With Right Intent Get Wrong Results

I guess the news mongers do not have too many good story leads now that the Mukherja couple is back on the front pages after a hiatus of a couple of weeks. The twist, it is the husband who is now in the spotlight, dammed by the evidence provided by his own son to incriminate the step mother. He did it for what he believed were the right reasons, but the result went all wrong, as it often happens with celebrated people.

Modi echoes Aamir Khan’s sentiments, 

says he’s already living outside India because of intolerance

Take the example of Mr. Aamir Khan. He expressed his personal view on “intolerance” at the Indian Express RNG awards ceremony for excellence in journalism. Without having understood the entire context of his statement, a part of an on stage interview, the hounds of politics and performers began to bay for what they are suggesting is his unpatriotic blood. I don’t know if the reaction to his statement took such an exaggerated turn because he is the second “Khan” to voice it, the first being Mr. Shah Rukh Khan (he subsequently denied his statement). Maybe there was ascare in their mind that the growing tribe of famous Khans would also like tooffer their own angle to this topic, which may well end up as a verbal epidemicof sorts.  I also don’t know if Aamir intended it, but he must have joined the super elite Rs. 1,000 crore club for free media publicity, even if most of it was negative.  Maybe an enterprising movie maker may be prompted to make a movie titled “My name is is Khan and I am not as tolerant of intolerance."

In defending India’s tolerance quotient, most of the voices being heard are doing just the opposite. Unfortunately, it is the world that is watching, reading and hearing all that is going on in India, and I don’t think anyone is finding this “Tamasha” (performance) one bit tolerable (just like the movie).

Speaking of global view on intolerance, a nation’s right to defend its boundary may have put the world at the cusp of a third world war. Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian fighter bomber in what it called an air space incursion sent shock waves around the world.  Guess the whole world must have celebrated Thanksgiving on the 27^th of November (a day after USA) for Russia showing extreme tolerance in not having roasted Turkey.  I don’t think Turkey’s leadership feels the same way.

The Russian fighter was on its way to bomb some ISIS targets in Syria, and if press is to be believed, target information is being exchanged between Russia, France and USA. Obviously, Turkey being a member of NATO should have been in the know of it too. At least Mr. Putin thinks so. Russians claim that the real reason for Turkey to act the way it did is because of its trade collaborating with ISIS. That’s a strong accusation, but one that would appear plausible based on the limited trade routes available to ISIS for pushing oil in the grey market.  

While beef, has been the major culprit for sparking off the debate on the visible intolerance levels in India, bombing of civilians has been responsible for festering intolerance in the Middle East and Europe. The downing of the Russian Metrojet over Egypt and serial bombings in Paris, both claimed by ISIS has created a very scary situation in the region with an obvious economic and political consequence for the whole world. One that will make the global grief inflicted by Greece and China appear as mere blips on history’s timeline.

I think ISIS is the only entity that has acted with wrongintentions and got the right results for itself. The bombers of Metrojet and Paris were carried out primarily by ISIS agents of Egyptian and European origin. Yet, rather than weeding out the sleepers within, the international military effort has been directed to weed out the ISIS brains based in Iraq and Syria. The over destruction of both right and wrong targets there have impacted innocent civilians, who in turn, braving all perils – death included,  are rowing their boats to the very nations that bomb them. The refugee influx in turn is driving up resentment ( I call it plain and simple intolerance) within the nations accepting them for socio-economic-political reasons. The resentment levels have reached a point where the people belonging to the world’s largest faith – Islam – have now to justify that all Muslims are neither terrorists nor ISIS supporters on social media and other forums.

There is a hope in the minds of those who have donned the black uniforms that someday soon this growing intolerance between the Muslim and Non Muslim world will reach a flash point, intentionally or accidentally throwing humanity back into a dark age like the period of the crusade.  We are pretty close to that point.

Incidentally, the beef issue seems to have been given the hiatus for now. Maybe it did not serve any purpose after the Bihar elections.  The issue going forward in Bihar is booze. The new CM wants to ban it. Going by trending news, even the intolerance issue may give way to a debate on the Nation’s Constitution on the subject of “Secularism”. In all this mess, there seems to be one sane voice, finally, that of the Prime minister. He conveyed that he would like to administer the Nation through consensus rather than forcing the majority view. Now that is a truly tolerant and secular act. But, it too seems to have been prompted with the right intent but may end up with a possible wrong result.

I don’t know how media will interpret it in the days to come. Until then the Mukherjea saga will serve more as a commercial ad break.