On the temple.

Byline: Aasim Sajjad Akhtar

THERE are many in our land that fall into the category of what anti-colonial freedom fighter Frantz Fanon called 'the wretched of the earth', such is the cauldron of injustice and tyranny that is contemporary Pakistan. The almost daily tribulations faced by the diverse group of confessional groups officially known as 'religious minorities' are second to none.

The halting of construction work on a Hindu temple in the federal capital over the past week is the latest high-profile example of the structural violence faced by people who do not fall into the idealised category of 'good Muslim'. The temple may eventually be built, but the hateful and threatening polemic which comes to the fore around such issues is endemic.

Hateful polemic is, in fact, just the tip of the iceberg; in both the past and present, churches have been burned down, Hindu and Christian girls and women forcibly converted and married off, unnamed and unseen thousands suffered lynchings and targeted killings, and individuals like Junaid Hafeez and Aasia Bibi fated to serve lifelong jail sentences and/or forced exile.

The long history of religion being weaponised, and the dire constitutional clauses through which confessional groups outside official Islam have been disenfranchised, merits repetition. The normative ideal of each individual citizen having equal and guaranteed constitutional rights in any case dies the moment we formally assign anyone to the category of 'minority'.

Hateful polemic is just the tip of the iceberg.

But the temple episode is also instructive because it provides both insight into the deep penetration of state ideology into society, segments of which now propagate religious supremacism as a matter of course, as well as the distinct material interests associated with places of religious worship.

A handful of videos doing the rounds on the internet are instructive with respect to ideology. One featured ordinary teenagers from the neighbourhood pulling down a half-erected boundary wall at the construction site, another featured a very young boy threatening death to any authority figure that allowed the Hindu temple to be built.

While it is important not to overstate how representative such social media posts are in our day and age, they cannot be understated either. Progressives continue to rightly call for the reform of curriculum and strict action against hate speech in mainstream media, but the sensationalist and polarising...