The stench of tolerance

Well finally, let’s just be truly honest and admit it. This whole ‘unity in diversity’ fairy tale is going horribly wrong. 

We have to be one of those societies in the world that is most prone to discriminatory behavior. We must be a country that is totally committed to keeping the ‘other’ at bay, constantly harping at the ‘separateness’ of people, and manifesting this in small and big ways, subtle and overt actions, and sometimes in ugly, inhuman and violent ways. 

Mumbai and its recent display of brute politics cannot have us believe any other way.

We’ve just had enough of this feel good sloganeering that we are a tolerant society. Are we, really? And I’d go a step further, tolerance is hardly enough; it is a word that is built upon difference rather than sameness and stinks of being on the brink of tipping over into intolerance. 

One tolerates pain, because there is nothing else one can do about it. Tolerate the pain till it leaves your body. Grin and bear it.  It’s silly to think we are a great nation just because we can do no better than to just, merely tolerate other Indians who are different. Stuff up the tolerance.

The real and more thorny question is, are we really ‘accepting’ of the other? And recent events in different parts of the country say it loud and clear, that the answer is a simple and sometimes almost inaudible no. Every time someone asks me that ugly question ‘where are you from’ I can almost hear the questioner’s mind-chatter that is readying itself to define the separateness or the sameness; and as soon as I provide the answer, I am tagged.

While we take the holier than thou position of being a tolerant society, let us not forget, that tolerance can and does harbor discriminatory beliefs, tolerance can be a charade. This is an imponderable to some who’d rather hide behind the comfortable mask of being tolerant, hiding their sniggers and discriminatory thoughts of ‘we’ are better, but ‘they’ aren’t too bad either.

Tolerance is merely an act of restraint, of non reaction to stimuli provided by the ‘other’. Acceptance on the other hand is being respectful of differences and responding to them from the frame of reference of equity. Basic tolerance is one thing. Real acceptance of and respect for differences is quite another matter.

The recent violence in Mumbai against Biharis and people from Uttar Pradesh (euphemistically called North Indians by the saner voices of the media) has made a lot of people cringe with shame, as though they were seeing themselves in those horrifying pictures either as the victim or the aggressor. Observe the language used in the sloganeering. The word Bihari is almost used as a vile, vulgar, abuse. The word Bihari has always been used as an abuse, in different contexts. The word Bihari is hurled at anyone who is seen as weak. Anyone who looks poor and weak and timid and looking-for-work and not urbane and self effacing, is called a Bihari. It is amazing that the Biharis have been docile enough, tolerant enough, weak enough, and strong enough to defy the urge to hurl back abuses and retaliate with as much venom as they have received bone shattering, deliberate and painful assault to his/her personal identity. 

Yes Biharis have been strong enough not to stoop as low as to retaliate. In some strange Gandhian way, they have taken in the degrading references to their identity in their stride, and dare I say so, in their human spirit have emerged as large receptacles that can truly and humbly accept the grossness of their fellow countrymen, and even forgiving their aggressors.  Raj Thackeray is begging to be forgiven. Vilas Rao Deshmukh who is on the verge of doing a Modi on ‘north indians’ is begging to be forgiven.  Bertrand Russell would call it the ‘superior virtue of the oppressed’.

It is indeed funny how when people from UP are addressed as ‘Biharis’ they immediately retort saying they are from UP, and not from Bihar. Save yourself from anything Bihari, lest the maligned and ridiculed identity of the Bihari touch you with it’s pooh. Grow up India.

How much longer will people have to stand up and get counted for their demand for basic dignity? I am a woman, I demand my dignity. I am a dalit woman, I want my place under the sun. I am person with disability, but I can be productive. I am a person living with HIV, but that does not make me dispensable. I am a tribal, don’t take away my land. I cannot speak English, but that does not mean I cannot access higher studies. I am not fair skinned, but that does not mean I cannot be beautiful. How many of these hands will go up for due attention? Aren’t we ready yet, as a nation to become more accepting of people who may not be like ‘us’?

I started this article by saying that maybe, despite all the feel good sloganeering, we are being merely facile when we say we are a tolerant society. What have we been tolerant about? On an everyday basis, we read about men women and children being vandalized and brutalized and dehumanized on the basis of differences. When Laxmi Oraon, an adivasi from Jharkhand is paraded naked in Assam, or a Bihari taxi driver’s taxi is pulverized in Mumbai, some analysts take the sublimated view that this is merely an outcome of competition arising from deprivation. False. Were we an accepting people, nothing would be provocation enough to commit hate crimes and vandalism against the weakest and the poorest and the most marginalized. Some eternal optimists or even escapists would say, the events of hate are far fewer than those occasions where people show tolerance towards each other. False. Each hate crime, each act of abuse, of dehumanizing treatment against the weak and poor has an ugly underbelly of thousands of such acts that have gone unreported, thousands of such acts that have simmered as possibilities and not found utterance.

For a 21^st century nation growing for a few at 9%, tolerance just isn’t enough. As Shah Rukh khan says famously in his TV commercial, ‘we need to wish for more’.