Whom Are We Tolerating?

One of the most slippery aspects of contemporary socio-political existence in several parts of Europe and Asia today is what I shall call the phenomenon of Comparative Martyrdom in which a group or tradition tries to present itself as having undergone greater persecution in the past than the groups or traditions around it. This raises a host of interesting debates centred around whom we are 'tolerating' (not to mention the perennial question of precisely what toleration is). There have been two major responses to this question : the classical European reply is that the locus of toleration is the Individual, whereas the contemporary consensus seems to be that it is rather the Community.

According to the older reply, it must always be the Individual who is to be tolerated, for it is the individual's liberty which is a higher value than anything else. This response is associated with the rise of European science, one important aspect of which was what has come to be known as the 'spirit of free enquiry', a spirit that can blow only in an environment where the Individual is allowed to think, write, speak and investigate whatever she wishes to. However, even proponents of this view recognised certain limitations; for example, that the right to Speech does not give one the licence to indulge in hate-speech against certain groups of people, that the right to Enquiry must be exercised within a context where other people too will discuss whether stem-cell research is to be allowed, and so on.

The more popular response, however, is that it is whole communities that are the true loci of toleration. That is, it argues that it is not enough to tolerate mere individuals, for in some societies the Individual is but a conceptual abstraction and virtually non-existent. Therefore, to give an example, if a Hindu immigrant in Britain in the 1970s wishes to learn something about her Hindu cultural origins, the government can be said to be truly tolerant only if it sets up local institutions where such education can be socially imparted to interested people. Or again, to be truly tolerant towards the Blacks, it will not do, so runs the argument, merely to treat individual Black people as the bearers of civil rights; the government must also establish departments of Black History in colleges and universities so that entire Black communities can better appreciate their (forgotten and repressed) pasts.

I believe, however, that both these approaches, as they stand, are well-meant but potentially misguided, for the question of the genuine locality of toleration cannot be answered in this Either/Or manner. The approach that we take towards such issues cannot be based on such sweeping dichotomies but must rather be sensitive to the socio-historical specificities of each case. Consider this example, drawn from the Indian Muslim context.

An Indian Muslim woman makes a claim for divorce : should the government 'tolerate' her as a member of the Muslim community or as an Individual who is the bearer of certain liberties which non-Muslim Indians possess? Much can be said for both options. On the one hand, the government cannot be said to tolerate the Muslim community unless it allows it to formulate its own socio-religious communitarian laws; on the other hand, if such laws prevent a Muslim from enjoying such rights which are allowed to non-Muslims, and if this Muslim woman wishes to exercise these rights, the Muslim must also be tolerated as an Individual. Consequently, which option is actually taken is a matter cannot be settled by adopting an approach of Either-The Community Or-The Individual.

The reason for this becomes clearer when we note that the so-called Individual in this context is herself immersed in her own community, this time, the community that is bound together by the rights that are granted by the Indian Constitution. Therefore, instead of viewing it as a battle between the (non-Muslim Indian) Individual and the (Muslim) Community, we should rather see it as one between (the Indian Constitution) Communitarian (the ICC) and (the Indian Constitution and the Muslim tradition) Communitarian (the ICMC). In many cases, there will be no clashes between the ICC and the ICMC : both types of communitarians, for example, agree that it is wrong to murder, cheat, swindle, or rob other citizens of the country. The trouble starts over certain fault-line issues such as abortion, marriage and divorce, property rights, and the liberty of women.

Over abortion, for example, the ICC response is quite clear : consult an expert on the Indian constitution, and if she says that the right to have an abortion does not clash with any of its schedules, ICC women can exercise this right straightaway. Coming to the ICMC reply, however, there is an additional factor, that of scriptural authority, so that even if the Indian Constitution (which she otherwise follows) allows abortion, she might come to the conclusion that abortion is an immoral practice.

It is extremely important not to misjudge the issue here : it is not over what is called 'open-mindedness'. Some ICCs often give the impression that ICMCs are narrow-minded because they accept an authority higher than themselves, that is, of the Qu'ran. This is an extremely myopic reaction, for ICCs themselves accept a greater authority, this time, of the Indian Constitution which they did not personally write, which they probably have never even cared to read through, which they do not usually question, and whose schedules they ('blindly') accept most of the time. Therefore, the vital question instead is this : Whose authority shall we accept? The ICC reply is that the Indian Constitution is the sole authority that we can accept, whereas the ICMC response is that the Indian Constitution applies only to temporal affairs and cannot be the final judge over questions connected with the individual's relation to the transcendent.

Here I have been talking specifically about the (Indian Constitution and the Muslim tradition) Communitarian, but the point can be easily extended to the (Indian Constitution and the Christian tradition) Communitarian (the ICCC), and even the (Indian Constitution and the Hindu tradition) Communitarian (the ICHC). For example, the ICHC may believe that even if euthanasia and inter-caste marriage are allowed by the Indian constitution, her specific tradition is opposed to these practices, so that this time we have a clash between the ICC and the ICHC. To make things even messier, let us think of someone who is an anti-ICC over some specific issue such as that of gay marriage. This time, the anti-ICC proponent of gay marriage will clash not only with the ICCs but also with most ICMCs, most ICCCs, and most ICHCs.

It is for reasons such as these that in societies with people from various ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds, it is not possible to settle in an a priori manner the precise domain of toleration. Sometimes it will be the Individual (for example, when a young girl refuses to marry the person whom her parents have chosen for her), sometimes it will be the Community (for examples, in cases involving anti-Semitism and 'Islamophobia'), and sometimes it will remain a hotly disputed issue over who is to be tolerated (and this is currently the situation over euthanasia, abortion and gay marriages).