In June 2009, Asia Bibi was harvesting berries at a farm in Sheikhupura, 30 km from Lahore. Her fellow workers asked her to fetch a pail of water from the well. On her way back, she took a few gulps, enraging the Muslim farmhands. They said she had polluted the water, arguing – wrongly – that their religion forbids them to drink from the pail a Christian had drunk from. A bitter row ensued.
Asia Bibi was accused of insulting Prophet Muhammad and was booked under Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy law. The courts sentenced her to death. Her execution was eventually stayed in July this year to allow her to appeal against the verdict. Should her appeal be rejected, Asia will become the first person in Pakistan to be judicially executed for blasphemy.
She is lucky that she is still alive. The Islamabad-based Centre for Security Studies says 52 Pakistanis have been killed over alleged blasphemy offences since 1990, either in courts hearing their cases, or when they were on bail, or in jail, or simply lynched as soon as someone alleged they had blasphemed. People accused of blasphemy in Pakistan usually go into hiding during the pendency of their trials.
Indian situation
In this story of Asia Bibi, change a few names. Replace Sheikhupura, next door to Lahore, with Dadri, next door to Delhi. Substitute Asia Bibi with Mohammad Akhlaq, who was lynched last Monday on the suspicion he had eaten beef. Frightening similarities emerge between the fate of Asia Bibi and Akhlaq, Pakistan and India.
Just as the easy availability of guns in the United States has led to ghastly killing sprees, the laws protecting religious sensitivities in India and Pakistan are scripting tragic deaths. Indeed, the cow-protection laws in India are fast becoming the symbol of inhumanity and injustice, just as blasphemy laws are in Pakistan – a tool for harassing minorities and oppressed Hindu groups, and for playing dangerous political games.
Mirror images
It’s possible you will disagree vehemently. So first, examples of Pakistanis killed for blasphemy.
Punjab Governor Salman Taseer was gunned down in 2011 by his bodyguard for coming out in defence of Asia Bibi. In 2003, Samuel Masih, accused of blasphemy, was killed in a hospital in Lahore where he had been taken from jail for treatment. His killer was his police guard, who used a hammer to smash his skull. In 2008, Muslim workers in a Karachi factory lynched Jagdish Kumar, who was accused of making blasphemous remarks.
But similar examples of barbarity can’t be found in India, you’d say. Think again.
Last year, a mini-van was stopped at a police check-post in Chhawla village of Delhi’s Najafgarh area. Its driver had been contracted by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation to take carcasses of cows for cremation. His name: Santosh Kumar. His caste: Valmiki. Soon, boys riding motorcycles swooped on him, smashing his skull. In 2002, five Dalits in Jhajjar district of Haryana were lynched by a VHP mob at a police station. They were ferrying the carcasses of cows for which they, like Santosh Kumar, had the requisite licence.
In Dadri, a Homeguard constable was among those who is said to have compelled the local temple priest to announce that Akhlaq had eaten beef and stored some at his home. Five months before Dadri, video clips went viral showing vigilante groups in Punjab tonsuring a truck-driver and torturing him. The driver was ferrying cows. In March, two Muslims were arrested from Malegaon, Maharashtra, for allegedly slaughtering a cow.
As an exercise, Google “FIRs lodged against cow slaughter” to see how India’s cow protection laws are being increasingly used to bind citizens, in much the same way as Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are.
Changing Blasphemy laws
It’s instructive to learn from the changes Pakistan introduced in its blasphemy laws and the consequences they have had.
Before 1986, 14 cases of blasphemy were reported in Pakistan. But this figure skyrocketed between 1984 and 2004, with about 5,000 cases of blasphemy being registered in Pakistan and over 800 people being charged under them. Of these people, 479 were Muslim, 340 Ahmadis (who have been declared non-Muslim under the Pakistani Constitution), 119 Christians, 14 Hindus and 10 others.
What happened in Pakistan in the 1980s, you wonder. The answer: General Zia-ul Haq. During his 10-year of presidency, beginning 1978, he altered the delicate relationship between society, law and religion.
For decades, the Pakistan Penal Code, which the British introduced in 1860, had a provision – Section 295 – which prescribed a maximum of two years of imprisonment to anyone found guilty of damaging or defiling a place of worship. In 1927, following the eruption of religious riots, Section 295-A was added, awarding maximum punishment of 10 years to anyone resorting to deliberate and malicious acts to insult the religion or religious beliefs of any class.
Both these provisions required the intent of the accused to be proved, and did not privilege Muslims over other communities. This was reversed during Gen Zia’s tenure.
In 1982, Section 295-B was introduced, awarding life imprisonment to anyone found guilty of wilfully defiling, damaging or desecrating the Quran or using extracts from it derogatively. Two years later came Section 295-C, which prescribed death sentence for anyone found guilty of blaspheming the Prophet. Not only this, the Federal Shariat Court declared the death sentence had to be mandatory punishment under Section 295-C, and that only a Muslim judge could try the accused.
Since then, Pakistan has lost the peace. Blasphemy laws were invoked to settle personal scores, or to win brownie points with Allah by terrorising religious minorities and Muslim liberals. These changes in the penal code might not have on their own given a fillip to fundamentalism, but they were also accompanied by Gen Zia’s concerted attempts to Islamise the Pakistani society.
Isn’t this what is precisely happening in India now? Aren’t we seeking to establish and reinforce the sacredness of the cow through law, much in the same way Pakistan has vis-à-vis the Quran and the Prophet?
The law and the courts
This phenomenon isn't new. Three weeks before Independence, Gandhi referred to Rajendra Prasad (who became India’s first President) receiving telegrams and letters demanding a ban on cow-slaughter. Gandhi argued against such an imposition: “I have been long pledged to serve the cow but how can my religion also be the religion of the rest of the Indians? It will mean coercion against those Indians who are not Hindus.” In other words, Gandhi rejected the notion of India being a land of Hindus, whose religious sentiments should take preference over those of others.
Nevertheless, the Congress ignored Gandhi’s arguments. In the 1950s, its governments in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh enacted cow protection laws. The Supreme Court upheld these laws in a 1958 case, invoking the Directive Principles of State Policy contained in Article 48 of the Constitution. However, it ruled that a ban on the slaughter of bullocks and bulls that were old and economically unproductive amounted to imposing unreasonable restrictions on the butchers, who were the petitioners, and was, therefore, ultra vires of the Constitution.
Several states continued to legislate on cow protection. Most of them, though, in accordance with the Supreme Court judgement, allowed the slaughter of aged bulls and oxen or even cows certified as fit-for-slaughter. Only Tripura, Kerala, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim have no restrictions whatsoever on cow slaughter.
In 2005, however, the Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Gujarat government, of which Prime Minister Narendra Modi was then the chief minister, to impose a total ban on cattle slaughter, including bulls and bullocks, regardless of their age.
The issue of cow slaughter acquired a new salience in the weeks ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Modi on his campaign trip in western UP and Haryana attacked the United Progressive Alliance for ushering in a “pink revolution”, a euphemism for India's huge volume of beef exports. Inspired, the Bharatiya Janata Party governments in Maharashtra and Haryana altered their cow protection law, enhancing imprisonment and bringing bulls and oxen under its purview. Now, BJP leader Sushil Modi has declared that should his party come to power in Bihar, the government would ban even the slaughter of aged bovines.
A broader context
The passionate debate over the cow and amendments to state laws protecting it are taking place in the larger context of the BJP’s attempt to stoke the religiosity of Hindus and fictionalise history. The devastating changes in Pakistan’s blasphemy laws were effected during the Islamisation process. Gen Zia allowed Pakistani soldiers to sport beards without prior approval. India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation has been asked to adapt technologies described in India’s ancient scriptures.
When you are drunk and drive a car at 140 kilometres per hour, the chance of you having an accident is extremely high. You should count yourself extremely lucky if you don’t have one. Likewise, when the social milieu is vitiated, hatred and violence seem to follow as a natural consequence.
From this perspective, Mohammad Akhlaq was not an accident, as Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma would have us believe. His death was waiting to happen. Similarly, India will be lucky if it manages to veer away from the path to perdition, a road on which Pakistan has some lead already. There is no mistaking that its blasphemy laws and India’s cow-protection laws are milestones counting down to catastrophe.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.
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Asia Bibi was accused of insulting Prophet Muhammad and was booked under Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy law. The courts sentenced her to death. Her execution was eventually stayed in July this year to allow her to appeal against the verdict. Should her appeal be rejected, Asia will become the first person in Pakistan to be judicially executed for blasphemy.
She is lucky that she is still alive. The Islamabad-based Centre for Security Studies says 52 Pakistanis have been killed over alleged blasphemy offences since 1990, either in courts hearing their cases, or when they were on bail, or in jail, or simply lynched as soon as someone alleged they had blasphemed. People accused of blasphemy in Pakistan usually go into hiding during the pendency of their trials.
Indian situation
In this story of Asia Bibi, change a few names. Replace Sheikhupura, next door to Lahore, with Dadri, next door to Delhi. Substitute Asia Bibi with Mohammad Akhlaq, who was lynched last Monday on the suspicion he had eaten beef. Frightening similarities emerge between the fate of Asia Bibi and Akhlaq, Pakistan and India.
Just as the easy availability of guns in the United States has led to ghastly killing sprees, the laws protecting religious sensitivities in India and Pakistan are scripting tragic deaths. Indeed, the cow-protection laws in India are fast becoming the symbol of inhumanity and injustice, just as blasphemy laws are in Pakistan – a tool for harassing minorities and oppressed Hindu groups, and for playing dangerous political games.
Mirror images
It’s possible you will disagree vehemently. So first, examples of Pakistanis killed for blasphemy.
Punjab Governor Salman Taseer was gunned down in 2011 by his bodyguard for coming out in defence of Asia Bibi. In 2003, Samuel Masih, accused of blasphemy, was killed in a hospital in Lahore where he had been taken from jail for treatment. His killer was his police guard, who used a hammer to smash his skull. In 2008, Muslim workers in a Karachi factory lynched Jagdish Kumar, who was accused of making blasphemous remarks.
But similar examples of barbarity can’t be found in India, you’d say. Think again.
Last year, a mini-van was stopped at a police check-post in Chhawla village of Delhi’s Najafgarh area. Its driver had been contracted by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation to take carcasses of cows for cremation. His name: Santosh Kumar. His caste: Valmiki. Soon, boys riding motorcycles swooped on him, smashing his skull. In 2002, five Dalits in Jhajjar district of Haryana were lynched by a VHP mob at a police station. They were ferrying the carcasses of cows for which they, like Santosh Kumar, had the requisite licence.
In Dadri, a Homeguard constable was among those who is said to have compelled the local temple priest to announce that Akhlaq had eaten beef and stored some at his home. Five months before Dadri, video clips went viral showing vigilante groups in Punjab tonsuring a truck-driver and torturing him. The driver was ferrying cows. In March, two Muslims were arrested from Malegaon, Maharashtra, for allegedly slaughtering a cow.
As an exercise, Google “FIRs lodged against cow slaughter” to see how India’s cow protection laws are being increasingly used to bind citizens, in much the same way as Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are.
Changing Blasphemy laws
It’s instructive to learn from the changes Pakistan introduced in its blasphemy laws and the consequences they have had.
Before 1986, 14 cases of blasphemy were reported in Pakistan. But this figure skyrocketed between 1984 and 2004, with about 5,000 cases of blasphemy being registered in Pakistan and over 800 people being charged under them. Of these people, 479 were Muslim, 340 Ahmadis (who have been declared non-Muslim under the Pakistani Constitution), 119 Christians, 14 Hindus and 10 others.
What happened in Pakistan in the 1980s, you wonder. The answer: General Zia-ul Haq. During his 10-year of presidency, beginning 1978, he altered the delicate relationship between society, law and religion.
For decades, the Pakistan Penal Code, which the British introduced in 1860, had a provision – Section 295 – which prescribed a maximum of two years of imprisonment to anyone found guilty of damaging or defiling a place of worship. In 1927, following the eruption of religious riots, Section 295-A was added, awarding maximum punishment of 10 years to anyone resorting to deliberate and malicious acts to insult the religion or religious beliefs of any class.
Both these provisions required the intent of the accused to be proved, and did not privilege Muslims over other communities. This was reversed during Gen Zia’s tenure.
In 1982, Section 295-B was introduced, awarding life imprisonment to anyone found guilty of wilfully defiling, damaging or desecrating the Quran or using extracts from it derogatively. Two years later came Section 295-C, which prescribed death sentence for anyone found guilty of blaspheming the Prophet. Not only this, the Federal Shariat Court declared the death sentence had to be mandatory punishment under Section 295-C, and that only a Muslim judge could try the accused.
Since then, Pakistan has lost the peace. Blasphemy laws were invoked to settle personal scores, or to win brownie points with Allah by terrorising religious minorities and Muslim liberals. These changes in the penal code might not have on their own given a fillip to fundamentalism, but they were also accompanied by Gen Zia’s concerted attempts to Islamise the Pakistani society.
Isn’t this what is precisely happening in India now? Aren’t we seeking to establish and reinforce the sacredness of the cow through law, much in the same way Pakistan has vis-à-vis the Quran and the Prophet?
The law and the courts
This phenomenon isn't new. Three weeks before Independence, Gandhi referred to Rajendra Prasad (who became India’s first President) receiving telegrams and letters demanding a ban on cow-slaughter. Gandhi argued against such an imposition: “I have been long pledged to serve the cow but how can my religion also be the religion of the rest of the Indians? It will mean coercion against those Indians who are not Hindus.” In other words, Gandhi rejected the notion of India being a land of Hindus, whose religious sentiments should take preference over those of others.
Nevertheless, the Congress ignored Gandhi’s arguments. In the 1950s, its governments in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh enacted cow protection laws. The Supreme Court upheld these laws in a 1958 case, invoking the Directive Principles of State Policy contained in Article 48 of the Constitution. However, it ruled that a ban on the slaughter of bullocks and bulls that were old and economically unproductive amounted to imposing unreasonable restrictions on the butchers, who were the petitioners, and was, therefore, ultra vires of the Constitution.
Several states continued to legislate on cow protection. Most of them, though, in accordance with the Supreme Court judgement, allowed the slaughter of aged bulls and oxen or even cows certified as fit-for-slaughter. Only Tripura, Kerala, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim have no restrictions whatsoever on cow slaughter.
In 2005, however, the Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Gujarat government, of which Prime Minister Narendra Modi was then the chief minister, to impose a total ban on cattle slaughter, including bulls and bullocks, regardless of their age.
The issue of cow slaughter acquired a new salience in the weeks ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Modi on his campaign trip in western UP and Haryana attacked the United Progressive Alliance for ushering in a “pink revolution”, a euphemism for India's huge volume of beef exports. Inspired, the Bharatiya Janata Party governments in Maharashtra and Haryana altered their cow protection law, enhancing imprisonment and bringing bulls and oxen under its purview. Now, BJP leader Sushil Modi has declared that should his party come to power in Bihar, the government would ban even the slaughter of aged bovines.
A broader context
The passionate debate over the cow and amendments to state laws protecting it are taking place in the larger context of the BJP’s attempt to stoke the religiosity of Hindus and fictionalise history. The devastating changes in Pakistan’s blasphemy laws were effected during the Islamisation process. Gen Zia allowed Pakistani soldiers to sport beards without prior approval. India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation has been asked to adapt technologies described in India’s ancient scriptures.
When you are drunk and drive a car at 140 kilometres per hour, the chance of you having an accident is extremely high. You should count yourself extremely lucky if you don’t have one. Likewise, when the social milieu is vitiated, hatred and violence seem to follow as a natural consequence.
From this perspective, Mohammad Akhlaq was not an accident, as Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma would have us believe. His death was waiting to happen. Similarly, India will be lucky if it manages to veer away from the path to perdition, a road on which Pakistan has some lead already. There is no mistaking that its blasphemy laws and India’s cow-protection laws are milestones counting down to catastrophe.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.