This is a trite thing to shout and start a post. But did not someone say sometime that
Tolerance is one of the values that is central to Indian Culture.
Or let me take the liberty to quote Gandhi himself
Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.
There are three terms here.
- Democratic Spirit
- TRUE Democratic Spirit
- Tolerance and Intolerance
All this is all so rosy and sounds really great. But where does one draw a line. Say suppose we have a toteliteraian ruler (like Hitler) and suppose we are the victims (say Jews).
How should one act if one is a staunch follower of Gandhian Ethics .. If ever such a thing ever existed. George Orwell in his well written essay(by well written I meant to say a very critical review of Gandhi and his actions) contemplates precisely on this. Here are his words:
“What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?” I must say that I have never heard, from any Western pacifist, an honest answer to this question, though I have heard plenty of evasions, usually of the “you’re another” type. But it so happens that Gandhi was asked a somewhat similar question in 1938 and that his answer is on record in Mr. Louis Fischer’s Gandhi and Stalin. According to Mr. Fischer, Gandhi’s view was that the German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which “would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler’s violence.” After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly. One has the impression that this attitude staggered even so warm an admirer as Mr. Fischer, but Gandhi was merely being honest. If you are not prepared to take life, you must often be prepared for lives to be lost in some other way. When, in 1942, he urged non-violent resistance against a Japanese invasion, he was ready to admit that it might cost several million deaths.
Now let me look at the non-violent action which Gandhi proposed. If u have to be tolerant to something. That something should be vicious enough to kill/destroy you. What Gandhi says is just don’t attack it back.. TOLERATE even if it kills you, even if it rapes you. Which means to say that we should never fight. We should turn ourselves into being a MASOCHIST when confronted by a SADIST. We should be willing victims. We should accept the enemy AND HIS ACTIONS. So that one day the enemy will get fed up and give up. We should never attack. We should tolerate with the enemy, at the cost of our self-esteem, we should tolerate the enemy, at the cost of our integrity, we should tolerate the enemy at the cost of our own lives. This philosophy seemingly gave India its freedom but it did one more thing, which the congress has managed to hide very effeciently, it has destroyed India.(the subtler point here is that u may say that integrity is in holding the Gandhian values.. a claim which I refute) .In short Gandhi asks u simply to give up your self esteem (if u have it) and fight using the lack of it as a weapon.
The argument is that this is HUMANE way of fighting. A deep thought would show that it would kill as many people as it would in any bloody war. The enemy may stop killing, if he has some humanity in him. What if he is ruthless.. like Hitler, or say like the Japaneese. They would have wiped India clean of its people.
His philosophy worked only in India and with Indians because of only one thing. Tolerance is a euphemism of cowardliness. It is another word to say that we do not have the balls to do. It could also be put as lack of self-esteem. A quality which I should say defines an Indian(there maybe 10% who are different). If u see a person without a self-esteem. I would say that there is a 90% chance that he is an Indian. Gandhi, inherently or intentionally, realized this and used precisely this as a weapon against the british. The british more or less used him to their purposes. which could be seen all over history.
For example Gandhi could have prevented the hanging of the Great Bhagath Singh. Why did he not do that? Weren’t the british wrong in hanging the Great man. So whats wrong in taking to the british and non violently preventing the hanging of the Great man. The answer is simple :- He would have questioned his delicate philosophy,infront of his impotent mass of followers, had he done that. He would have send wrong signals to the british. Which he did not want to happen. Which could have been due to his tolerance, in the sense I was talking in the previous paragraph.
It was this lack of self-esteem that later became the Banner “TOLERATE”, tolerate both your enemy and his actions. This was the magic mantra that many impotent Indians(i would say 99% of them) were waiting for. They did not have the guts to fight, nor did they have the self-esteem to fight. All that Gandhi asked them to do was to protest against the british without fighting, means without ever having a feeling of self-esteem or in other words, fighting without integrity. This is the least of which anyone could do. And so the Gandhi Concept spread like wild fire. That was the Dominant Philosophy so that our people could hide their impotency behind the concept of tolerance. This is exactly the kind of impotency that George Orwell suspects in Gandhi. Let me quote the relevant lines.
Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe, find that the main motive for “non-attachment” is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work. But it is not necessary here to argue whether the other-worldly or the humanistic ideal is “higher”. The point is that they are incompatible. One must choose between God and Man, and all “radicals” and “progressives,” from the mildest Liberal to the most extreme Anarchist, have in effect chosen Man.
Note the word incompatible. Orwell is trying to make a distinction between a Mystic and a Rationalist. The fun is because 90% of India was/is ignorant (illitracy driven ignorance or literate ignorance), nobody cares to think that there is no rational basis for Gandhi’s arguments. If the concept of God is taken away from it, then it tumbles down like a piece of domino cards. Gandhi integrated the concept of mysticism and suicidal idealism and injected it into the minds of ignorant people.
Those who REALLY fought for independence, the great saints, like Mangal Pandey, Bhagath Singh, Subhash Chandra Bose were termed as fools..just because they had the Integrity to say that an enemy had to be treated like an enemy. They were treated as fools because they said that they will die fighting, if they have to die anyway then fight and die. They were treated as fools beause they believed that independence should be attained from within the human mind and not when someone(british/enemy) leaves us alone. They were rational minds, who believed in Independence, and not MASOCHIST who took all the beating and begged the enemy to leave them alon after being raped. They were men of Integrity, and they stand like mountains rising out of the sea. Such a person is still called a fool in India. However those Great Men were men of action and not inaction. Unfortunately the values that they stood for were literally wiped off by congress’ 50 years of destructive socialist rule.
I believe that if there wasn’t a Second World War :- We would have been still under british rule.
The congress has been able to fool the Nation for 50 odd years, because people are ignorant and tolerant. We tolerate corruption, which has now become synonymous with the word Government. We tolerate rape. We Tolerate feudal people. We call our products as inferior. We believe more in American brains than in Indian brains. We ARE Ignorant, Impotent.
That’s what we are … Ignorance + Tolerance +Gandhi = MESS
P.S:— A mystic is a person who calls himself superior by defining some ideals which can never be acheieved. Example:- True Democratic Spirit