The rising tide of coercion

Rajmohan Gandhi

Thoughts about Gandhi for this day seamlessly turn into thoughts about the scores of innocent boys killed in Peshawar on December 16. The Mahatma was quite old and the boys were very young, but there were common elements.
In neither case had the killed done any harm to the killers. Deception was employed in both cases. The killers entered the Army Public School in the security personnel uniform. Gandhi’s assassin pretended he was venerating his victim before pumping bullets into the old man’s unprotected chest. Since many of the APS boys’ bodies showed bullet wounds in the head, they too were probably shot from a close distance. In any case, one boy after another was cold-bloodedly gunned down.
Gandhi in 1948 as well as the APS boys in 2014 symbolised an idea the killers detested. Gandhi's assassins - the man who did the actual killing plus his associates — hated Gandhi's stand, which India's Constitution would enshrine, that Indians should be left free to believe and practise any or no religion. They detested Gandhi's reminder of the thought, embraced for centuries by India's masses, that both Ishwar and Allah were God’s names.
The Peshawar killers likewise hated the idea that people could worship the way they liked. Because the Pakistani army was now targeting violent extremists who want to forcibly impose one form of religion, the killers decided that the boys of the army's soldiers and officers merited death. Uniformity required the elimination of the young sons of those defending diversity.
In both cases, freedom and its twin, tolerance, were unbearable for the killers. In both cases, an extreme act produced a strong reaction against the killers.
Believers in coercion have recently obtained a stage in India. In Pakistan they have had a free run for decades. The army and the police looked away as killers on motor-bikes mowed down people belonging to targeted sects, or when mobs incinerated alleged blasphemers. When hate-merchants declared that Pakistan’s Hindus, Sikhs and Christians were not worthy of equal rights, or decreed that Ahmadis and Shias were outside Islam's pure fold, and thus not entitled to equality or protection, politicians remained silent.
What can Indians do to help the effort against coercion in Pakistan? For one thing, we can recognise the bravery of the many in Pakistan who in the teeth of deadly danger continue to ask for freedom and tolerance; and we can spread word of this bravery.
Most Indians are unaware that many followers of Badshah Khan - the Frontier Gandhi -- have been active in the effort in Pakistan against intimidation. Hundreds connected to the Awami National Party, founded by Badshah Khan's son Wali Khan, have been killed in recent years by militant extremists. Yet the struggle of these fighters for "insaaniyat" continues. These Pakhtun men and women have courageous counterparts in Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan. Open praise in India could create problems for brave Pakistanis, but we can at least keep them in our thoughts and prayers.
In addition to wishing strength to Pakistani fighters for freedom and tolerance, we can acknowledge India's own coercive trend and strive to reverse it.
I take some heart from my recent study of Punjab's history, where I found that even during the terrifying months of 1947 — terrifying in both halves of what once was a single Punjab — Punjabis who protected threatened lives greatly outnumbered the gangs that took lives. 
I am certain, likewise, that in today's Pakistan those who want freedom and tolerance greatly outnumber the intimidators. If the latter thrive, it is because of an irresolute government and a civil society divided by enmities, and certainly not because of the people of Pakistan.
To return to Gandhi: in September 1944, when he and Jinnah held fourteen rounds of talks in Mumbai, Gandhi asked the Muslim League president whether the Pakistan he was demanding would give Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and minority Muslims equal rights. ‘Yes,’ Jinnah replied.
In June 1947, painfully acquiescing in the Partition which had been accepted by the all-India Congress, the League, and leading political figures of Punjab, Gandhi reiterated his core belief and asked direct questions regarding the two new nations that were about to emerge:
“13 June 1947. When God is here, there and everywhere God must be one…That is why I [ask] whether those calling God Rahim would have to leave [India] and whether in the part described as Pakistan Rama as the name of God would be forbidden. Would someone who called God Krishna be turned out of Pakistan? Whatever be the case there, this cannot be permitted here. We shall worship God both as Krishna and Karim and show the world that we refuse to go mad” (Collected Works 95: 270).
Had he not been killed, Gandhi would have gone to Pakistan, with Jinnah's full agreement. That was the plan for February 1948. If the two were to return today — 67 years later — to the subcontinent, Jinnah would probably be even more disappointed than Gandhi.
Yet Pakistan’s sad scenes would wound Gandhi as well. Claiming that Pakistanis were also his people, Gandhi had declared on 2 July 1947: “Both India and Pakistan are my country. I am not going to take out a passport for going to Pakistan” (CW 95: 388-9).
Gandhi's death-day should be used for honest reflection. If there is a rising tide of coercion in Pakistan and also in India, what should be the response of citizens and governments? The duty of the latter is clear: governments should make life difficult for intimidators and freer for citizens. There should be no tolerance whatsoever for threats, whether from organisations, extremist groups, mobs or persons in power.
What about the rest of us? As individuals, we may not be able to paralyse an AK 47 or defang a bomb. But we can help create a climate where diversity and diverse opinions are respected. We can agree that in every informal and formal institution where we have a place — family, farm, workplace, legislature, or whatever — we will listen to, reason with, and respect one another.
In such a climate, the militant owning a lethal weapon would feel increasingly isolated, and citizens who cherish tolerance would acquire confidence. 
The writer, a biographer and grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, is a Distinguished Scholar in Residence, IIT, Gandhinagar