#Intolerance: Aamir Khan has voiced what many are afraid to talk about

Actor Aamir Khan's comment - that he felt "alarmed" by a number of incidents in India and that his wife had even suggested that they should leave the country - has once again brought to the fore the intolerance debate. One may or may not agree with him, but the fact remains that the issue has kicked up a storm and showcased how it is not just about dissent but also about a sense of insecurity pervading among the minorities.

Controversies

In one sense, there is more space for dissent in today's times. For, people are keen to listen to the views of the ''other'', besides being quite sensitive to instances of intolerance. To add to it, they are now better informed than ever before, thanks to 24x7 television news channels and the country's extremely vocal political milieu. The media, for instance, never backs out from displaying any incident of intolerance taking place in the country. This has its impact. According to a recent survey, 70 per cent of the residents in the slum areas today own a TV and avidly listen to the programmes on the news channels.

In fact, our news channels are only too keen to lap up all controversies because they find it difficult to get enough news to fill their slots. Controversies raised by the fringe elements in the Sangh Parivar by persons like Sakshi Maharaj come in handy. The social media then picks up these items and gives them prominence. These controversies, therefore, cannot be dismissed as irrelevant just because they do not reflect the mainstream party view.

The problem becomes more complicated when intolerance takes the form of threatening another community, especially the minorities. The memories of communal violence during Partition when thousands of people were massacred still haunt the minorities. It is in this context that irresponsible statements by senior leaders of the ruling party have to be judged. When renowned scholars and artists returned the awards and honours in protest against the rising level of intolerance, they were primarily referring to such intolerance. By their protest, they were highlighting a very serious issue.

Even if the voter today is more concerned with issues that impact his daily life, as the result of the recent Bihar elections have shown, they can still be manipulated by raising emotional issues. But that is not on the agenda of the fringe. Vote bank politics on communal lines have not disappeared. These leaders continue to depend on the time-tested device to raise emotional issues and then parade themselves as the people's champion to defend them.

Agenda

They have not given up the Hindutva agenda. Worse, they have succeeded in creating an environment of distrust and victimhood even among the majority community. The incidents like the Dadri beef lynching, murder of three prominent writers and the ink attack on Sudheendra Kulkarni have all contributed to the perception - rightly or wrongly - that intolerance is increasing. How can any right thinking person justify the lynching of Akhlaq at Dadri or the killing of a truck driver at Udhampur in Jammu on the suspicion that they were involved in the eating of beef? These terrible acts deserved the strongest condemnation by one and all. Such acts should not take place in any civilised society in the 21st century.

And yet, the condemnation by the high-ups in the ruling party was lukewarm and half-hearted. Some actually gave an impression that they were condoning these acts. The fact that the ruling party at the Centre took no disciplinary or political action against those responsible for these acts and dismissing the whole issue merely as a law and order problem, gave rise to the suspicion that there was some tacit approval, if not complicity, at the higher level.

Conspiracy

Calling these acts as aberrations would also not do. Nor would the trumpeting of a conspiracy theory. To say that highlighting these acts was a conspiracy by their political opponents to malign them is running away from the real issue. Again, by alleging that the incidents like the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom were worse, the ruling party cannot absolve itself of its responsibility. Yes, what happened in 1984 was horrible and could have been prevented, if the law and order machinery had performed its legitimate role. The suspicion that 3,000 Sikhs could not have been burnt alive in the capital in broad daylight without some complicity at the higher level, as Sanjay Suri in his recent book on these riots has so convincingly demonstrated, is credible. But to argue that because of these incidents, India is less intolerant today than it was in the past, cannot justify what has been happening recently.

India is a vast and diverse country and any attempt to create a sense of insecurity among the minorities by the fringe elements can seriously challenge its unity and integrity. The ruling BJP at the Centre has a special responsibility to allay such fears, because in public perception, the party and its ''parivar'' carry a huge baggage of their alleged actions in the past. They are associated with a bias against the minorities. Their ally, the Shiv Sena, is openly playing on this fear to pander to their vote bank. Let us hope better sense will prevail and this evil is nipped in the bud before it disrupts peace and harmony in the country. Without this essential requirement, India can neither leapfrog economic growth, nor take its rightful place in the comity of nations.