DENIALABAD – The country, where it is illegal for a Hindu to marry a Muslim and where a Muslim woman cannot marry any non-Muslim, this week illustrated the intolerance of a neighbouring country where many expressed outrage over an ad showing a Hindu-Muslim married couple forcing it to be taken down.
The country that was created, and then sustained, on the basis of Muslim nationalism, where the law codifies the supremacy of the majority’s religion, where religious minorities are constitutionally subordinate, further highlighted the bigoted, increasingly Hindu nationalist, neighbour’s growing subjugation of its minority, which coincidentally happens to be the majority in the former country.
“That country is no longer secular,” said one government official of the country that was never secular, has no intention of being secular, and actually uses the world ‘secular’ as a slur.
“The Hindutva ideology is a threat to the entire region,” said a security analyst of a state that codifies Islamism in the constitution, where even criticism of certain Islamist laws has seen individuals being lynched for murder, and where propping jihadist groups has been an openly acknowledged security strategy.
However, some rare species in this country is acknowledging the wrongs of the neighbouring country while underlining the realities on this side of the border.
“They are indeed becoming increasingly intolerant and religious extremism is gradually taking over,” said one such individual.
“If they codify this religious extremism, they’ll legally become what we began to become in the 70s and 80s.”
