It
was the January of 1999 and I was ten years old then. Pakistan cricket team was
about to tour India when Shiv Sena activists digged up the pitch of the Feroze
Shah Kotla cricket stadium in Delhi and my reaction to it was that I was
“happy” but today I am ashamed of my feelings then came Gujrat, this time I was
a bit worried as the object of these riots were my Muslim brothers and sisters
but deep inside I was pleased to see that the real Indian face has been
exposed, it was the face which we were taught about in our curriculum. However,
for the last decade or so things in Pakistan have changed, we have experienced
outcome of violence and extremism first hand and today after losing more than
fifty thousand of our own countrymen, no country in the world is better
equipped than Pakistan to advice India that this path of violence and extremism
will take them to destruction only.
For
some it is something (The rise of extremism in India) that has just happened
but India was always this much violent and extremist. Gandhi, the founder of
India, was also killed by a RSS worker “Nathuram Godsay” and subsequently RSS
was banned in India but some years later the ban was lifted by the government
due to some electoral/political compulsions. The truth of the matter is that
India always had these radical elements like any country of this world. It was
like that India was sitting on a ticking time bomb and it was meant to explode
any time and when year and a half ago Modi assumed power, his government only
made the ticking quicker.
Some
are calling this current extremist wave in India just an anti-Pakistan
sentiment, but by doing this they are undermining the magnitude of the problem
at hand as it will not stop here and if they (The extremist elements) succeed
in damaging Pakistan-India relations then they will start to interfere in other
state matters; the black ink that is today thrown on Sudheendra Kulkarni (the
organizer of Khursheed Mahmud Kasuri’s book launch) and Engineer Rasheed (member
of Indian held Kashmir parliament) can also be thrown on the participants of
Jaipur literature festival or on any member parliament having a point of view
that does not comply with ideology of the extremist elements.
Pakistan
cannot afford another Afghanistan on her eastern borders. Even though a lot of
actions in India will give “I told you that” moments to Indian haters in
Pakistan but Pakistan should continue to support moderate and secular forces in
India because if those forces fail today we will return to the times of “Hindu
paani (water) and Muslim paani” but only this time it is going to be “Hindu
bomb and Muslim bomb”. The example of “Sahitya
Akademy” has
shown that the Intellectual and moderate forces of India are pretty much aware of
the grave dangers that are threatening the very national fiber of India. Pakistan
should forward moral support to all such forces.
Nevertheless the buck
stops at Mr. Modi. Modi can turn himself to be a blessing in disguise by
playing the role of a bridge between the Hindu nationalists and Secular and
moderate forces. It is up to him that how he wants the history to remember him.
He has the political power as well as the governmental power, he is the prime
minister of India and he should start acting like one. He should show his
acumen and prove that he is not a mere poster boy of Hindu nationalism but a
leader of national and international stature. Today India stands at the
crossroads of history and there are only two roads to take, one takes her to the
greatness and the other to destruction but unfortunately at the moment India is
on the road to destruction. 
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