Intolerance is the word which has taken whole country by storm in last couple of weeks. With so called ‘intellectuals’ returning their awards, news channels having heated discussions on this issue, the issue has become the topic which everyone wants to hear about and almost everyone has an opinion of. While The Bihar election result and the attack on Paris has shifted people’s attention away from the topic, Aamir’s remark about leaving the country has worked as a stone in tranquil water and has stirred the discussion again.
Bihar election shows that people are still tolerant. They are happy to tolerate 9th fail deputy CM who cannot recite simple Hindi words which he only had to repeat after Governor of the state, we are tolerating master of all U-turns, the muffler man himself, Mr. Kejriwal. We are tolerating Politician cum stand-up comedian Mr. Rahul Gandhi for the record no of times. So we are still tolerant.
But the big question is, Have we, as a country, become intolerant in last few months? Before Aamir khan spoke about this matter, I too used to think that nothing has happened in last couple of months that makes our country intolerant. Being a big Aamir khan fan, I adore him and whatever comes out of his mouth has an impact on me. In his interview he said, “There has been a sense of growing despondency in last 6 to 8 months.” He further added that his wife suggests him to move out of the country because this country has become intolerant. His statement made me ponder over the current situation of Intolerance in our country and I found out that, Yes!!! Intolerance did increase in our country but this hasn’t happened in last 6 to 8 months only.
It all started way back on 16th may 2014, the day when B.J.P. came into power. Before that day India was tolerant. It tolerated policy paralysis that prevailed during the congress regime. India tolerated an ineffective, remote controlled, silent PM, who never came out to speak on any matter except for once and on that occasion he read out the speech specially tailored for him, and even then he was so petrified that as soon as he finished reading it, he had to ask “theek hai??” All this while he was addressing his countrymen on national radio and we tolerated it. We tolerated when Indian government took no strict actions against Pakistan when two of our soldiers were mercilessly decapitated on the border. We tolerated when Suresh Kalmadi looted crores in Commonwealth games and dented the image of our country worldwide. We tolerated when A. Raja filled his account by illegally allocating 2G spectrum to his allies. We tolerated Coal scam. Why only this, we also tolerated Rajeev Gandhi when he said, “Earth shatters when a big tree falls” justifying 1984 sikh riots after the death of Indira Gandhi. We tolerated when Indira Gandhi, the then prime minister of the nation imposed emergency way back in 1975. We tolerated when our great India was cut into two pieces in 1947. We have a great history of tolerating all this bullshit.
Now, we have an extremely intolerant government. Our government is intolerant towards the people who have black money in Swiss accounts, that’s why they made their names public and 3770 (this amount is too low more than 8000 cr have been recovered) crore rupees have been recovered from them. Our Prime minister is so intolerant towards uncleanliness, poverty, unemployment and many other problems that he not only talks about them in “Mann Ki Baat” but also is trying to eradicate them. We have a PM who is no longer controlled by a remote control and he does not need a piece of paper to interact with his fellow countrymen. Not only our PM but Our defence minister, an IIT graduate, Manohar Parikkar is so intolerant towards terrorists that he ordered a strike in Myanmar to kill 50 terrorists. We have an intolerant external Minister for state affairs, Gen. V. K. Singh. Be it, carrying NRIs home safely from war struck Yemen or nabbing the mafia Chhota Rajan from Indonesia, while the media was busy in criticizing him. He chose to work silently and proved that he turns intolerant towards everything when it comes to serve his country. Under the rule of our railway minister, a chartered accountant by profession, Mr. Suresh Prabhu, our railway ministry has turned intolerant. They are intolerant towards uncleanliness in railway stations. They are intolerant about harassments in trains, that’s why on a mere tweet of a woman named Namrata Mahajan from Maharashtra, a team of RPF was sent and the culprit was nabbed before he could commit any heinous crimes. Our intolerance is not only limited inside the boundary of our own country only, It’s also been felt in other countries too. They are praising our government for being intolerant against all these issues.
So when we have such an intolerant government in power which we’ve elected to be intolerant against all these issues, how can we as a country be considered as tolerant? The only thing I failed to understand in this whole episode of Aamir khan is, “why he feels so despondent?? What is he alarmed for? God knows!!!”
P.S.:- The whole episode of intolerance had one nice impact that it gave our English speaking youth a whole new word of Hindi to brag about and that is असहिष्णुता