When we retrace our steps in history perhaps we can learn some lessons from the unfortunate situation Pakistan is in today.

After partition Pakistan’s population had 15 percent Hindus and 2 percent Christians. If Pakistan had promoted diversity then, the next generation would have grown up in a multi-cultural, multi-religious society and exercised more tolerance.

General Zia-ul-Haq during his tenure as President systematically erased this multi-cultural heritage replacing it by radical ‘Islamicisation’ of civil society and the army. The rich Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh legacy that was common between Pakistan and India was forgotten. Had they recognised that their ancestors were also part of these traditions, they would have imbibed and kept alive some of those values and that perhaps would have made them more tolerant and less violent. When people dispose of their own heritage it makes them intolerant and fanatical.
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In the course of the Moplah riot of 1921 anything was practised from
arson to conversion to pregnant women being cut into pieces with
unborn babies protruding from the mothers’ corpses. Smt Annie Besant,
the Irish lady, and the 1913 president of the Congress, after her
visit to Malabar, exhorted Gandhiji to see for himself the ghastly
horrors.

Since 9/11, Islamic terrorists have perpetrated any numbers of blasts

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