Building a Shri Krishna Mandir in Islamabad has repeatedly proved difficult. Our liberals can blame the difficulties on the bigotry and pigheadedness of a small minority—the mad mullahs in cahoots with the almighty Army. Only if it were true.

For Left-liberals in our country humor themselves by believing—and lecturing us to believe—that the Pakistanis are good people, just like us, but are burdened with the Islamists, unscrupulous generals, the deep state, et al. When Imran Khan became Prime Minister, Congress leader and author Shashi Tharoor said that he is a “good guy and if the military decide they want peace, he will be a wonderful face for that peace but if the military decide they want hostility, I’m sure he is equally capable of being an effective voice for hostility.”

Notice “if the military decide.” As if the Pakistani Army were the only hindrance in the Indo-Pak relationship! The fact, however, is that the bellicose generals, like the mad mullahs, are from the same society, embedded in it and deriving moral and ideological sustenance from the ideals and mores of Pakistan.

But then intellectuals like Tharoor relish to wander in their fantasyland.

While Left-liberals’ pathologies emanate from their acquiescence to postmodern doctrines, those of Pakistan’s are a product and function of its unique character: it is the only country in the world that has imported both its faith and its language. While there are dozens of countries which imported religions, our western neighbor is the only one that also got its national language, Urdu, from another country and that too from its mortal enemy—India (that is, mortal enemy from its own perspective, not India’s). Much of its faith too comes from India—the Barelvi and Deobandi versions of Islam.

Come to think of it, Bangladesh, which was East Pakistan for 24 years, also separated from India on the basis of religion. When it seceded from Pakistan, it decided to continue as a separate nation, and yet it is not a creator and exporter of jihadist terror. Perhaps because it has not tried to import language and culture.

It seems that the Pakistani psyche suffers from a deep Oedipus Complex; it not just wants to define itself as not-India but also desires to destroy its father, India.

In fact, that is how it was born. Pakistan began as a tryst with Islam. Downplaying its own roots, culture, and languages—Punjabi and Sindhi languages have been systematically slighted—and distorting its history for decades, Pakistan ended up with a covenant with Islamism. Ruler after ruler—military or civil—has strengthened the scope and scale of Islamization.

But Pakistanis’ heartbreak is the condescending attitude of Arabs and Turks towards them. Prominent Pakistani journalist Hassan Nisar points out that Arabs and Turks despise Pakistanis as being lesser Muslims, and yet his compatriots identify themselves with Arabs and Turks. “Our biggest crisis is identity crisis,” Nisar says.

It is the search for a national identity, for its soul—which they can’t find in the land they are born in—that propels them to look outwards, look askance at the Arabs despite the latter’s unconcealed contempt.

So, Pakistanis persist with not-Indiaism and anti-India activities. The attempts against the Shri Krishna Mandir are an example of such activities..