With a blind heart,
You yourself understand nothing.
How can you explain anything?
You sell your erudition for possessions,
And spend life meaninglessly.
– Sant Kabir's admonition to the learned
When asked to comment upon the significance of the French Revolution, the first prime minister of the People's Republic of China, Zhou Enlai, is reputed to have answered without a moment's hesitation, "It's too early to tell." Indeed, a century or two is hardly enough time to pass judgment upon the cataclysmic events of history.
The Chinese premier could show equanimity towards an event that did not concern him directly. But a French person, who has to live with the direct consequences of that history, will probably have to learn to examine it in the light of contemporary realities. There is no better way to make sense of the present than through the lenses of the collective past. Predictably, there is a rush to compare Ghazi Abdul Rasheed of Islamabad with Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale of yesteryear. But to blame the state for fostering a Frankensteinian monster would perhaps be an over-simplification. There must be deeper reasons why the devout risk decimation in revered shrines.
Resemblances are obvious between the seizure and subsequent storming of the Lal Masjid in July, and the military operation at the Golden Temple in June 1984. But the dissimilarities are no less striking. At Amritsar, Operation Blue Star came as a shock. The Sikh community was not prepared for the desecration of the holiest of its holy shrines. Over in Islamabad, however, General Pervez Musharraf's Operation Silence had a sense of inevitability about it. The opinion-makers among the Pakistani population seem to have accepted the operation with quiet relief, rather than frenzied alarm. The consequences of similar military actions can have different political outcomes in different situations, but the aftermath of the Golden Temple tragedy offers salutary lessons to all of the strategic planners of Southasia who are confronted by religious extremism.