The
best possible answer, I found to the question whether India could ever be
intolerant while going through an International bestseller novel ‘The Monk Who
Sold His Ferrari’ few days back. Here, John, a leading character of the novel
while speculating about the possible sojourn of the another prime character of
the novel Mr. Julian Mantle states that, “Perhaps he had settled in
India, a place so diverse that even a restless soul like his could have made it
his home.” The recent ‘Intolerance debate’ was sparked by few extremely
unfortunate incidents. These ill-fated episodes include the lynching of a man
belonging to Muslim Community by an alleged Hindu mob on the grapevine of
eating beef at Dadri in western Uttar Pradesh, the cold-blooded killing of
rationalist MM Kulbargi in Karnataka etc. The ‘Intolerance debate’ arrested the
national attention after a certain section of writers, artists, scientists etc.
started returning their awards like ‘Sahitya Academy’ and other such awards
which they had received in their respective fields to register protests against
rise in intolerance. They while returning their awards, incessantly kept
targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP regime, for such intolerance and
made a centralized attack on him and his Party. According to them, the present
regime in the leadership of Narendra Modi is solely responsible for rise in
intolerance.
The
history reflects the present and mirrors the future. Though, it is not genuine at
all to question the integrity of each of these award returners individually but
it is also not a hidden secret that most of them have a biased and preconceived
historical notions about the present ruling establishment in the Centre. Their
leanings towards a particular soci-political ideology is not a hush-hush. The
arguments and concerns of these writers, both ring hollow and appear to be
tendentious for several reasons. They while maintaining a centralized attack on
the PM and BJP, hardly fulminated against the respective State Governments for
its failure to maintain law and order as the same is a ‘State Subject’ which
falls under list II of the Indian Constitution. These incidents which were the
outcome of a colossal failure of ‘Rule of Law’ were intentionally coloured
religiously to malign the present ruling establishment which also led to the
defaming of India’s reputation on International Podium. They cherry-picked
these aberrations to make a federal case out of it to prove that India has
become Intolerant. If one swallow does not a summer make, one incident of
lynching a man by a fanatic Hindu mob for whatever reason doesn’t make our
entire country intolerant. The sudden halt of ‘Award Returning campaign’ after
Bihar assembly elections results bears a strong testimony that this was a
highly orchestrated campaign conducted by Opposition Party through a proxy of
individuals committed to identical or similar ideology.
This
is a matter of record that all these individuals who have returned their awards
were nowhere to be seen to register their protest during much more calamitous
conditions like Anantnag riots 1986, Bhagalpur riots 1989, Meerut riots 1987
and 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. They didn’t protest and chose to be tight-lipped when
Salman Rushdie’s ‘Satanic Verses’ was banned or Taslima Nasrin was hounded and
kept under house arrest. They maintained intriguing silence over MF Hussain’s
perverse painting of Hindu Goddess. Is it just a mere coincidence that all
these incidents didn’t shake their Conscience once but one Dadri did or does it
just indicate a clandestine agenda? I strongly believe that there is no
intolerance in the country, however I don’t believe that by merely proving
these individuals biased or tilted towards a particular ideology, the existence
of tolerance can be proved. This is a very vital question which has emerged and
which needs to be proved with substantial facts and evidences.
In
my opinion this ‘Intolerance debate’ has two facets, one is legal and the other
is political. It is an undisputed fact that the ‘Law’ ultimately prevails and
thus is dominant over ‘Politics’. A country becomes intolerant only if it’s
Constitution and the laws which govern its people are intolerant. But our
Constitution and laws are the most tolerant among others. It is tolerant to the
effect that the Supreme Court of India opens at wee hours of the night to hear
the petition of a convicted terrorist and continues to hear till barely an hour
before his scheduled hanging. An entire nation doesn’t become intolerant merely
because a fanatic Hindu mob lynches a man to death or a perverted criminal
assassinates a rationalist thinker since such a mob and a perverted criminal
doesn’t represent the country. It is only the deeply entrenched tolerance and
immense respects for the values, cutoms and other socio-religious affairs of
the minorities that has hitherto restricted our legislators to enact a ‘Uniform
Civil Code’ despite a clear mandate under Article 44 of the Constitution. Had
the India been Intolerant, the well-known Singer Adnan Sami would not have
requested for Indian Citizenship and a commodious sufferer of Intolerance
Taslima Nasrin would not have wished to spend her entire life in India. I still
remember that Interview of Balasaheb Thackeray to Arnab Goswami in May 2011 in
which he openly said, “I am a political cartoonist. I know the
political side of the thing. You are overpowering the other 4 pillars of your
democracy. Your democracy, not my democracy. I don't believe in democracy.” It is even hard to imagine for a man living
in China or Saudi Arabia to question the way of their governance. It is an
unprecedented beauty and the extreme tolerance of our nation and democracy that
allows a man like Balasaheb Thackeray to happily live and even rule a part of
this nation without believing in its democratic system. Therefore, as long as
this nation continues to run on its Constitutional principles and laws,
intolerance may exist politically but not practically.
Note: The Picture used on the blog has been taken from the Internet with due credit to its owner.
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