In a recent editorial, the country’s most reputed English-language newspaper rightly drew attention to rising hostility against Christians in India. It referred to attacks on Christmas symbols, intimidation around churches, and the emboldening of extremist mobs. Much of this concern is valid and necessary. But one sentence in the editorial quietly exposes how even principled commentary can slip into analytical looseness.
Referring to violence against Christians, the editorial states:
“The most recent such episode occurred in Manipur, during an ethno-religious conflict between two local communities, in which hundreds of churches were reportedly torched.”
This line carries significant weight — and it deserves closer scrutiny.
The destruction of churches in Manipur did indeed occur, and on a devastating scale. However, that episode began in May 2023, nearly two years ago. It is “recent” only in a rhetorical sense. For readers encountering the line in the context of “incidents over the past few days leading up to Christmas”, the phrase reasonably implies currency, not historical reference.
Here, the editorial’s approach diverges sharply from Pakistan’s own official diplomatic communication on the same issue. The Foreign Office, in its statement, condemned the “recent condemnable incidents of vandalism during Christmas” and spoke of “state-sponsored campaigns”. It strategically anchored its condemnation in the immediate timeline of Christmas 2025. Notably, it made no mention of Manipur.
The contrast is instructive. The state, engaged in diplomatic advocacy, confined itself to a verifiable, current pattern to build a defensible case. The editorial, driven by moral urgency, reached for the most severe example in recent memory — even if doing so required stretching the timeline. The problem, therefore, is not factual error but temporal compression. By placing Manipur alongside current Christmas-season incidents, the editorial collapses time, blurring the line between what is unfolding now and what has already passed into history.
This matters because the editorial positions itself as a moral indictment rather than a casual opinion. Chronological looseness, even when unintentional, weakens credibility and hands detractors an easy escape route. Those inclined to deny persecution will not engage with the substance; they will point to the slippage. The Foreign Office’s restrained chronology, by comparison, offers no such opening.
More importantly, this imprecision exposes a deeper issue: selective urgency.
While the editorial invokes Manipur as the “most recent” large-scale atrocity, it remains silent on genuinely current incidents unfolding across the region at the same moment. In Bangladesh, Hindu homes were set ablaze in coordinated arson attacks in Chattogram between December 19 and 23. On December 24, a Hindu man was beaten to death and later set on fire by a mob in Rajbari. These are not historical reminders; they are present-day realities.
Once sectarian hatred is normalised, it consumes far more than just officially recognised minorities
And Pakistan itself cannot claim exemption from this regional malaise.
From January to December 30, 2025, Pakistan recorded 25 sectarian attacks, resulting in 41 fatalities, 48 injuries, and 89 casualties. The violence cut across communities: Sunnis, Shias, Ahmadis, Hindus, Christians, and Ahl-e-Hadeeth followers were all affected. Mosques and madrasas were attacked. Notably, the highest number of casualties occurred among Sunni and Shia communities, underscoring a grim truth often obscured in public discourse: once sectarian hatred is normalised, it consumes far more than just officially recognised minorities.
Yet these figures rarely appear in elite editorials or official moral pronouncements. Domestic sectarian violence is reported episodically, stripped of cumulative context, and seldom integrated into broader regional assessments of religious hatred. Even as Pakistan urges the world to protect minorities elsewhere, its own sectarian toll remains largely unexamined as part of the same continuum.
The issue, therefore, is not that the editorial criticised India. That scrutiny is justified, just as diplomatic pressure is a legitimate state instrument. The issue is that the moral lens narrows selectively, and history is stretched or silences maintained to compensate for the absence of a consistent, contemporaneous framework that applies scrutiny evenly.
Ironically, this mirrors the very phenomenon being condemned: concern activated unevenly, shaped by political comfort rather than by the immediacy of suffering.
Minorities across South Asia are not endangered by one ideology alone. They are endangered by majoritarian narratives, institutional weakness, political transitions, sectarian mobilisation, and elite discourse that highlights some victims while rendering others peripheral, whether through temporal blurring in an editorial or strategic silences in statecraft.
If journalism is to play a genuinely constructive role, it must do more than focus outward, especially in a selective manner. Editorial boards have wide access to both local and international developments that allow them to form comprehensive judgements on the issues they choose to address. Any lack of care regarding timelines can not only affect their credibility but may also lead readers and analysts towards inaccurate conclusions. Avoiding distinctions that cause some suffering to be treated as merely historical illustration while other suffering remains less visible in current discourse does not reflect the standards of journalism expected of such institutions.
Precision is not pedantry. In matters of persecution, precision is credibility. And credibility is the first casualty when “most recent” becomes a moving target.