Intolerance? Look around again.

A star, sorry – MEGA STAR,  who minted money to the tune of ₹150 crore from a film that mocked some religions, although one clearly more than the others, expresses what his wife thinks about this nation of 1.3 billion. And that leads to a big hue and cry, hurting the public sentiment across the nation.

It truly was an expression of disregard, belittling the whole nation, and could certainly have been avoided.

I wish to ask – why should the people of India not make the right noises? Why should they NOT oppose the mega star’s irresponsible statements in the loudest possible ways? After all the wife thinks that their family is not safe anymore – in a nation that is a template of religious harmony for the rest of the world!

You would have guessed the mega star by now – Mr Aamir Khan. The great actor’s negative comments regarding the state of the nation provoked strong reactions from the ruling party as well as from his fellow Bollywood personalities.

He says that she says (pun intended) that India seems not so much a safe place now, especially in the last 6-8 months. His wife fears for their children, whether they would be able to survive in such a newly intolerant nation such as ours.

She just has to take a look at the history of this great nation to get an idea about the people that inhabit this place.

India is tolerant. One just needs to look at the reaction to all the suffering that it has had to go through in the past. Did people come out on the streets rioting whenever there was a terrorist attack? People did come out on streets, but that was for peaceful protests against the horrors of terrorism. They DID NOT link or equate any religion to terrorism. They did not go about bashing their fellow countrymen for belonging to a particular set of religion. Why would they? India is, after all, tolerant.

How can the government of the day be responsible for a few isolated incidents that take place in certain pockets of the society? Incidents such as these are highly unpredictable, and they can take place anywhere in the world, let alone the country! That does not mean the larger picture has to be dismissed. The nation is inherently peaceful, as it has always been.

The two relatively modern highlights of destruction by terrorism on Indian soil are the 1993 Bombay Bomb blasts and the 26/11 massacre, although there have been many more instances of terrorist attacks, but these two were the big ones, much more noticeable for the sheer audacity of the way these were meticulously planned and executed.

The fact of the matter is that India has suffered so much at the hands of terrorist elements that any nation worth its salt could well and truly have been in a civil war, with the exception India. It is a strength unmatched by anyone in the world. The strength of restraint.

To quote BJP’s Shahnawaz Hussain: “No country in the world is better for Muslims than incredible and unmatched India and no neighbour better than a Hindu.”

According to a recent online poll conducted by the Times of India, India’s most read English daily, some 86.5% of people supported the BJP leader’s statement. Isn’t THAT incredible?

Instead of spreading panic and negativity about India, personalities such as Aamir Khan should have a moral responsibility to protect the interests of such a great nation, especially when it is trying to make a mark in the modern world – politically as well as economically. Hell, you are being paid for being the brand ambassador of the campaign for projecting a positive image of the country.

Indians may not be proud of everything that is about the nation, but we certainly are proud of the cohesive and united nature of our general population which does not do distinction on religious lines. India is the most communally harmonious multicultural nation that there could be, and that Mr Khan, is what is INCREDIBLE about India.