Is India now a mirror image of Pakistan?

Are we turning into a Hindu Pakistan? It would have been a silly question earlier. But it is now a serious query begging an answer.

Like it or not, we are increasingly looking like Pakistan for the simple reason that religion is now being increasingly used as a political strategy very much like our western neighbour.

The deadly game of mixing religion with politics in Pakistan was started by its then Army Chief the late Zia-ul-Haq, who overthrew Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1979 and imposed army rule. Zia had a problem. He desperately needed an ideological cover to justify his rule.

In Jinnah’s Pakistan, Islam was an easy political game to play with. After all, Jinnah himself had played the Muslim card to carve out Pakistan from the Indian sub-continent in 1947.

So, one fine morning after Zia took over, a lady news reader appeared on official Pak TV with hijab. She signed off the news bulletin with ALLAH HAFIZ instead of Khuda Hafiz, the customary Muslim good bye till then.

It was the beginning of Zia’s nizam-e-mustapha, with Islamic sharia laced governance like public whip lashing and many more Islamic mode of punishments.

Now Pakistan was a hard-boiled Islamic state instead of the somewhat liberal Muslim country till the times of Ayub Khan and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. From that time onwards, it has been a long and painful journey for Pakistan on road to politics mixed with religion.

It is now jihad that is being played out on the streets of Pakistan with active encouragement of Pakistani military establishment. Terror groups like Hizb-ul- Mujahdeen, labelled as non-state actors and proxies, are playing virtually the role of the state, exporting terrorism to India and Afghanistan.

Religion is so much a part of the Pakistan establishment now, that it is difficult to sift between state and non-state actors there. Non-state actors like Hafiz Saeed now call the shots in Pakistan because religion is the mainstay of the Pakistani establishment.

It was a deep crisis that had pushed a desperate Pakistan Army to play up religion in political affairs. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had pushed Pakistan into a semi-socialist model, threatening feudal lords’ supremacy over Pakistan establishment. Zia came up with the idea of mixing religion with politics in defence of the system, which is now a captive of jihadist elements.

Well, India has had a different story altogether. India has been a liberal, secular and modern state based on rule of law as guided by our constitution. So, Pakistani medievalism was looked down upon here and very rightly so.

But things began to change during early 1990s. It was the time when Hindu social establishment suddenly faced a serious political crisis. The then Indian Prime Minister V P Singh had implemented the Mandal Commission recommendations to introduce 27 percent quota for the OBCs in government jobs and educational institutions.

It led to an uproar against the OBC quota because it led to backward caste political assertion, which seriously threatened the upper caste hierarchy. Now, RSS stepped in with Kamandal politics, which was a euphemism for mixing religion with politics. It pushed Lal Krishna Advani onto a rath yatra to build Ram temple on the site where the Babri Mosque stood in Ayodhya.

It was a clever move because it suddenly brought Muslims into the political frame. It also managed to transform the entire OBC vs upper caste crisis into a Hindu-Muslim crisis because Muslims jumped to defend Babri mosque.

The Hindus now had a new enemy, Babar ki aulad. The BJP was the new Hindu saviour. It lent respectability to the BJP and transformed it into a national political alternative to the liberal Congress Party. The BJP suddenly transformed into an upper-caste Hindu establishment saviours, somewhat in the fashion of Jihdist elements of Pakistan.

Well, both RSS and the BJP were not only upbeat since then. But they now boldly began to mix religion with politics. The Advani rath yatra experience of carving out a Hindu vote bank was used with impunity during 2002 in Gujarat riots which now transformed Narendra Modi into the Hindu Hriday Samrat. The practice of mixing religion with politics was now done almost on the Pakistan pattern as non-state actors like Hindu Sena, Bajrang Dal, Hindu Vahini etc., were used to play cards like love jihad, gau raksha, etc,. They were Hindu proxies like Muslim jihadi proxies in Pakistan.

The Sangh-led Hindu social system is now so hooked to blend religion with politics that it has pushed proxies like Yogi Adityanath into mainstream political affairs. It is, indeed, a dangerous game. You never know proxies like Yogis may even take over Modis sometime, like Modi overtook Advani one day, and hijack the system itself.

India may still not be a replica of Pakistan. But we are surely on the path of becoming Pakistan, as we increasingly mix religion with politics. It is, indeed, a dangerous situation for the liberal, secular and modern Indian state, which needs a combined effort to salvage the modern state from spinning into a medieval, religious kingdom.