Pakistanis know well how safe their country is. Large parts are ungoverned spaces from where emerge armed thugs, wreaking murder and mayhem every day. Even supposedly administered parts — such as Pakistani Punjab — are host to terrorist bands nurtured by the state over decades. These engage in wanton sectarian killings and turn their ideological gun — loaded with communal venom — against India.
Hafiz Saeed, head of a particularly malevolent formation under which come the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa, and which has shown itself to be a conjoint twin of the Pakistan Army, has lately engaged in a self-condemning, hate-India trick. That is not a surprise.
But Pakistan interior minister Rehman Malik thought this trick so worthy that he mimicked Saeed’s words which seek to manufacture the notion that Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan needs protection from Hindutva goons on account of being a Muslim, that India can’t provide this, and therefore the magnanimous “land of the pure” created for the subcontinent’s Muslims feels duty-bound to offer Mr Khan sanctuary.
That’s a “jannat” India’s Muslims, or those from anywhere else, can do without, as the people of Pakistan might well appreciate. But it is a Pakistan Cabinet minister’s over-enthusiasm in promoting the cause of a terrorist outfit that is regrettable and worrying. The iconic star has himself seen fit to provide an appropriate rejoinder to the likes of Saeed and Rehman Malik, in which he underscores the idea of India. That should be the last word from here.