Values, Traditions and the Law

India is a vast country. We’ve been multicultural since centuries – Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Parsis; and we are multilingual – at least seventeen different languages and 5 to 600 dialects. 

A country like ours is bound to have vastly differing values. 

Some of our sensibilities are completely foreign to each other. Our close proximity as neighbours, at work, on our beaches, in our restaurants, on public transport and everywhere in between means we constantly witness those differences. The majority of our people are tolerant and in fact, might even enjoy those differences.

Some are intolerant. That is also acceptable as long as that intolerance doesn’t translate into their physically or mentally hurting the hateful "others". 

======================================================

That is why there has to be no ambiguity about what is punishable by law and what isn’t. 

======================================================

In India there is. People believe, by virtue of their power, money or influence they can break the law and get away with it.

For that very reason, the sooner we (especially our law enforcement agencies) learn to respect the laws of the land, the more we realise that certain things are punishable whatever our justification, the more we’ll be able to co-exist and even prosper together. 

The alternative is chaos.

"It would be a fair comment,” she stated, “that we all react differently to different cultures. Most of us accept that whilst we follow our own traditions, we need to let other communities follow theirs; that the common umbrella we all share is that of our humanity, guided by the laws of our city. This helps provide order, peace and justice through which we share our city's resources. This umbrella covers all of us in our diversity; all of us have to obey its dictates to be able to live and prosper together, under its shade. 

And then,” Bharati paused before declaring, “…there are the others.” 
(Excerpt – Never Mind Yaar, first published in October, 2000.) 
[To find out what Bharati believes is the mindset of our traditionalists and why we don’t react strongly to their intolerance of the hateful “others” please wait for the book to be published in India.]

.