Obfuscation 101

The Jaranwala mob riot should have been a wakeup call for our government and its various institutions and arms. Ideally, it should have led to calls for interfaith harmony. Ideally, it should have led to law enforcement promising to do better. But Pakistan is not an ideal place, and anything that can be twisted into a bizarre narrative is twisted into a bizarre narrative here. According to a latest statement from the Punjab inspector general, the police have found ‘foreign elements’ behind the Jaranwala incident. While one cannot discount unrest fomented by ‘foreign hands’ in our country – India being the main suspect in most cases, some rightly so – how is such a statement supposed to offer any sense of solidarity to those who saw their home and places of worship burnt down by a crazed mob? Instead of trying to fix the country’s poisonous mess which has led to multiple attacks against members of minority communities over the years, the highest police official in the province has chosen to gaslight a whole community. Such obfuscation will hardly solve our problem of hatred and bigotry.

The 2021 murder of Priyantha Kumara is still fresh in our memories – a Sri Lankan factory worker who was lynched to death after his subordinates accused him of blasphemy. We have already seen Aasia Bibi’s case. We have also seen what happened to those that tried to stand up for her: former governor of Punjab Salmaan Taseer and lawyer Shahbaz Bhatti both losing their lives. In 2014, the conviction of a Christian man, Sawan Masih, led to an attack on a Christian settlement (Joseph Colony) in Lahore. In 2016, Christians were again targeted when a suicide attack turned their Easter celebrations into a tragedy.

Were all these attacks orchestrated by ‘foreign elements’? Does Pakistan not need any work at all in fixing interfaith relations, minority rights, and mob violence? In most cases, angry mobs have taken the law into their hands knowing they may get some relief from the courts (for example, the 2014 case of Shama and Shehzad, a Christian couple burnt to death in a brick kiln). In these cases, no foreign entity worked as a motivator. These incidents happened because we have nurtured a society where the mob is used to settle scores. Successive governments have failed to take any action against such angry mobs out of fear. That fear ironically is a product also of the fact that these political parties have all weaponized religious sentiment against their opponents. The mob that attacked the Christian settlement in Jaranwala also had children and teenagers as participants. It is pretty clear that years of pandering to a regressive mindset has led us to a place where the state and its officials stand helpless before violent mobs of hate. Our extremist chickens have come home to roost but our state officials are still grasping at bogeymen. The only way forward is to take measures to promote interfaith harmony and respect for all religions. Unless this is done, Pakistan will continue to report one dark incident after another.