Why is the tolerance/intolerance debate futile in India?

India is an apt example of social contradictions. India is Ram. India is Ravan. India is Buddha. India is Aurangzeb. India is Gandhi. India is Godse. India is a prophet and a pusher. India is partly truth, partly fiction. 

We are an unexplainable, indefinable and incomprehensible nation.  We can’t be understood on the semantics of tolerance and intolerance.In India, wisdom (Saraswati), wealth (Lakshmi) and power (Durga) are manifested as goddesses while globally, we rank lowest in women empowerment. One wouldn’t be surprised to hear of a khap panchayat ordering the killing of a young girl for loving a boy of different gotra during Durga Puja - a festival that celebrates woman as Shakti (empowered woman).

In one part of India a Hindu mob lynches a Muslim and in another part Hindus empty a road to facilitate Jumme ki Namaz for Muslims. We can witness a Sikh Langar, Muslim Namaz, Hindu Kirtan and a Christian Mass in a radius of 500 metres and within the same radius Hindus will refuse to rent their houses to Muslims and vice versa. Muslim classical singers start their performances with Saraswati Vandana, whereas, in movies, a Hindu couple breaks into a Sufi song devoted to Allah, Maula or a Khwaja.

A film star and a liquor baron, dressed in Armani/ Versace, will leave a swanky 5-star hotel in a Rs 3 crore Rolls-Royce, after attending a charity dinner with Paris Hilton and race at 200 kmph on the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, an engineering marvel. They detour into a dug up, bumpy 19th-century road, their driver honks at a slow moving haath-thela, pulled by a walking skeleton in a half lungi. They stop at a late night chai-cum-keema-paratha stall, infested with flies, cockroaches, cops, pimps, beggars and eunuchs. Just a few feet away from the teashop is an open garbage mound hiding ‘Clean India’ poster. In that garbage dump, a 5-year-old child is fighting with a piglet and rodents for food while her mother is sweeping the road for more BMWs to zip past on.  As they sip tea, discussing ‘increasing intolerance’, their driver literally kicks off a beggar and wipes off his fingerprints from the car’s shining bonnet. The beggar moves to another BMW, reflecting giant billboards advertising a $1000/night holiday in Australia along with illegal and ugly political posters.

We are world’s least innovative country yet we made the cheapest journey to Mars. We are world leaders in unorganised recycling and repairing. We are champions of multi-purpose usage of devices. The best example is how we use our railway tracks for mass sanitation and use the excreta as fertiliser for growing vegetables. We are world’s oldest country and a spiritual leader having built the world’s first planned city in Nalanda. Paradoxically, we have the worst planned cities with appalling quality of sanitation, drinking water and hygiene. We have given Yoga and Ayurveda to the world but have high rates of malnutrition in our society. We are the world’s second most populated country and ironically also have a history of forced sterilisations.

We are a country of the world’s oldest texts in Vedas but don’t have an authentic written history. We are also a country of the Emergency, of literary and creative bans. We also kill people who try to rationalise popular ideas. We don’t tolerate cows sitting in the middle of the road; we accept them as part of our urban landscape. In a lot of Indian cities, monkeys live freely. Tourists find them menacing and throw stones at them while locals live with them with an unexplainable understanding and reverence, treating them like descendants of Lord Hanuman.

We don’t question men who urinate under ‘Yahan Peshab Karna Mana Hai’ signs and those men who enjoy their bus/train rides sitting on ‘Women Only’ seats. We love our malls and 5-star hotels for their cleanliness but spit our gutka the moment we are out on the street. If you want to see our civic sense, just take the staircase of any building, in any part of India and look at the corners; if they aren’t painted red with paan spits, you aren’t in India. We pick up filth from private properties and throw them on public properties.

We have Muthaliks who beat up pub-going girls (with 'loose character') and we have girls who send him thousands of ‘pink chaddis’. We want to every deemed anti-national kicked out of India while wanting our children to study abroad. We want the government to bring social justice but look for a gori, convent-educated, cultured, apt in household chores, bride with good dahej.

We want the government to shower us with 'achhe din' while we evade taxes.

We have not just given Satyajit Ray, Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt to the world, we have invented film genres like ‘mindless comedies’, ‘masala films’, ‘family films’ and ‘story-less films’. We take pride in ‘Bollywood’ as our best-known brand in the world and yet we love to censor our films. We aspire to be like Hollywood but refuse to pay our writers and love to fake box-office figures.

We love to hate the rich but also want to become rich. We take pride in our simplicity but do vulgar displays of wealth at our children’s weddings. We believe in reincarnation, but our funerals are so melodramatic.

Our Constitution specifies our rights and their extent yet we believe everything is our right: from unnecessary honking to spitting in public places to eve-teasing a girl to ragging juniors. Many people believe it’s their right to hurt others, to make it difficult for others and if the need be, even kill others. As a country, we still spend years debating the reasons for massacres and riots but never hold anyone accountable. It’s okay for us to steal, to bribe, to lie, to be a hypocrite and to be perpetually late. Nobody has a clear view of whether not standing for National Anthem is our right or throwing the defiant viewer out of the cinema hall is our right.

In some states, people suffer from police atrocities and in some people throw stones at police. We are victims of intense terrorism yet we take decades to convict a terrorist and then fight for his right to live. We hang terrorists and also give them martyr’s mourning.

Liberalism is defined by attacking and ridiculing the majority while secularism is practiced by appeasing the minority. 

We make Gods out of our cricketers but hurl water bottles and abuses at them when they fail to score runs. We curse God for killing people in the Chennai rains and pray to the same God for our safety. We celebrate when Amma is arrested and also celebrate when she is released. We can be blind worshippers and passionate agnostics of the same God. Our philosophy begins with ‘Tatvam Asi' (Thou art that) but mediocrity is our national culture.

We have millions of Gods, but we live in a hell. If you travel length and breadth of India crossing its metropolis, kasbahs and gaon, at the end of your journey, you would feel as if India is a concentrated display of the entire world’s problems. Abject poverty, hunger, unemployment, inflation, insurgency, political unrest, lack of basic amenities like drinking water and electricity, housing, epidemics, droughts, floods, dying rivers, terrorism, social exploitation, women safety, corruption, unethical media, partisan politics, unreported crimes, racism, sexism, foetal killings, child labour, regional, social and financial disparity, inefficient system, unproductive public sector, lopsided education, coal mafia, water mafia, religious crimes, hate crimes, cyber crimes— you name a problem, it exists here. A new problem is invented almost every day. To top it all, people have to constantly deal with mosquitos, infections, dengue, dug up roads, heat, noise and delays in almost everything, ranging from trains to court cases. Yet, we live. Together.  

We are a loud noisy, melodramatic and an over-the-top society. Be it a wedding or a funeral, an election or a selection, traffic or TV, everything in India is larger than life. Amidst all this, people travel here to find peace.

India isn’t an either/or society. She is an amalgamation of all these things. India can irritate you with its filth, stench and bugs or it can give you an orgasmic flash of enlightenment. India is, perhaps, the world’s most liberal society, having given major peaceful religions, yet she is ridden with religious clichés.

For a visitor, India is a mess. For an inhabitant, India is the cosmic truth. When foreigners arrive, India is a question.  When they leave, India is an answer. They come to discover India but end up discovering themselves.

India is 'Vasudev Kutumbkam'. It’s a home. Home is not a building. It’s a feeling. Our roots are in the joint family system. Joint families don’t run on tolerance. They run by understanding and acceptance. This kind of coexistence doesn’t come from tolerating. It comes from understanding the reality of our world, our potential and our limitations and by accepting them. We believe in universal acceptance and unconditional surrender to cosmic reality. It’s in our nature. It’s our DNA. This is the ‘Idea of India’. 

Vivek Agnihotri is a filmmaker, writer and motivational speaker.