Or the lack of it;

so thoughts gathered....baby put me back in my thread .....here goes....

we live in a secular india, where equality is normative and where justice prevails. We have a certain amount of religious tolerance, ofcourse gujrat and Modi are harldy included in that, nor are the missionatry killings of Orissa nor the forcible conversions during the freedom struggle, the muslim - hindu pitch battles are neither testament nor argument to tolerance. Despite all this we can say we do have a certain amount of religious tolerance, after all why shouldn't we tolerate, religion is a personal choice. My religion has nothing to do with yours, and yours has nothing to do with mine. Yet when boundaries blur and lines are overstepped we erupt into zealous warrior clans. The godhra incident, the mass citings i can name in proof of this zealotry is endless. The fact is that we really dont have religious tolerance, calling it indifference is more appropriate. Leaving alone religion lets come down to different matters, communities have zero tolerance of each other, this infact is a well acknowledged way of life, maybe again it can exclude a few highly metropoolised people but this percentage can't even be calculated for its sheer decimality. You have the south Inidans spoken off with contempt in the north, you have the punjabis similarly scorned in the south, the U.P's in other places, need i mention the brethern Bihari?, you have the northeast dissmissivly acknowledged all over the rest of our soverign territory, you have the gujratis and the bengals joked off, you have the middle belt ignored. "Dilli walas" are not very popular in "mumbaikar" eyes and vice versa and of calcutta and madras; well i'll leave that upto your imagination. The bottomline is we dont have communal tolerance, and here communal takes on a different shape not a religious rather regional. This is not even the bottom off how deep tolerance, or the lack of it stretches.

Women, Men the great gender divide. Let me cite a simple example. travelling in delhi's public transportation how often is a man obliged (for fear off offending the over chivialrous types) to give up his seat to a lady, and how many of those times is it done with some silent resentment and grumbling? being honest to myself i would say unless its a really old woman i really dont think any woman has a right to ask for a seat and yet demand equality (but again i shud be taken to task this time by the feminist and the female sex in genral). ofcourse we have tolerance to a much greater extent here, but this is Delhi the capital of Secular India. Having been to many villages you can observe even today that a woman is not tolerated to be studying, to play cricket (indeed!!!), to eat before the man (shocking??) in genral she is not tolerated to have her own individuality. so lets redefine tolerance, infact divide it on a broad spectrum that has no inbetween; you tolerate in the city but grumble and you dont tolerate in the village and thrash! but lets get down to even more instances of tolerance, once again rather the lack of it. Sexuality, it is a individual choice...right? well lets see how we tolerate it. I wouldn't say i am intolerant of different sexualties, i am tolerant as long as it includes consenting adults call it degree wise tolerance. However; some friends, i could call them, get very very turned on by lesbians (the feminine homosexuality) and get very upset (for propriety of words) at gays (the male homosexuality) and i cant say too much about the reverse senario because my female friends really wont tolerate me discussing such opinions with them for fear of breeching there modesty and decency, without which society wont tolerate them.

Leaving gender behind, let me come back to tolerance on political opinions. Lets take our elections. You go to a RSS man and say congress or Laloo or islam or christianity or parsi and you'll be lcuky to escape unthrashed for reasons i cant fathom. Then tolerance on a simple simple level, or agin its lack. Travelling in our famed public transport, you get to hear the best and the worst of hindi music be it the racy remixes, the off beat oldies or the bus drivers 'besura' casette worn with over use and sounding like Lata Mangeshkar ( no offence to the nightingale or her million and one fans); but the minute the driver catches snatches of english on the radio he just cant tolerate it and canters the bus wildly while attempting to change the station. I cant say im any better, while i dont drive buses i dont allow hindi music in my car while im driving either. So then who am i to speak of tolerance. Well, i am nobody in this regard so madonna " papa dont preach" applies to me as well.

Just let me close with saying that Tolerance is an individual choice. So also are the things we must tolerate so just live and let live, the world after all is round.