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Tolerance is more than putting up with something which is distasteful: Abid Hussain

In 1994, former Ambassador of India to the US Abid Hussain delivered a speech as part of the Sardar Patel Memorial lectures, highlighting the features of a good society while calling for peace, tolerance, and unity.

Peace is vital to the cause of mankind. All people everywhere want peace.

They do not adore war or love violence. This obviously does not mean that they will always accept peace of any kind at any cost. A just peace cannot be an imposed peace.

Sometimes peace is a regressive and passive state of affairs, eroding all moral dividing lines. In the face of injustice and tyranny, people will opt out of an imposed peace. Peace is not a subterfuge to continue the domination of the powerful.

It is not a sheep’s submission to oppression, or a consent to be led like a lamb to the slaughterhouse. Indeed, virtually all traditions enjoin us to demolish an unjust and tyrannical order. One cannot allow the tyrant to prevail.

That said, we all want peace. It is the basis for the enjoyment of every other value in the good life. A question then arises as to what is it that gives us a lasting peace, whether within or between the nations.

If we examine the issue deeply, we will find that it is the habit of tolerance and respect for diverse points of view that brings peace. I know that for some tolerance is a bad word, loaded with seeds of discord and alienation, leading to ruptures. It signifies the act of putting up with something, even if one finds it distasteful and unacceptable, inculcating an attitude of non-engagement.

In this sense, tolerance is a pallid caricature, and I would venture a form of moral isolation or aloofness, because it is a withdrawal from dealing with others. However, tolerance is more than putting up with something which is distasteful. It is not just passive coexistence without violence.

It is just not a sterile separateness but fruitful togetherness, enriching cooperation. It is accepting the diversity of the world as something to be celebrated and not shunned, not even as something to be accepted reluctantly. In the most profound sense, it is an engagement not only with others but also with oneself.

In the face of something distasteful, the truly tolerant person is one who asks, why is it distasteful? True tolerance is in the first place a self-questioning. Why does one find a practice or a viewpoint or a custom distasteful? What does the feeling of the distaste say about one’s own values and preferences? Tolerance is based then on a reasoned inquiry into the validity of one’s own likes and dislikes. It is not enough simply to say, I find this habit or belief distasteful but I shall accept it.

It is the ability to overcome the blindness and deafness to see or listen to people who hold the different viewpoints and to question one’s own. The second necessary attribute of tolerance is to go further and to ask, why is the other person or group or community or nation behaving the way it is? What values or ideas do they hold which has led them to do and say certain things which I find distasteful and offensive? In other words, true tolerance rests on a real attempt to comprehend others, to understand their worldviews, their motives and intentions. As I begin to comprehend them, I may well begin to find their ideas and actions less objectionable.

I should see at least that what they are doing and saying is not arbitrary or irrational or malicious but consistent with the traditions and modes. Surely nobody is exempt from the requirement of logical rationality. But people live their lives in situations already structured for them by others.

One cannot rob life of this human condition, which lends life its many diversities and accounts for contradictions. You have to think of them with compassion and with gentleness. After all this, it may be that I still find the ideas or practices in question distasteful.

But now I am in a position to begin the third movement of an act of true tolerance. I can now initiate a real meaningful dialogue, interaction with others as part of an attempt to bridge differences and combat the legacy of........

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