Thinking about Tolerance, religious or otherwise
I write this with mixed feelings but feel it needs to be written. I am not sure if I will be able to put my point across. There is a great chance that I will be misunderstood. Anyway..here it goes...
It is important to ask the government to take care of law and order in the country. It is important to stand up against what is wrong. It is important to teach tolerance and equality to people. To teach people how everyone's views and lives are important.
However, it is also important to think about why as a society we hold the government responsible for this. Why do we expect a government to make a difference either way? How have we as a society reached a state of complete disconnect where all we can think of to make a change is by activism or by "speaking up". Is it the government? is it a group of people? or is something wrong with each one of us?
When I was growing up...(1980s and 90s, Baroda, Gujarat)..There was no talk of tolerance, I don't remember getting a lecture on it from my parents or teachers. (Maybe from Hindi cinema, but that was once in a month between a lot of illusion). I lived in a residential colony, in an area called fatehgunj, which had no boundary walls nor did it have a gate, or for that matter there was no security guard. Our home was on the outer edge of our society, plonked between a row of slums, a public lavatory and a maldhaari settlement. As we walked a few steps behind our house we entered a market street, called sadar bazaar. It was lined with haath lahri, hand carts, which mostly sold vegetables and fruits. On each side of the street were homes, some had thatched roof, some had tin roofs, some were multi-storeyed with lots of wooden elements. Each house was different from the other and yet stuck to one another wall to wall. Each home had their animals of choice tied in the front-yard. Some had goats, some cows, some had chicken coops and some had dogs. The animals signalled the religion of the people staying in the homes. Muslim houses had goats, hindu houses had cows, maldhaari's had Buffaloes and Christians had chicken, dogs..i may not be accurate on this, as this is an assumption. No one spoke of religion but it was everywhere. In shrines and sounds, clothes and produce. The market itself was a melodious cacophony with the nasal shouts of vegetable vendors (bhaiyaji's as we called them then. Is it politically incorrect to call them that now?), the sound of the cycle bells blending with the bleeting, mooing, clucking, barking and hindi music playing through different houses and shop radios. It was a sensorial experience just walking through that street. We experienced a way of living just by walking in that street.
Compare that to our curated apartment complexes today with manicured lawns, designated walk ways and specified play areas and you understand why tolerance needs to be taught and sloganised.
In those days we woke up to "allah uh akbar..." ....mom would say.."Uttho, mullo bolyo" (Get up the mullah is calling out ( his prayers)). Till date I don't know who a mullo is, I have just heard his voice broadcast over my childhood. That voice was my wake up call, lunch call, 'go back home' in the evening call. We lived with different religions not because we tolerated them or respected them but because we did not know any other way..that is what life was.
We woke up to the mullah, we heard our father do a quick puja with a bell, we went to school and said "our father in heaven...". There was no us and them, only us.
It is important to ask the government to take care of law and order in the country. It is important to stand up against what is wrong. It is important to teach tolerance and equality to people. To teach people how everyone's views and lives are important.
However, it is also important to think about why as a society we hold the government responsible for this. Why do we expect a government to make a difference either way? How have we as a society reached a state of complete disconnect where all we can think of to make a change is by activism or by "speaking up". Is it the government? is it a group of people? or is something wrong with each one of us?
When I was growing up...(1980s and 90s, Baroda, Gujarat)..There was no talk of tolerance, I don't remember getting a lecture on it from my parents or teachers. (Maybe from Hindi cinema, but that was once in a month between a lot of illusion). I lived in a residential colony, in an area called fatehgunj, which had no boundary walls nor did it have a gate, or for that matter there was no security guard. Our home was on the outer edge of our society, plonked between a row of slums, a public lavatory and a maldhaari settlement. As we walked a few steps behind our house we entered a market street, called sadar bazaar. It was lined with haath lahri, hand carts, which mostly sold vegetables and fruits. On each side of the street were homes, some had thatched roof, some had tin roofs, some were multi-storeyed with lots of wooden elements. Each house was different from the other and yet stuck to one another wall to wall. Each home had their animals of choice tied in the front-yard. Some had goats, some cows, some had chicken coops and some had dogs. The animals signalled the religion of the people staying in the homes. Muslim houses had goats, hindu houses had cows, maldhaari's had Buffaloes and Christians had chicken, dogs..i may not be accurate on this, as this is an assumption. No one spoke of religion but it was everywhere. In shrines and sounds, clothes and produce. The market itself was a melodious cacophony with the nasal shouts of vegetable vendors (bhaiyaji's as we called them then. Is it politically incorrect to call them that now?), the sound of the cycle bells blending with the bleeting, mooing, clucking, barking and hindi music playing through different houses and shop radios. It was a sensorial experience just walking through that street. We experienced a way of living just by walking in that street.
Compare that to our curated apartment complexes today with manicured lawns, designated walk ways and specified play areas and you understand why tolerance needs to be taught and sloganised.
In those days we woke up to "allah uh akbar..." ....mom would say.."Uttho, mullo bolyo" (Get up the mullah is calling out ( his prayers)). Till date I don't know who a mullo is, I have just heard his voice broadcast over my childhood. That voice was my wake up call, lunch call, 'go back home' in the evening call. We lived with different religions not because we tolerated them or respected them but because we did not know any other way..that is what life was.
We woke up to the mullah, we heard our father do a quick puja with a bell, we went to school and said "our father in heaven...". There was no us and them, only us.
Those were also times of thrift. Chacha and his son Munnabhai converted all of mom's textile ideas into reality. Jeans became cushion covers and curtains became door mats and hand bags. I had never bought jeans till I reached 3rd year of college, I just got my elder brother's jeans altered to my size. For that I needed chacha or munna bhai's 'karigari' (skill, expertise). Standing at their 'khokha" (meaning a shop which was a wooden box that stood on stilts) I would discuss the design elements of my pair of jeans while he would ask me to choose the new rivets to fix on to them!!
We didn't have an oven in those day but mom made the best cakes. How?.....she used to take her mixed cake batter, poured into tins to "American bakery" to get them baked. The bakery was in the by-lane of the market. We had to climb heavy stone steps to enter a dark and dingy bakery, smelling of sublime smells of baked goodies. The boys who worked near the oven would be drenched in sweat. They would come, take our cake tins with a smile and ask us to collect them later. This happened at least once a month.
You don't know where I am going with this? Hear me out.
The thing is that we were not taught to respect people from different classes and vocations, we needed them..they were an essential part of our life, so respect and attachment with these people become a natural outcome. I never saw a need to respect any religion to respect a human being. So I don't understand benevolent racism where people talk about understanding the different facets of religion to show their tolerance. In fact, I don't see a need to "respect a human being" if I understand that he or she is, just like me, living his or her life. You are, I am.
When we become plain consumers, where we can afford everything, our society and the people around us becomes dispensable. I don't need chacha today cause I can buy my jeans online. I don't need Ghumaan from American bakery cause I can afford an oven or buy a cake online. I don't need my neighbour to keep my house keys, or look out for my house's security while I am away, cause I can buy security. This leads to an erosion of random relationships. Relationships that were formed cause we needed them to make our life function. They weren't deep relationships. But relationships they were. One where if one of them died we experienced a sense of personal loss not just a philosophical pain. That person's death does not become a rhetoric or a statistic. Rather its like a string that is cut from a web. One might argue that its ridiculous that we learn to be tolerant of people because we need them. But what is more ridiculous? To expect people to develop tolerance through lip service or through experience? Consumerism and Capitalism, in my opinion, is a much bigger culprit today than politics, for the state of intolerance that we live in. Whish is not to say there was no conflict in those days. There was, but the common man could see the difference between his own conflict vs a political one. Today we need law and order, society norms and rules to do what was a natural way of life, for some us, just a few years ago. Do think about it.
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