P. A. Chacko
The world stands in need of nations that practice tolerance and fellowship and not those that merely utter inanities for public consumption.
Tolerance, yes! But go Beyond Tolerance! We need tall leaders who can go a step or two beyond mere tolerance and accept people as fellow human beings beyond religion, culture, caste or colour.
Tolerant and fellowship-promoting leaders do not indulge in lying or in promoting lynching. Nor do they feed the poor with false promises and an otherworldly paradise.
Time for false prophets to move out or be consigned to oblivion!
Urgent need for questioning unjust and biased pronouncements of courts for whom “all are equal, but some are more equal!”
A tolerant and peace-loving Gandhi was murdered in public, shot dead by intolerant and violence loving elements. They were agents of those who found Gandhi’s message of ahimsa, (non-violence) and human fellowship repugnant and anti-national.
We need community heads, legislators and political leaders who can stand above communal and fundamentalist forces seeking to tear apart India into majority and minorities, upper castes and lower castes, labour class and managerial tribe.
A dispensation that cannot tolerate people’s dissenting opinions isn’t worth a dime.
A government that feels threatened by an aged person in jail and confined to bed with dementia and uncontrollable urinary problems and other complications isn’t worth a grain of salt.
A government that finds a Parkinson-affected 83 year person a threat to the nation demonstrates its incapacity to practice ancient principles of tolerance.
A government that does not allow a wheel chair bound prisoner to be released at least on bail makes the hearts of the citizens bleed for India.
A government that feels dwarfed by the presence of human rights-promoting intellectuals, writers, social workers, and journalists needs to be pitied for its poor mindset and mental make-up!
It would be instructive for the nation’s leaders to revisit the famous words of Swami Vivekananda at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. “I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth.”
Will those who fathered the Citizenship Amendment Bill with its intolerant religious underpinnings open their yes to restore confidence in all sections of the nation?
Awake India! Rise India ‘into that haven’ of tolerance and freedom, fellowship and humanity! Awake!