Events this past week have confirmed the worst about South Asia. First, came the attack by Shiv Sena on Sudheendra Kulkarni, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician, for the crime of hosting Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri and organising his book launch. The week then ended with Mir Waiz Umar Farooq, a separatist Kashmiri leader, warning the Ahmedis against “spreading their tentacles” in Kashmir. Both these events were symbolically ironic. The idea that a BJP politician could be hounded by right-wing Hindu extremists underscores just how far the atmosphere has been poisoned in India. For his part, Mir Waiz completely forgot that the UN resolutions he seeks to implement in Kashmir were themselves the result of the efforts of an Ahmedi, Zafrullah Khan, who was the first foreign minister of Pakistan. The growing intolerance in India will only embolden bigots in Pakistan. Videos coming out of India of Muslims being beaten up and forced to chant jai shri ram are already being circulated widely on social media here. One hopes that there are no reprisals against Pakistani minorities, especially the Hindus, as a result. There is no mechanism in place in either country to protect minorities in either country against excesses of permanent cultural majorities, be it Hindus in India or Muslims in Pakistan. The legal and political systems in both countries are designed to perpetuate these excesses by the respective majority communities in these countries. Laws — more so in Pakistan than India — are designed to privilege majority opinion over the minority view and that is essentially the problem with the idea of majority rule, which we, quite erroneously, conflate with democracy in the subcontinent. The time has come to question this premise and revisit the idea of effective safeguards to protect minorities in South Asia. Anyone seriously studying this part of the world must conclude that religion and community play a major part in the organisation of society. It is for this reason more than any other that secularism in the lower case is a practical necessity for any state that seeks to impose its writ on such a society. This means that an indigenous South Asian variety of secularism needs to be developed by thinkers and writers that ought to be based on the willing compact of various communities in a multicultural state. To obtain such a secular compact of communities, political scientists need to imagine a federalism of communities through adequate representation and a consensus based constitutional arrangement that takes into account the considerations of reforming elements in each community. This necessitates a political system that builds bridges and actively marginalises the extreme voices within each community. Above all, it should recognise and not paper over all the various fault lines that exist in the multicultural state while privileging the equality of citizenship above all. The idea would be to empower the individual both vis-à-vis community and the state. This would allow individuals to ultimately transcend communal and ethnic considerations at some point to think in terms of state, country and humanity. Historically, the approach in the subcontinent has been to appease extreme elements. Congress has, throughout its history, reached out to the ulema (clergy) instead of allying themselves with the Muslim modernists. It was this approach that led to the alienation of the modernist element in the Muslim community to break away from the independence struggle and forge a counterfoil in the form of the Pakistan Movement. Even after partition, the Congress remained wedded to the idea of appeasement with disastrous consequences in the form of the Shah Bano case. At the same time, the Congress also appeased the Hindu right by passing cow protection laws through state governments. The same happened in the case of the PPP, which, in 1974, disproportionately empowered the Muslim religious right in Pakistan by passing the Second Amendment. Both in India and Pakistan, the right wing elements within Hindus and Muslims were strengthened over time to a point where they have become the determinants of state policy. Underlying the politics of intolerance in either country is the idea that if a group can muster up enough street support it can bend the state to its will. There should be constitutional safeguards against street blackmail. There also has to be a bilateral understanding between Pakistan and India on the issue of minority rights. It is not unprecedented. In 1950, Pakistan and India entered into a bilateral treaty called the Liaquat-Nehru Pact, which provided for minority commissions in both countries and bound both countries to guaranteeing equal rights for their minorities. A new version of this treaty, which provides for a bilateral mechanism to address minority complaints in either country, perhaps is the best way the two neighbours can cooperate to their mutual benefit and to the benefit of the minorities in either country. The problem, however, is that there is no political will in either country to enter into such a treaty again. Ultimately, the responsibility lies with civil society in both countries to agitate this point before their governments and to press upon them the need for such a treaty. A Pan-South Asian alliance between liberals and progressives is the need of the hour. Intolerance and majoritarianism are common problems confronting us that require imaginative responses from all those who want to see their countries and societies be organised on just, fair and egalitarian principles. The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Mr Jinnah: Myth and Reality. He can be contacted via twitter @therealylh and through his email address yasser.hamdani@gmail.com