Tolerance

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Wise men say: If you live in this world you have to tolerate even if a stone falls on you. But why should a stone fall on any one? They would smilingly argue and say-storms and blasts are nature’s inequilibrium: to restore balance such unnatural things will happen; since man is the best of nature the offshoots of the balancing process will fall on man only. Trees get uprooted, mountains crack, the sea gets churned but they never complain because they can’t; they never invented language. But they too suffer and wait for nature’s rejuvenating touch. Man is unrenewable, he comes for one life, therefore he does not tolerate the onslaughts of nature and the society which is of his own creation. Tolerance is a virtue of patience, patience is built into the human system; man’s psychic composure depends on this virtue which man must inculcate in his growing process. Since man is equipped with intelligence and a moral sense he alone can assimilate pain and psychosocial insults rationalising events and issues diligently. The desire to survive and the necessary struggle make the human beings tolerate all natural and societal slings and arrows with equanimity.

All religions, Hinduism in particular extol this virtue, as negative aggression shown towards unfriendly values is often self- stultifying. Priests and preachers with scholarly pretensions say, in line with Jewish revaluations, that ‘the wretched alone are the good: the poor impotent, lowly alone are the good; the suffering, deprived, sick, ugly alone are pious, alone are blessed by god...’ The soul sickening debate in the mind of Hamlet is unresolved- "whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...” for religion always advocates tolerance of all onslaughts of fortune or powerful men, is a great human virtue worthy of God’s attention. We have been coaxed with the lure of heaven to be tolerant, cowardly accepting injustice without facing the challenge manfully. We never fought sacerdotalism, imperial autocracy and exploitation of aristocracy. Poverty and deprivation were the will of god, the reward in this life for sins committed in the past birth. We were forced to confess to untruths to protect the powerful. In short tolerance was always accepted by us against our grain for fear of base life.

In the twentieth century E.M.Forster advocated the same negative virtue after Europe’s experience of the War made him humble. He argued, it is now no more possible to love the Germans but we have to tolerate them. The Germans too have the right to live in this world. Is tolerance, turning the other cheek to the enemy, a value that can replace love? Is it love of the enemy or fear of survival? Frankly I don’t know.

In the present day world ISIS menace was tolerated by the powerful countries till Iraq was decimated. It was politically correct for some countries to overlook the menace. But when the survival fear, came tangibly near it became politically correct again to resist it. But it was late.  The cost was enormous. India has been protesting the terrorist killings in India for more than twenty years. Even today countries still debate who is a terrorist and whether in Jammu and Kashmir it is terrorism or a freedom movement. So called intellectuals in India and elsewhere still advise restraint and tolerance. If tolerance is an ethical value how is it that it has now become a political virtue?

The religion which Gandhi followed, a sort of political Hinduism, demonstrated the power of tolerance. In Dandi the salt makers were beaten black and blue but their bleeding heads did not bend. We still are proud of that. But where is that pride when lynch mobs kill a serving DSP in Kashmir? Those who shout against Indian Army for having fired upon stone pelting radicalized youth do they hold the banner of tolerance? A meek surrender to death is neither a moral nor a political virtue. Often we pay the price for our tolerance in the name of political expediency or ethical values. The dalits have paid the price over the centuries. Cow vigilante groups kill Muslims to protect the cow mother simply because they are a part of the Hindu majority assuming the minority will tolerate without protest: Why? Gods in our myths and epics never tolerated injustice; the Saints and Sages too were intolerant of insult or atrocities. Why should the weak always tolerate? Tolerance is not a virtue. Human dignity should not be compromised by this negative virtue. Manliness is a proud virtue: it should not be sacrificed on the altar of tolerance.