marxists are doling out concessions, sops, and other beneficent generosities to the minority religions only to win their vote banks while ignoring the sentiments of the majorities which are hurt again and again. They contend that this support is only to bring that appeasement to an end, after which this support will be rolled back. They think it is a tap which they can shut off anytime. They think they can foster the hatred for a while only to attain certain goals and once they are attained, they think they can just turn off the hatred.

Experiences from Pakistan clearly illustrate what happens to a nation that fuels such hatred – whatever may be the end goal. Hatred against any enemy or ideology, people or religion is bad. Once fostered, it cannot be rolled back. It is a Frankenstein Monster. It is not a tap that you can shut it off. The hatred that you build is like a dam of mud. It stores lot of energy to be untapped. One day, the dam is going to break, and the ensuing deluge will submerge everyone including those who constructed it.

Indian Hindus believe that their support for Narendra Modi and his kin, Bal Thackeray and his Shiv Sena, BJP and its sister outfits is all in the interest of a greater India where certain minorities who irk them with their fundamentalism and terrorism can be reined, monitored and controlled, where certain minorities are kept in check for the long term interest of this nation. Indian Hindus believe that this hatred can be controlled.

Lessons from Pakistan indicate how foolish these Indian Hindus are. They do not learn histories, they do not learn from mistakes of others, they do not reason nor think. They speciously argue how India is not the same as Pakistan and how it will escape the fate of Pakistan. They stick to their own theories of how India is going to be unique where in they will somehow not pay the price for the hatred they foster in their own ground. How foolish they are!