By bringing into law the Indian Penal Code (Punjab Amendment) Bill, 2016 that seeks life imprisonment for sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Punjab assembly has embarked on a slippery slope. The legislation comes in the wake of incidents of desecration of the Sikh holy book last year. But little progress has been made in the investigation into those cases, exposing infirmities in Punjab’s law and order mechanism. Yet, perhaps to cover up its administrative failures, the Punjab government deemed it necessary to enact a draconian new law. Given that the ruling Akali Dal-BJP dispensation faces a tough assembly election next year, the move is a populist ploy to play the religion card and divert attention from the government’s shortcomings.

This is a dangerous game. Enacting a sacrilege law only with respect to the Guru Granth Sahib is bound to create demands for similar legislation with regard to other religions. In fact, Congress only objected to the bill because it did not provide for similar punishment for disrespect to other religions – which according to it went against the principle of secularism. If anything, Congress’s logic represents the worst form of pseudo-secularism as it tries to outdo the Akali-BJP combine in playing the religion card under the garb of upholding secular values.

We witnessed something similar recently in the Maharashtra assembly when Congress and BJP MLAs demanded the expulsion of their AIMIM colleague Waris Pathan for refusing to say ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’. Such competitive pandering to religious and hyper- nationalist sentiment creates rigid definitions of who is a ‘good’ Indian, leading to witch-hunts and mobocracy. In a country as diverse as ours, this militates against the very idea of India.

Punjab’s sacrilege legislation is akin to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which have led to the ascendance of theocracy and religious violence in Pakistan. That, in turn, has fatally weakened Pakistan’s democratic institutions. India lives or dies by whether it can be a democracy or not, as it is too diverse to be anything else. The rescinding of blasphemy laws marked the Enlightenment, whose values also power India’s Constitution. Going in the reverse direction will mean a reversion to medievalism and clashing fundamentalisms. Posing as it does the gravest possible threat to India’s unity and integrity, that is the most anti-national act of all. India’s political class must end this race to the bottom now.