A lot of
flavor of intolerance has been in the air of India from last couple of years. A fait accompli or a perception incubated by
repetitive usage of the term. Intolerance, as the terminology indicates, is the
feeling which is deprived of tolerance for any person or a group of persons
complemented with a feeling of antipathy towards the same. Is the present India intolerant? Is there not any intolerance anywhere else? If there is any phenomenon of
intolerance, then it came into existence with the development of human brain
and flourished perpetually. Life sprout out with a follow up principle of
survival of fittest triggering the cascade of the intolerance, intolerance
against anything harming one’s interest or not complying with one's ideology. Tolerance or intolerance is one of the
human psychological attributes malleable enough to be influenced by the
patterns of socialization, one’s instinctive behavior, extent of cognizance and
level of maturity. Every living being is intolerant against something. A
microbe shows intolerance intra-specific prioritizing its needs. Intolerance
can be said to have flourished spatially and temporally infinite. Vedic period,
one of the enlightened period of Indian history, furcated the society into four
Varna leaving the rest as untouchables. The untouchables were so insulated by
the elites or the twice-borns that mere their glimpses tainted the latter and
was customary for untouchables to beat
the drums before entering the main dwelling areas. Intolerance started incubating, curse of which
haunting the societies hitherto. After the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, a dispute over succession to Muhammad as a caliph of the Islamic community spread across various parts of
the world, which led to the Battle of Jamal and Battle of Siffin. The dispute intensified
manifold after the Battle of Karbala,
in which Hussein Ibn Ali and
his household were killed by the ruling Umayyad Caliph Yazid I, and the clamour for revenge
divided the early Islamic community.
