The most important thing about the current wave of religio-nationalist hysteria in India, from Pakistani people’s point of view, is not how the macabre sequences are played out, though the degree of violence on the victims of intolerance cannot be ignored, but the nature of reaction from this country.

Since the campaign of violence and vilification unleashed by Shiv Sena, the most militant religious element in Indian polity, is largely directed, so far, at Pakistani writers, artists, and sportsmen and Indian Muslims who hold elective offices or demonstrate their cultural, especially dietary, practices, the average Pakistani is being led to believe that the whole of India has launched an offensive against Pakistan and Islam.

Since this impression of India is in accord with its image that the Pakistani establishment and the media have assiduously cultivated for decades, they are not worried if irrational behaviour across the border is answered with matching irrationality on this side. Thus, there are calls to curse the Indian people across the board and boycott them in every field of life, more thoroughly than what the Shiv Sena hotheads have been able to suggest.

A sickly obsession with the politics of confrontation and revenge prevents the gullible majority on both sides from realising the wrong done by painting the people black with a wide brush, and ignoring the Indians who assert their national identity and do not hate Pakistan and the Pakistanis who are proclaiming their resolve to accommodate the Indians as friends.

If the Indian hate-preachers are trying to win rewards for using belief to capture or retain political power in an absolute sense and force the democratic-secular elements in their society to surrender, similar attempts to suppress the voices of reason and democratic secularism are visible in Pakistan, too. The rise of these forces will lead not only to increased bitterness between India and Pakistan but also a dangerous escalation in excesses against Muslims in India and non-Muslims in Pakistan.

This scenario is not unalterable. A determined effort to change it must be made by Pakistani men and women of goodwill.

First of all, the Pakistani people must understand the causes of the latest wave of intolerance in India. They should be able to realise, in the light of their own national experience, that if power is acquired on the slogan of Hindutva the saffron brigade will have to insist on religious exclusivism in order to retain its supremacy. Inevitably, it will use all possible means, including murder and mayhem, to secure the submission of not only the non-Hindu population but also the lower caste Hindus and the motley crowd sitting under the none too strong canopy of secularism and democracy.

Thus, the current Indian aberration should be treated as essentially an internal struggle for consolidating a Hindu upper caste regime. Pakistan is not a central issue in this tussle; it is used as a lighter to start the fire. However, one need not ignore the possibility that the need to use Pakistan to further whip up mass frenzy for political objectives could drive India into taking direct action against Pakistan. The government of Pakistan and the people both should be watchful without indulging in inflammatory rhetoric.

Throughout the past 68 years, each communal outburst in India has somehow revived the controversy over the partition. Now again, some people have discovered in insane acts such as blackening of the faces of Kulkarni and Rashid the seed of India’s division. Such simplistic explanations of the long historical process and the roles played by the colonial power and the shortsighted indigenous political parties that resulted in the creation of Pakistan have no place in a serious discussion on the wave of religious fanaticism that is threatening the entire subcontinent.

Yet the memory of the partition does haunt the minds of India’s Hindu community and it continues to fuel anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim sentiment. The popular Pakistani narrative attributes this sentiment to India’s inability to reconcile itself to the emergence of Pakistan.

A correct explanation is that the Indian people cannot get over their anguish at the loss of a part of their land. Pakistani Muslims are unable to appreciate this because, intoxicated by notions of an extra-territorial religious identity, they have little use for loyalty to their territory. They continue to cry over the loss of power in Spain or the fall of the Mughals or their military defeat in East Bengal but no tear is shed over the loss of the territory that once formed part of Pakistan. This factor prevents Pakistan from establishing a rapport with the Indians.

The point being made here is that while the origins of militant Hinduism can be traced in India’s distant past, partition has certainly played a significant part in extending its life. Further, it will be difficult to contest the view that Pakistan’s choice of the path towards a theocratic state, for which it is not indebted to India, has encouraged similar trends in India. And Pakistan’s attempt to reply to Hindutva in the same coin completes a vicious cycle for mutual destruction.

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The subcontinental people’s tendency to be influenced by happenings in their neighbourhood is quite remarkable. Just as Pakistan has seen in India’s professions of secularism a threat to its religion-based ideology, India is having difficulty in coming to terms with Nepal’s adoption of a secular constitution. Incidentally, this puts to rest the Hindu communalists’ claim to be genuinely secular as against their rivals who they say swore by secularism only for demonstration.

At the same time, it is necessary to remember the contribution made to the rise of communal intolerance in India by the "non-communal" parties’ policies of appeasement of the conservative clergy. This, too, should be easily understandable in Pakistan as the twin states are following the same trajectory.

What this discussion leads to is the need for Pakistan to treat the present turmoil in India as a sign of despair in the communal hardliners’ ranks, which is born of fear of losing power. Regardless of how weak or strong the non-communal forces in India are, the communalist parties have little to give to the people in the long run. They are at the wrong end of humankind’s march towards rationalism and peace and are bound to lose, though they will cause much devastation and misery before being defeated. And this applies to Pakistan as well.

Before deciding on their response to the Indian scenario, the people of Pakistan should decide on their vision of the subcontinent’s future. If they accept the ideal that the regional states should move towards peaceful and cooperative co-existence, they must not get provoked into answering intolerance with intolerance.

Instead of lambasting the entire Indian people for the misdeeds of a minority, they should express confidence in the capacity of the Indian masses to overcome the challenge from forces of regression. They should also redouble their efforts to arrest Pakistan’s slide into chaos that religious intolerance breeds as that would only prolong the suffering of the people of both India and Pakistan, especially the under-privileged among them.