RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE

RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE

Trusting the law and respecting the process of Law, is a very simple way of channelising your anger and curbing intolerance. 

While there is once again a raging debate on the “Agnes of God” in quick sequel of the beef eating controversy, my view in such issues is simple. If a community at large finds some content or conduct offensive, then it should not be done or displayed.  After all, that is what democracy is all about. But it is important to, with certainty ascertain, that the community is actually offended, and it is not some vociferous fringe elements, trying to catapult themselves to a position of leadership  for personal gains or seek political mileage by bandying the band wagon of intolerance to some form of expression.

It is also queer, questioning the existence of God per se is not blasphemous. Even if it is in some cultures, at least the believers, but for the fanatic muslims or Islamites, have learnt to live with that scepticism. What intrigues me most is, if people can live with scepticism on the very idea of God, why does an allegedly aberrant depiction pique communal sensitivities

  

Jurisprudence : Besides, both groups, those who question, in toto, or in the name of art, and those who want to decisively quell that questioning, don't have faith in the law, and the law does not act sou moto, but keeps waiting for the situation to get ugly, before it gets galvanised into action.

If only would people trust the system and have faith in the law taking its course to punish the people who flout it, such incidents of mob fury and justice will get automatically weeded out. The fact of the matter is, mob fury, or community justice is meted out only when the perception of systemic dys-functionality has become deeply set in the minds of the people.

Those you suspected that beef was stored and consumed in a families house, could have lodged an FIR with the concerned police station. And the police should have taken action as per law. But they did not. Because, to gain cheap popularity, the chief patron of the state, the father of the CM of the state would invariably have instructed the police to not entertain such complaints against the muslims, whose messiah he wants to portray himself as. And similarly, the champions of the sentiments of the majority faith, who have always questioned the politics of appeasement, also went overboard taking the law in their hands, once again as they suspected that law will not act.

When I was a class 12 student, a friend of my father in the police services told him that Mulayam Singh had clearly instructed them to not file any FIR against any Kanpur Muslim family for theft of electricity. Similar special status was conferred on the Yadavs also, the community that Mulayam himself hails from. And favouritism is not shrouded. It happens openly, for if it is shrouded, then the electoral benefit that can be reaped from such political brazenness will be far less.