A commentary over this report by Jug Suaiya in his blogf
Fighter
Zero tolerance
Jug Suraiya, Tuesday December 29, 2009, 08:22 PM
Voltaire said, "I disagree vehemently with what you say, but i shall defend to my death your right to say it." Today's
India might paraphrase that remark to read, "I disagree vehemently with what you say and i shall defend to your death your right not to say it."
If a 198-country survey conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre is to be believed, India ranks only below civil war-torn Iraq in terms of 'social hostility and religious discrimination'. It would seem that when it comes to respecting the social and religious beliefs and practices of others, we are a zero tolerance society. The report identifies the Hindutva movement as the main reason behind this social and religious chauvinism.
So what happened to the image we'd long fostered about India being an eclectic sponge, capable and, indeed, willing to soak in all the diverse cultural currents that have flowed into it over the millennia? What happened to the ancient concept of 'anekantwad', which has been defined as the willingness to accept another person's point of view, and which has been claimed by some commentators as the taproot of the spreading banyan tree of India's much-celebrated pluralism through the ages? Is that long-enduring tree which for long has given shelter and shade to all, irrespective of creed and custom in danger of withering and dying?
We can, of course, dismiss the Pew report as yet another example of biased, anti-India foreigners who want to paint us in the worst possible light, for their own vested interests, on all issues, be it climate change, corruption or, as in the current case, religious and social intolerance. It is not being paranoid, or xenophobic, to say that often the so-called First World projects a distorted image of India to suit its own ends and to assert an implicit moral, social or political superiority vis-`-vis us.
But such foreign gamesmanship discounted, what is likely to be the reaction to the Pew report? What is your reaction to it? Is it one of the righteous wrath there go these wicked Americans again, spreading nasty lies about us to cover up their own shortcomings on human rights issues or is it one of sober reflection maybe the report is prejudiced, but is there even a germ of truth in it?
On the same day that the Pew Research Centre report appeared in the TOI there was another report which said that
in Surat 1,747 tribals had been reconverted from Christianity to Hinduism by the Shree Sampraday organisation. The organisers of the reconversion camp reportedly did not seek official permission to reconvert, as required by the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act, 2003.
But that's a minor technical point. A far more significant lapse on the part of the organisers, and their supporters, was that no one seemed to ask why the tribals had
converted to Christianity in the first place, and whether they'd converted from Hinduism or from some form of animism.
The cruel, and continuing, physical and social dispossession inflicted on our indigenous peoples is exemplified by the episode in the Mahabharat when Dronacharya requires the tribal, Karna, to cut off his thumb as guru dakshina so that the maimed warrior will not be able to match Arjuna in archery.
Why do tribals convert to Christianity? Is it only because those predatory Christian missionaries bribe them with free rice and other goodies, or is there some other reason? Is it the missionaries' carrot or the majority's stick which drives them into the Christian fold? Similarly, when Dalits convert en masse to Buddhism are they falling prey to proselytisation, or are they seeking to escape millennia of persecution by the majority?
Are we going to ask these questions, or are they going to be shouted down before they are raised? If they are, it'll show that the Pew report was wrong. We are not an intolerant lot; we are very tolerant. Of our own intolerance of others.
Zero tolerance : India : Jug Suraiya : TOI Blogs