Worshipping Intolerance: A Warning India Cannot Ignore

 Worshipping Intolerance: A Warning India Cannot Ignore

Hindi Version: https://rakeshinsightfulgaze.blogspot.com/2025/10/blog-post.html

How many civilized cultures celebrate intolerance as divine? Most of us would like to say none. Yet history and present-day India tell a different story. From mythologies that sanctified vengeance to leaders who weaponize it today, violence has too often been justified as justice. What was once ritualized in temples is now normalized in politics, and the danger of this legacy can no longer be dismissed.

Kali, the goddess of destruction, has long been revered for her violence against demons. Her garland of severed heads, once symbolic of evil destroyed, also became a justification for violence in human hands. The Thugs of central India invoked her name as they killed hundreds of thousands over centuries, embedding the idea that brutality could be sacred. This was not just mythology; it was a cultural imprint. In a society otherwise celebrated for logic, debate, and non-violence, there remained a deep undercurrent of sanctioned violence, ready to be summoned when the system of justice faltered.

The problem is that this imprint never left us. Even today, India’s most beloved festivals reinforce the normalization of violence. On Dussehra, across the country, effigies of Ravan are set ablaze, celebrated as the symbolic triumph of good over evil. Days later, Diwali marks Ram’s return after Ravan’s destruction. On the surface, these festivals appear harmless, joyous, cultural, and unifying. But beneath the fireworks and festivity lies a repeated lesson: that burning your enemy, destroying them completely, is the highest form of justice. Year after year, generation after generation, such rituals leave impressions that condition people to cheer not just the defeat of an enemy, but their annihilation. What appears cultural becomes political psychology.

This is why, when a leader like Yogi Adityanath demolishes homes with bulldozers or eliminates alleged criminals in custody, the public instinct is not outrage but applause. The ground has already been prepared by centuries of myth and ritual that glorified annihilation as justice. What is presented as “decisive governance” is in fact a political re-enactment of cultural symbols that have been normalized for centuries. And this is what makes it so dangerous: because when violence becomes ritualized, people stop questioning whether it is just.

The gravest offense lies not just in demolishing homes of the poor and marginalized without due process, but in the killings of those branded as mafia leaders inside prisons, men who, regardless of their crimes, were under the state’s custody and entitled to trial. When a government eliminates its prisoners instead of presenting them to courts, it does not prove efficiency; it proves contempt for the rule of law. The responsibility of the state is not to act as executioner, but as guarantor of justice. By violating this, Yogi has not only eroded public faith in courts but has dangerously normalized the idea that rulers themselves can decide guilt and punishment.

The silence of the judiciary is even more alarming. Judges, entrusted as guardians of the Constitution, have looked away as executive power mocks due process. Their inaction echoes a historical pattern: for centuries, when kings or rulers carried out biased justice, the people mythologized it rather than challenged it. But in a modern democracy, such normalization is catastrophic. It signals to every citizen that institutions meant to protect them can be bypassed, and that the state has no obligation to fairness once it decides they are guilty.

This normalization is not uniquely Indian it is part of a dangerous global pattern. Nazi Germany turned entire communities into scapegoats, convincing ordinary people that violence was justice. Fascist Italy glorified “strongman” leaders who took law into their own hands, eroding institutions in the name of order. Even in the United States, the legacy of lynching shows how communities once viewed mob violence as legitimate justice when courts failed to protect white supremacy. In every case, societies that normalized violence as virtue collapsed into authoritarianism, leaving behind only shame and scars.

India now stands at the same crossroads. It can continue to excuse Kali’s shadow in its politics, tolerating bulldozers and prison killings as “tough governance,” or it can confront the truth: that a democracy cannot survive if rulers are allowed to act as gods of vengeance. To accept Yogi’s methods is to accept that the law no longer applies equally, that minorities can be targeted without defense, and that tomorrow, anyone could face punishment without trial.

For centuries, India lived with the contradiction of worshipping peace while sanctifying violence. That contradiction may have had its place in a fractured past. But in a nation that aspires to modernity, equality, and the rule of law, it is poison. The normalization of intolerance is not a strength it is rotting away at the foundations of democracy.

And here lies the warning to all who still believe in the rule of law: the dangers of this governance are not theoretical; they are historical. Time and again, societies that normalized vengeance over justice collapsed into authoritarian regimes that devoured their own people. Today’s burning of Ravan may seem like a harmless celebration, but it leaves impressions that prepare the ground for bulldozers, prison killings, and silent courts. If India continues to worship intolerance as justice, the risk is not abstract. The risk is that a culture that once ritualized destruction will allow destruction itself to become governance. And when that happens, harmony will no longer be possible, not for the guilty, not for the innocent, not for anyone.