The assassination of a religious scholar in Karachi last week reeks of yet another attempt on the part of the enemy to sow hatred among different outfits in the country. Pakistan is no stranger to such tactics, of course, as we spent the good part of the last three decades dancing to just such tunes, even at the cost of utter mayhem in people’s daily lives. Fortunately with time we were able to learn that when we killed and harassed people of different denominations and religious persuasions the only one really left happy was the enemy that hated all of us alike. One hoped, after all that went so wrong for so long, that such episodes would never be repeated in the long narrative of Pakistan.
Yet here we are. The prime minister seemed convinced, based on a lot of evidence that crosses his desk no doubt, that the enemy is trying one of its oldest tricks one more time. Now that it has failed to isolate Pakistan diplomatically, instead practically all of India’s neighbours are pretty cross with it at the moment, it’s going back to trying to get Pakistan to implode and fall on itself. Yet the country’s religious community seems well aware of precisely what is happening and their joint stance of condemning the murder but at the same time calling for calm needs to be appreciated. They might just have put out a fire that could have burnt the house down.
