Intolerance or fear of unknown ?

Debates can be classified in a number of ways and debate over Intolerance is the one that falls in the ‘worthless’ category because

• it started due to one thing (as a protest towards assault of intellectuals and murder in Dadri by extreme elements of society)
• was steered towards some other thing (Is this Intolerance a new thing or an old phenomenon in this nation?)  
• and ended in a completely counterproductive manner ( Tagged India as an extremist, intolerant nation on the world map) giving neither solutions to the problem of assaults by extremists nor answers to the questions it generated…

So whose fault is this?
Is this the fault of those authors who returned their awards in protest and generated huge drama?
or
Is it the fault of Indian Media for propagating the debate in the wrong direction ?
or
Is it the fault of Authorities like Prime Minister or ‘Sahitaya Akadami’ who showed  silence  and ignorance towards these killings leading to restlessness among people and pressure groups?

Answers to these questions may polarize this article, so it is upto readers to decide who is at fault here.
Moreover, what’s more important than blaming the culprits of a dead debate is finding the solution of a huge problem called extremism and looking for answers of some critical questions.

Let’s try to discuss all this and this time without deflecting from the ‘real deal’

Q) Is India an Intolerant Nation?
 Yes, and so is USA, FRANCE,AUSTRALIA and any other country with diversity in the world.
Before pointing fingers at India,

• take a look at USA which has Donald Trump and his supporters, Republican Party, Guantanamo bay etc.
• Or France which is facing a great deal of Tension with its Muslim Citizens due to its policies
• Or Australia and its racist behavior towards its Indian citizens.

Before tagging India as a freak with lack of tolerance, take an insightful look at its acute diversity and think how despite this diversity in culture , language  and religion every citizen of this country work, live and share with people from different states, castes, religions and accents.

Let these people define India, not some spoilt brains which are present everywhere around the world as a ‘natural calamity’.

Q) How can we solve the ‘Extreme ideology’ problem in our country?
First of all its not the ‘Extreme Ideology’ which is a problem  it’s the ‘Criminalization of Ideology’ which is the real but lesser known villain because any person can believe in a religion or ideology to whatever extent he/she wants to believe.Problem begins when belief mixes up with inhumane views either due to innocence of believer or due to belief creator's greed for fame and finance. 

Honestly, we can’t completely solve it, because we will always have some people who will have malfunctioned and criminal thought process.
However, we can surely decrease the number of such people.
To do that we would have to understand following two points

1. ‘ If we are not properly informed about something then chances are high that we will get misinformed about it’
2. ‘ UNKNOWN is scary’

These points about human behavior are not acknowledged in our education system when dealing with religious content.
Since independence, our education material has been created in a way that it doesn’t glorify or nullify any religion which is not a wrong thing.
However the way it has been done is dead wrong!
In order to avoid any controversy they started avoiding most of the religious content in the textbooks.
This led to an education system which produce students who know
very little (superficially) about other religions and that too usually from people of their own community.
Sometimes what they know about their own religion from these sources is also not correct.
This leaves them with limited information which creates a sort of taboo or a potential fear in their mind about other religions (‘unknown is scary’) and leaves them susceptible to getting misinformed about that ‘alien religion’ (‘if we are not properly informed…..’).
This misinformation and fear when combined produce a drastic and criminal ideology which plagues the society under various names like intolerance or extremism or whatnot.

Most of this happens because kids are not given correct knowledge about every religion from a legitimate source at school level.
That’s what the problem is.
Solution to which is increasing their knowledge about every religion at school level so as to insulate them from stupid and spoilt thoughts in future.

Now a lot of people will start making bad faces thinking that
--teaching about religion in a compulsory manner is non-secular NO! its not, as all the religions will be taught with equality and that too in theory not in practice ie. you will be informed about other religion and that doesn’t mean that you have to believe in that information.

--Our education should contain only those things which help kids in their professional lives and religion is not one of those.Before raising this question, take a look at the present syllabus in schools, profession oriented education start becoming significant in 9^th class and becomes completely significant only in 11^th  and 12^th  standard(when streams are divided) .
It means from primary to 8^th class there is pretty much time to vaccinate their minds from spoilt thoughts.

--This is impractical as one cannot just force a hindu to study Islam or a muslim to study Hinduism. why not?
Why can’t a person know a religion other than his own religion just for sake of knowledge?
This idea is not about making them to follow all religions, its just about increasing their knowledge about all religions.
Thinking that teaching religions at school is impractical is the very reason that our society is tending towards the verge of saturation.

Knowledge can never be a bad thing, it’s the lack of knowledge which must be feared.