Daily Times

India might soon have its own ‘blasphemy law’, of course it already does have a blasphemy law, as part of the Sections 295 and 295-A of the 1860 Indian Penal Code, which Pakistan adopted following Partition and then added the Islam-specific 295-B and 295-C to the Pakistan Penal Code. But in the context of our part of the world, blasphemy law is synonymous with the death penalty – as sanctioned by PPC’s 295-C – and India might have one of those as well.

Yesterday, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member Subramanian Swamy introduced a bill proposing capital punishment for cow slaughter in the Rajya Sabha.

The Cow Protection Bill, 2017, seeks “to create an authority to ensure stabilisation of population of cows and to suggest such measures to comply with Article 37 and 48 of the Indian Constitution, to ban the slaughter of cow and to provide deterrent punishment including death penalty for slaughter of cow and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto”.

They might not want to dub it as their ‘blasphemy law’, but secular India is currently mulling whether or not being hanged to death is the appropriate punishment, considering the “deterrence” effect, for an individual that might contribute in the making of beef cuisine. Let’s not forget that since the dawn of the Modi sarkaar some Muslims actually have been lynched for eating beef biryani. Now the state might legalise the punishment and spare the mobs’ energies.

But if the Hindutva India ends up being anything like Islamic Pakistan, it would realise that the “deterrence” would actually sanction mob violence. After all, there has been a total of zero people judicially executed for blasphemy. This ‘lack of action’ actually fuels the blasphemy mobs into taking matters in their own hands.

Again, we’re just assuming that Indian judiciary would be as kind as their Pakistani counterpart in interpreting legislations seeking murder for offended religious sentiments. After all, Pakistan would be hard-pressed to cite an example like Yogi Adityanath throughout its decades-long affiliation with Islamist extremism.

While many have tried to paint a liberal Pakistan based on many of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s words, and a few of his actions, let’s not forget that Pakistan is currently in the midst of a clampdown on ‘social media blasphemers’. Sure, it might be an opportunistic buffer for the ruling party against Islamist detractors ahead of the 2018 elections, but valuable human resources are being loudly and proudly dedicated to targeting individuals for posting things on Facebook.

Also, let’s not forget that this act of posting certain things on Facebook is being described as “terrorism” in the FIRs filed against the culprits and the Islamabad High Court (IHC) Judge Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui. It is the same judge that removed terrorism charges against Mumtaz Qadri, before they were eventually reinstated by the Supreme Court.

This is the thing with affixing Penal Code punishments to ‘offending religious sentiments’. For, when cartoons, videos and culinary choices start offending these sentiments, capital punishment might feel a tad over the top.

The Islamists in Pakistan would find death for eating beef as absurd as a Hindutvati would see over a sacrilegious cartoon on Islam. But neither of the two camps would see, and recognise, the flaws in their own narrow ideologies, which claim that reverence for their respective religions can be enhanced through murder.

Let’s not forget that every religious ideology inherently negates the veracity of all others. This means that ideological clashes are inevitable and any state that vies to establish harmony within its communities should seek to establish religious equilibrium.

There cannot be a state that upholds identical death penalty for offending any religious community’s sentiments. For it would instigate judicial genocide based on who worships whom, and who holds whom in higher esteem. Hence, the means to ensure this equilibrium is to grant freedom to express one’s belief, however offensive some might find them, as long as they don’t promote violence against anyone – the practical definition of hate speech.

It is only after Pakistan elevated the status of Islam above other religions in its already existing blasphemy laws, that Islamist violence over ‘offended sentiments’ became commonplace. India is similarly following suit by lifting the status of orthodox Hindu beliefs at the expense of others.

Domestic extremism is a major stumbling block en route to much-needed cooperation in South Asia, at a time when both the PML-N and BJP leaderships profess to liberal economic policies. If Pakistani Hindus and Indian Muslims remain under the gun of the respective radical religionists, any of the many Indo-Pak disputes will remain as such.

Should India pass the capital punishment for cow slaughter it would become the 14th country in the world to sanction death for religious sentiments. Each of the other 13, including Pakistan, is a Muslim state.

One wonders why the Hindutva and Islamists fail to understand how they are each other’s long-distance backbones in South Asia.

The writer is a Lahore-based freelance writer