Tolerant Indians

India is known as a secular and tolerant country, which makes us Indians tolerant and secular. We are secular and tolerant, no doubt about it but do we need to be so secular and so tolerant?

On 5th October, a few Bangladeshi immigrants were unhappy as they were not able to “express their freedom” and out of frustration they hoisted Pakistan’s flag at three places in Assam. It is beyond me to understand why Bangladeshi immigrants who are considered as Indians by the govt. of India would want to hoist a Pakistani Flag to express their freedom??? What did the govt. do about it? Nothing!

If you visit the BBC Country profile of India and see the map of India there, you will see that Kashmir is divided in 3 parts;

Part 1: India-Controlled Kashmir
Part 2: Pakistan-Controlled Kashmir and
Part 3: North-eastern most part of Kashmir that is shaded off in grey and is clearly not a part of India or Pakistan-Controlled Kashmir seems to be a part of China!

(See the map here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/country_profiles/1154019.stm)

And what has the govt. of India done about it? We’ve been fighting this war for ages and the result is still nothing!

At this rate the day is not far when half of the north eastern India would come under Bangladesh, Arunachal Pradesh would be taken by China and maybe Manipur would come under Myanmar.

But we are a tolerant country so maybe we will continue to tolerate that, just the way we tolerate so much bullshit all our lives! If someone passes a negative remark about Indians we just smile and say that their opinion why get in to a fight about it, we are tolerant. If someone occupies our land we say let’s “talk” about it, even if we talk for more than 50 years, we are tolerant. It is as if this gene of tolerance in us.

Day after day we adjust to our surrounding and make huge sacrifices because we are tolerant. The roads in India are bad, the govt. is not doing a good job, people take us for granted but we sit quietly, we get stuck in traffic jams for 25Kms, our policemen work purely on bribes as is the case with most govt. officials, but it is all ok, why? Because we are tolerant.

Not only that at our workplaces, if we work for 12 hrs as opposed to our foreign counterparts who work 8 hours, we don’t say anything about it. If people take credit for our work again we are tolerant and accept it. We tolerate everything that may seem unfair simply because we are trained to do so.

When family members violate our personal space, we tolerate it. When people misbehave with women, most women ignore it. When married women are mistreated by in-laws she is expected to tolerate it. Even with the dowry system becoming illegal, people still give and take dowry and we tolerate it. So much so that parents of a girl child will go to an astrologer and ask him, will my daughter ever divorce her husband and come back to our house; do you see that in her future? It is such a dreadful thought for them to have their daughters fighting with their husbands/in-laws against their torture/cruelty/lack of respect and finally leaving them and returning to her parents. Every daughter is told to compromise and adjust once she gets married. Every daughter is told that her husband’s house is her home now and she has to live there for the rest of her life and that she has to keep everyone happy. Even if the daughter sometimes complains to her parents that she is being treated badly, the parents still hesitate to ask her take action, they still tell her to be tolerant. It is as if we are trained to tolerate as much bullshit as we can, sometimes even more than what we can.

I still remember this incident that someone narrated to me. This happened in US, there was an Indian father who was scolding this 6yr old daughter and he was so upset with her that he raised his hand to hit her. This little girl, very calmly told her father “You don’t want to do that dad, if you hit me, I will call 911 and complain about it. My teacher told us in school today that it is not ok for parents to hit their children, so don’t do it”. The father was so shocked that he was absolutely speechless. This 6yr old has already learnt to not tolerate anything that may violate her space and her respect, and here we are, a lot older than this 6 yr old, but still tolerating everything that comes our way.

Why do we do it? What will it take for us to finally accept that we have a right to a good life, a safe life and a happy life? When will we learn to stand up and get what we deserve instead of just accepting every piece of shit thrown at us?