I DO not know what is happening with Tariq Ali`s new book, but banning books has similarities with the Taliban mindset.

After all when two suspected Taliban gunmen shot Gayle Williams in a Kabul street on Monday, the cold-blooded murder of the British Christian charity worker was linked to her proselytising mission in Afghanistan. Her charity denied that Gayle was doing conversions.

However, there is no reason to be defensive if she was.

Writers of books also often seek converts to their point of view. What happened with Gayle is no different to what Hindu extremists have been doing to their quarries, including Christian and Muslim preachers in India, for decades. In fact, they often do worse. They also rape the women and raze their mosques and churches as an expression of their world view.

Hindus and Muslims both have banned books, music, paintings, plays and so on. What is common between the two extremists is their intolerance of each other`s right to profess and propagate their perspectives on life, which includes religion, a right enshrined in the Indian constitution but evidently not so in Pakistan or Afghanistan. It is tempting to conclude, therefore, that Indian extremists want their constitutional rights to be modelled on the medieval blasphemy laws that mainstream Pakistan is trying to repeal. I am not sure if there is an equally coercive law in US-administered Kabul.

The essential grievance in the Taliban-Bajrang Dal approach towards those they disagree with thus boils down to a fatal inability to accept that they too could be wrong. (A possibility the much-reviled Karl Marx had kept himself open to when he declared his motto of life — doubt everything.) At any rate the killing of Gayle Williams in Afghanistan, tragic though it is, was not as unexpected as the ceaseless trauma of religious and intellectual minorities in India. It looks even more shocking when it happens in India because India is seen as the world`s largest democracy.

The Taliban are not a new phenomenon. Whoever killed M.K. Gandhi or Martin Luther King — let`s say both were secular evangelists — shared the streak with today`s bigots. But not all bigots are religious. There can be the secular Taliban too, people who are intolerant of a different way of thinking or seeing the reality without being necessarily close to any religion. Those who get punched in the nose by both are known as liberals.

Prof Mushirul Hasan, the vice chancellor of Delhi`s Jamia Millia Islamia, was beaten up by Muslim extremists when he trashed Salman Rushdie`s Satanic Verses but opposed its ban by the Indian government. But the very people that once considered him secular for speaking against the ban are now abusing him. Why? Because he is seen as defending the community that wanted him lynched for alleged apostasy. Hasan has offered to give legal assistance to two students, both Muslim, who were picked up by the police for allegedly planting bombs in Delhi and elsewhere. In so doing he stands tall, albeit precariously so, among the scattered liberal community of India`s Hindus and Muslims, etc.

Tariq Ali implied in an article in The Guardian last week that his new book, The Duel Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power, was being deliberately stalled from release by the current Pakistan government. If this is so it is bound to increase the sale of the book in India and elsewhere from where curious Pakistanis would carry it back, while others would smuggle it in for snob value.

I haven`t read the book entirely, but did look at some of the passages which I thought could be behind the alleged unofficial ban on the 288-page title. There are certain disparagingly candid passages about a meeting the late Benazir Bhutto had with President Farooq Leghari prior to his dismissal of her government on charges of corruption and mismanagement. Her husband, who was in fact the main cause of Leghari`s ire, accompanied her at the meeting. Benazir defended her husband tooth and nail. In India and Pakistan there is a tradition not to rope in the head of state in a scandal. This is a colonial tradition because everywhere else the head of state is hauled over the coals. To an extent even President Pervez Musharraf was.

Britain`s Private Eye magazine was celebrated for its complete irreverence towards the monarchy, for example. It almost always referred to Queen Elizabeth casually as Brenda, probably based on palace gossip that this is what Prince Philip called her. Prince Charles was called the Biggest White something, and nobody cared, and everyone was amused. TV channels and newspapers shared graphic details of President Clinton`s impeachment ordeal in a sex scandal with their audiences and readers without a murmur from the White House. In India, by contrast, we will not hear about President Pratibha Patil`s financial deals, which was the main opposition plank before she became head of state.

So was it the graphic if, in my view, vaguely sourced details concerning President Asif Ali Zardari`s financial liaisons that led to the alleged impasse over the book? If so, it would be squeamish considering that Ayesha Siddiqa got away with an expose of the military, the holy cow of Pakistan, during Gen Musharraf`s tenure.

Or does the book reveal more than what is acceptable about America`s long-term plans in Afghanistan and, therefore, in Pakistan? There are other possible reasons why the book should cause worry to the Pakistan establishment. It insinuates that Osama bin Laden is alive and is regarded by the Pakistan army brass as “the goose that lays the golden eggs” and therefore as indispensable.

Ali sources the claim to a man who described himself as a senior security officer to Z.A. Bhutto and Gen Ziaul Haq. The officer throws up a few gems. “As long as Osama was alive, the official seemed to be saying, the flow of dollars would not stop. It sounded credible, but was it true? I shifted the conversation to another subject,” writes Ali.

And he adds “Why had General Zia`s assassination never been properly investigated? He (the Zia-Bhutto security officer) shrugged his shoulders and said Washington was not keen to dig any deeper. His own view was that the Russians were responsible. This is not an uncommon view among sections of Pakistani intelligence. For most of them, the explanation is linked to Afghanistan it was revenge by Moscow. I think this is pure fantasy. I think what my informant suggested was more original and contained a sting in the tail. According to him, the Russians owed the Indians a favour (he didn`t explain why), and Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi (Indira`s son) had asked for Zia`s head ... in return for his mother`s death.”

These are all claims that one could agree or disagree with or have a laugh at, provided one doesn`t have a Taliban mindset.

The writer is Dawn`s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com