Recently you have noticed an incident on twitter when an Iranian-Canadian ex-Muslim Armin Navabi posted a cartoon of Kali Maa to offend the follower of the Hindu faith. Let me give a little background, in the result of recent riots in Sweden when a right-wing political party person from Sweden tore the Quran, Armin decided to tear the Quran himself and in addition, he decided to spit on it as well in a YouTube video which he posted on his YouTube channel. Some believers of the Hindu faith showed him support from India and the world, then he decided to make and post that cartoon in order to instigate Hindus.
Here you have to understand the mentality of the person, Armin and many other neo atheists in the western societies tend to call themselves atheists but they are still trapped under Abhramic ideology because they behave in the same way a religious person in Abhramic countries would behave only difference is that their gods have changed, it can be anything they say they believe in logic, science, and Humankind. But the real question is the people who believe in humans are not humans as per the recent phenomena?
Western societies had to separate the state from the religion in order to sustain and lead a peaceful life for their people and arguably they have managed to do so to a larger extent. But societies don’t evolve overnight, their thoughts and ideas are shaped by the surroundings they have been raised, the school of thought they have seen. In general society’s ideas and thoughts are very limited because they and their ancestors have experienced the abhramic school of thought which fundamentally dictates either this or that. It’s rigid in a way that these are the rules you have to follow and not flexible which exist in Indian society. Don’t get the wrong idea we are not talking about people here, we are just talking about ideas and thoughts in general, there can be individuals with multilateral thought process in western societies and similarly individuals with bilateral thoughts. One of the reasons for this goes to fundamentals of the abhramic school of thought which dictates either you believe in this school of thought or you are against it, which is in absolute terms(this or that).
That can be the reason for the western institutions many times pointing out that Indian societies have become intolerant because they don’t understand the society and their lens of ideas doesn’t allow them to. Not denying that there can be problems in Indian society regarding law and order but you cannot pick up an individual case and generalize the society. Well, you must be thinking oh! you are taking Armin Navabi’s case and generalizing yourself, No Armin is just one of the many atheists who jumped in his support because they too believe that way, also let us give you another example down and you can yourself find many different reasons why I thought so.
You can clearly see the distinctively separate left and right in the political scenario in western societies, that’s one of the reasons they tend to copy their western template and paste it on Indian society when they call Modi, BJP, and RSS intolerant without any evidence or proof simply because according to their school of thought either you are left or right there is no place for the multilateral school of thoughts which exist in fundamentals of Hindus as well as Indian society. You have to understand humans and their ideas are flexible and too complicated to just simply put it in black or white.
One more example, western societies tend to introduce titles like Feminism, Secularism, and tolerance/intolerance which all are absolute in nature. You are either a Feminist or not a Feminist there is no scope for flexibility. Again these ideas are very good but only work for societies having absolute ideas with this or that, it tends to fail when you put it in the Indian context.
Indian society must look for thoughts and ideas by looking within and looking at our history and reality. We have thousands and millions of school of thoughts and ideas in our civilization and history. There is nothing wrong with looking at western societies and appreciating their ideas which they apply to evolve their societies but if we want to improve and evolve our society we have to look for answers within instead of looking outside.
