Panellists equate it to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

Cow protection in India has become the equivalent of blasphemy laws in Pakistan in promoting state-sanctioned mob violence against people, said panellists at a discussion on religious majoritarianism in South Asia on Friday.

Think tanks in the U.S. capital have been generally very bullish about PM Narendra Modi and his style of governance that they find ‘decisive’ and ‘reform friendly’ and the event at the Stimson Centre was a first of sorts. “This is an unorthodox topic for a discussion here,” said Sameer Lalwani, Senior Associate and Deputy Director of the South Asia Programme at the Stimson Centre.

Comparing the incidents of lynching in Pakistan on unverifiable charges of blasphemy and those by cow vigilantes in India, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Distinguished Professor of Physics and Mathematics, Forman Christian College in Lahore said liberals in Pakistan, who had once looked up to India as a model are now saddened. “The mob that lynched a university student recently in Pakistan for raising questions about Islam on Facebook included his own room mate,” he said. Recalling that Pakistan’s slide into majoritarianism has a long history of political opportunism gone out of hand, he said it was saddening that India now appears to be following Pakistan’s footsteps.

Sadanand Dhume, Resident Fellow at American Enterprise Institute, cautioned against drawing parallels between Pakistan, which was founded on the principle of religious nationalism and India, whose foundational creed is secularism. “Despite this legacy, despite this tradition of secularism, today I am more deeply worried than I have ever been worried about India,” he said. He pointed out that though the incidents of lynchings may be small in numbers, their impact has been huge. “The government, in general, at the highest level, has not condemned these incidents immediately and forcefully,” he said.

Mr. Dhume said the appointment of Yogi Adityanath as the Chief Minister of U.P. further raises questions about BJP. “His resume has only one thing — he has said nasty, violent and bigoted things about Muslims. The message this sends is that not only that you will not be punished for saying these things, but you will also be a rewarded. What is the message that has been sent to the next generation of politicians from the ruling party? ‘If you spew hatred you are going to be on fast track,’” Mr. Dhume said. The scholar had in the past lauded Mr. Modi’s leadership, but his recent criticism of the BJP in the wake of vigilante violence in India has earned him the ire of Twitter trolls.

Madiha Afzal, Assistant Professor at University of Maryland and Gautam Mehta, of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies also participated.