Comments on: Is India a tolerant society?

By: Vitus Holzner

Vitus Holzner — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 01:16:21 +0000

Hemanth,
I am not judging the content of either Jordan’s post or your addendum but I feel like changing people’s posts is not okay. If I submit something to be posted on this site, I want it to be posted unchanged (apart from typos etc).
Please don’t get this the wrong way, I really appreciate your inside view on some of the topics posted here. I think your comments add value to the discussion and the content of this site. However, I think you should give your input in form of comments.

-Vitus

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:25:42 +0000

I personally think it’s remarkable that India can be made up of such a diverse peoples yet can still be governed through a democracy. I do think having so many different viewpoints slows the process way down, and because there are so many conflicting views, it’s difficult to gain a consensus on anything. They do seem to be making progress however (as opposed to our US democracy where congress is afraid of their shadows)

By: Jordan Wente

Jordan Wente — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:24:48 +0000

Thank you for the additional information. It was a hard topic to write about and information was limited. I agree with you, India is an extremely tolerant society given its size and diversity. I was not making any kind of judgements. My goal was to highlight India’s remarkable tolerance. In particular toward the rest of the world. While many western countries are running scared of globalization and integration, India has been able to embrace globalization and prosper from openly participation with the rest of the world, without bias toward religion or culture. I think that this is a direct result of India’s tolerant nature and diversity. My point was that maybe other countries could learn from how well India has been able to assimilate. In an effort to get feedback I left both sides open to discussion. In my research I found a few articles in the New York TImes that claimed that India is not a tolerant society based on various reasons and I provided some of those examples above. I found it interesting that even though India has had some rough patches, like every country has at one point or another, the article does not look at the bigger picture. So then I guess my question would have been better stated to say; Are these incidents evidence enough to classify India as an intolerant country?