Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Philosopher Karl Popper wrote in his book, The Open Society and its Enemies , about the paradox of tolerance: “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.” Today, depending on your point of view, one of two things has happened: -          What Karl Popper warned about has happened, as exemplified by the rise of the Right. -           Or the Right is the set of people who have risen to “defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant”. Regardless of your take on the topic, “identity politics” and “questions of religion” have fueled the rise of the Right and the fragmentation of the Left, in India and the West. The “Old Left” is dead, ...

Santosh Desai rightly condemns what followed the Ram Rahim verdict: “What we saw in Panchkula and elsewhere was a surrender to a force that had no official standing, but was able to cause carnage without fear or hesitation.” He wonders if private armies are the norm? “Gau rakshaks and anti-Romeo squads are examples of how unregulated islands of muscle are used to enforce an agenda through intimidation and the use of informal power.” While I don’t deny any of Desai’s criticism, perhaps we should also check how we landed here? Is it a case of the Arab and his camel: did we start by giving an inch because it seemed inconsequential and before we knew it, the camel’s in the tent? After all, do we not allow weddings (especially in North India) and religious institutions to block roads and blare away via their loudspeakers? Do we not allow every random set of people to say they are offended by something or the other, and then let them dictate what gets banned (remember the ba...

Finally. A few Western public figures are saying what many feel privately but dared not say publicly. Ex-Aussie PM Tony Abbott declared: “(The West) can't remain in denial about the massive problem within Islam…Cultures are not all equal. We should be ready to proclaim the clear superiority of our culture to one that justifies killing people in the name of God.” Now compare that with what Donald Trump said and it sounds almost tame! All he said was that the US stop allowing Muslim non - citizens into the US until lawmakers find a solution to this terrorism problem. Oh, in case you forgot, the US Congress already voted to disallow Syrian refugees from entering America! Scott Adams writes a series of blogs on Trump’s persuasive skills. While Adams doesn’t always agree with Trump, he is quite impressed with the techniques employed. For example, he says that sooner or later another ISIS attack will happen. At that point, Adams says : “You probably don’t know of any other...

Many ask if it is fair to ask Muslims to condemn the terrorist acts of ISIS. No, says Dalia Mogahed : “Condoning the killing of civilians is, to me, about the most monstrous thing you can to do. And to be suspected of doing something so monstrous, simply because of your faith, seems very unfair....(But when white, male Christians carry out terrorist attacks in the US) we don't suspect other people who share their faith and ethnicity of condoning them. We assume that these things outrage them just as much as they do anyone else. And we have to afford this same assumption of innocence to Muslims.” But every other terrorist doesn’t cite his religion as the reason for his act. Therein lies the difference. Do the likes of Mogahed really not get that?! Now that New York, London, Barcelona and Paris have joined the list of India and Israel as victims of terrorism, it’s harder for most people to pretend not to see the common denominator everywhere. If the “non-terrorist majority”...

I used to think of Machiavelli as a manipulator, a man without scruples, a guy who did whatever it took to get ahead. I certainly never thought of him as the man who took apart “ one of the foundations of the central Western philosophical tradition ”! I got that only after reading this very interesting analysis of Machiavelli by Isaiah Berlin. Berlin says Machiavelli called the bluff on “ the belief in the ultimate compatibility of all genuine values ”. Machiavelli realized “ that entire systems of value may come into collision without possibility of rational arbitration ”. (Take 2 such ideals: always speak the truth; and defend the wrongly oppressed. Now imagine the mob of 1984 hunting down Sikhs to kill. You see this terror stricken Sikh run down a lane. The mob asks if you saw where the Sikh ran? Do you tell them where he is (speak the truth) and sign his death sentence? Or do you lie?). If that was all there was to it, you could just shrug and dismiss the scenario as a ...

I read somewhere that it’s almost as if Amsterdam is stuck with the label of being tolerant. Even to things like drugs and prostitution. The article wondered whether Amsterdam was now stuck having to be tolerant to pretty much everything. Otherwise they risked being asked: so drugs are OK but you draw the line at graffiti? Really? I think Hinduism is stuck in the same situation. It declared that all religions were the same (or equivalent): so now it gets stuck when asked how Jainism and Islam can possibly be considered the same. Like Hobbes says in the strip above, there is such a thing as too much tolerance. A point beyond which an evil figure will twist tolerance to condone pretty much everything. A point beyond which tolerance is sickening. And wrong. But you can realize that only if you still have the capacity to think and haven’t yet been blinded by faith at the altar of, well, Tolerance.