Like Pakistan’s Islamisation, the Hindutva project is bound to fail. Here’s is why

For many years, I had the opportunity to visit and study Pakistan and also to write for its newspapers. My special interest was in the 20 years period just after the creation of Bangladesh till the exit of president General Zia ul Haq. For the 30 years before that time, Pakistan had attempted to Islamise itself but had not been able to.

Even today, Pakistan’s laws are the same as India’s and the residents of Lahore and Karachi and Peshawar are familiar with things like 420, 302 and Section 144. This is because the subcontinent’s criminal laws were written by an Englishman named Macaulay in the 19th century. In Dhaka, as in Delhi, even today the section invoked for promoting enmity is 153A.

In that two-decade period of the 1970s and 1980s, Pakistan tried to change this. It introduced what was thought to be Quranic or Islamic punishment. This included public flogging (80 lashes) for those who drank alcohol, and at the other end it included stoning to death for adultery. The punishment for theft and robbery was chopping off of the right hand from the wrist. In case of a second offence by the same person, his foot from the ankle down was to be amputated.