Tolerant or Intolerant?

I have been hearing about the words like tolerant and intolerant for quite a few years now and I think it is time to write what I feel about it. Maybe Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan, KRK, Congress, BJP, and pretty much everyone in India and people like Donald Trump, Putin, Obama, Nawaz Shareef, and other famous leaders of the world, to learn who Indians are.

Let us see the meaning of these controversial words. Tolerance, it simply means the strength to bear the occurrence (mostly it is bad) whereas, Intolerance, means the moment when you deny bearing the occurrence (it is for sure bad).

For last 3 years, our country has been struggling with the issue of being tolerant or intolerant. Artists returned their awards and honors to show their aggression. Few film stars talked about leaving India as if Donald Trump has been elected as the President of India. People are now organizing more strikes than festivals to either support some ban (maybe Beef or Triple Talaaq) or fighting the so – called autocracy which they feel the government is enforcing on them. Well, the world’s biggest democratic economy talks about autocracy, I wish if they would have been in Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea or any other extremists countries then, these people would know what autocracy really is.

The actual issue started with Dadri incident, ban on beef and General V. K. Singh’s remark on Dalit. And the funny thing is that people now fight on some or the other issue even after Arnab Goswami left the idiot box. No one needs a panel to get screwed by the master reporter, it is a by default thing now. And in these fights, people have forgotten the real reasons and the discussions are turned to one thing, Is India tolerant or Intolerant?

Well, in my opinion, being tolerant is not a good practice. Being tolerant means that you promote the acceptance towards the occurrence which is unacceptable to you. On contrary, being intolerant raises a concern that people do not have a capacity to bear something which might be good or bad.

After analyzing the impact of these words on the world’s largest democracy and secularist nation, I have arrived at a conclusion that things should be balanced. Rising tolerance in a person will initially be good but later, it might lead to suppression of identity. And, rising intolerance will initially make you a rebel in the eyes of people but subsequently, it will make you a person who will choose things as per his interest and is not bound by some external force or pressure.

And when you know the consequences of these words, you should never be proud of being tolerant or intolerant. You should rather be proud of being a person who understands and analyses the situation and act accordingly like a civilized human.

I know you must be thinking that writing all of this is bringing me in the same crowd of the famous influencing personalities but believe me, I am neither a politician nor a film star or a renowned artist. I am just a stupid common man. The one who suffers from the consequences of the growing chaos in the nation.

For the big leaders of the country and the world, I just have a small message. This might change your way of speaking:

Think before you speak and focus on building a better nation!