In November 1998, I visited the 3,400-year-old Temple of Hatshepsut near Luxor, which stands out in two ways among the plenitude of magnificent historical sites dotting Egypt. First, it looks more Greek Classical than Pharaonic Egyptian, though it was built centuries before anything similar came up in Athens. Second, it honours the most unusual of pharaohs, a woman. Hatshepsut was the first female to rule Egypt, and historians give her high marks for managing the country during her twenty two years in power.

Exactly a year before my visit, the site had made news for a tragic reason.

There, on November 17, 1997, Islamist militants massacred 58 travellers, 36 of them Swiss, others Japanese, German, British, and Colombian. Four locals were also killed. Those murdered included elderly couples, lone women, and a five-year-old child. The massacre at the Temple of Hatshepsut was a turning point. Horrified by the unrepentant brutality of the Islamists, many Egyptians began to view Hosni Mubarak’s military dictatorship, torture chambers and all, as the lesser of two evils. Militancy in Egypt lost what mass support it had, and the insurgency withered.

Over a decade later, a non-violent movement led by liberals would do in three weeks what Islamist violence failed to achieve in three decades, toppling Mubarak and clearing the way for free and fair elections. Now, little more than two years after that exhilarating moment, the Egyptian military has initiated a coup against the legitimately elected President of Egypt.

Is that a step back for Egypt? Have the revolutionaries who came out onto the streets once more, this time to demand President Mohammed Morsi’s removal, played into the hands of the old guard? It’s too early to say for sure, but a clue lies near the Temple of Hatshepsut. Two weeks ago, Morsi appointed as governor of Luxor Adel el-Khayat, a member of the political wing of the Gamaa Islamiya (what we would call the Jamaat-e-Islami). The group had waged war against the government through the 1990s, and is held responsible for the massacre of November 1997.

The President’s supporters gave familiar excuses when his choice was criticised: a lot of water has flowed from the Aswan High Dam since 1997; Gamaa Islamiya renounced violence a decade ago; Adel el-Khayat has never been convicted of any crime; and so on. But Luxor’s citizens were having none of it. Within a week, the governor was forced to resign.

The fact that President Morsi appointed a member of a former terror group to lead a province where that group carried out its most infamous atrocity indicates he never had any regard for the beliefs that animated the Arab Spring. The constitution he proposed a few months ago signalled a similar disregard for the principles of democracy. Democracy, after all, is not about elections so much as it is about rights.

The truest tests of a democracy are the degree to which the weakest can exercise their rights, and the extent to which their rights are recognised by law.

Egypt’s new constitution neither protects the rights of Christians and other non-Muslims sufficiently, nor gives women and other historically marginalised groups any succour. It passed in a referendum, but only a third of the electorate voted.

The erudite Egyptian diplomat Tahseen Basheer once said, “Egypt is the only nation-state in the Arab world. The rest are just tribes with flags.” He might have exaggerated, but wasn’t wholly wrong. As a large nation with a long history, a sophisticated population, and a complex economy, Egypt is a natural leader of the modern Arab world, much more so than Sheikhs awash in petrodollars who a couple of generations ago lived in tents. Hopefully, the nation has not lost its way, but is in the process of finding it, and the step back that the coup represents will only enable a leap forward.

The story of President Morsi’s abuse of power, and his promotion of people linked to a past atrocity, inevitably brings to mind a person closer to home who has done pretty much the same thing. Narendra Modi made Maya Kodnani a minister, though she was implicated for inciting violence during the Gujarat riots of 2002. She has since been convicted for her role in the Naroda Patiya massacre, which was every bit as gruesome as the Hatshepsut temple butchery.

Last month, the Gujarat chief minister, newly appointed chairman of the BJP’s campaign committee, put Amit Shah in charge of the Uttar Pradesh unit, though the man is accused in a case of kidnap and murder, and was for a long time barred by the Supreme Court from entering his home state. Modi promoted a number of policemen who were in charge of areas worst hit during the riots, where the police had done little or nothing to stop assaults. Some of those officers are now in jail for cold-blooded killings disguised as shootouts.

In a well-publicised move that turned into a public relations disaster, Modi recently flew to Uttarakhand to evacuate Hindu pilgrims expeditiously after a flood there. This is the same man who refused to visit relief camps packed with Muslim victims in his own home state, until forced to accompany the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to one, over a month after the carnage. It is preposterous that this man is considered a serious candidate for prime minister. We could learn something from the citizens of Luxor.

The author is an independent journalist and an art critic.