Tolerance is the key concept embedded in public discourse these days. Everybody wants the ‘other’ to tolerate ‘us’. Those in power want the impatient rivals to tolerate them. Women want men to respect their rights. Members of minority communities want the majority community to concede their right to equal citizenship. Workers wish the employers to bear with their unions. And so on.

Although many people believe that the Pakistan society is losing tolerance for good practices, such as democracy and respect for human rights, and increasing its tolerance for bad practices, such as intrigue and chicanery, most citizens still treat tolerance as a positive value that should determine one’s attitude towards the fellow beings.

It is, however, doubtful if due attention is being paid to the factors that contribute to tolerance or its opposite -- intolerance. Usually, tolerance is understood as a capacity to bear with a difference of opinion, to listen to and respect a belief or opinion other than one’s own and respect others’ rights.

In its broader definition, tolerance is part of a community’s social code as determined by its dominant elite. Thus, concepts of tolerance and intolerance can change over time.

For instance, there was a time when no political party tolerated an office-bearer who was facing trial on a charge of moral turpitude. Now such people are not disturbed until found guilty by a court, a stage that may never be reached or may be reached after a very long delay. For a long time, persons in authority did not like to be seen in the company of well-known smugglers, at least avoided being photographed with them. Gen. Ziaul Haq abolished this taboo for ever. In fact, he tolerated and fraternised with internationally recognised thieves. But then, under his code, lying too could be tolerated.

Read also: Violence, another level

The area where tolerance and intolerance are critical issues is relations between Muslim sects. For centuries, adherents of the various schools of Islamic thought tolerated one another’s right to interpret the injunctions of their common faith. That is no longer the case. Whoever has a gun and has been motivated and trained to kill those belonging to other sects will do so as a sacred duty. The keepers of mosques now do not allow entry to anyone belonging to a sect other than theirs.

Is tolerance/intolerance purely a matter of one’s personal inclination or a psychological trait? Sometimes yes, but more often than not a person’s or group’s tolerance level is determined by material interests. So long as the Western countries needed the cheap labour of their subjects in colonies or ordinary migrants from poorer countries they went on setting standards of tolerance. But once their economies ran into difficulties or their own youth failed to find jobs, their tolerance level declined to the extent that race riots became common. In Pakistan, too, tolerance of members of minority communities has declined as the latter have joined the competition for jobs, profits in business, and social status.

In societies like Pakistan that are still trapped in feudal modes of thinking and behaviour, there is a limit to which the poor -- tenants, wage earners, menial workers, low-level state functionaries -- can be allowed to approach their masters or to order their own lives. A landlord might not mind giving a few coins to the child of a servant but he is unlikely to tolerate the same child’s desire to be educated. Similarly, in a feudal society a woman is tolerated only so long as she accepts without protest her status as a piece of property or a slave with only the minimum facilities that her lord may in his discretion allow.

Read also: Editorial 

People usually acquire the quality of tolerance when they live in peace and security, when they are strong enough to be confident of meeting any challenge, or are competent enough or knowledgeable enough to be respected by their peers. Insecurity, lack of order, absence of rule of merit and consciousness of one’s weaknesses and inadequacies all breed intolerance.

Fear is one of the most common causes of turning people away from tolerance. Politicians do not tolerate their opponents because they are afraid of being supplanted by them. The conservative religious groups cannot tolerate other sects out of fear of losing their flock, that is, their source of living. Men are intolerant of women’s ideas of freedoms and gender equality because they are afraid of death of patriarchy and loss of power.

Thus, tolerance in its essence, is an attribute of human beings as well as groups and communities that are physically, intellectually and emotionally stable. And it is valued for its material benefits. A tolerant society functions, in today’s parlance, according to principles of inclusiveness, rejects exclusivism, and makes sure that it can engage all its members, regardless of distinctions of belief, gender, social status or domicile, in the pursuit of common good. Nobody’s talent is lost to society by barriers to self-realisation.

Tolerance is not like a wild flower. It has to be cultivated. The way to the establishment of a tolerant society lies through the creation of guarantees of equality to all citizens in all spheres (political, social, economic and cultural), rule of law (equality of citizens before law and right to equal protection of law), elimination of all forms of discrimination, strict enforcement of rule of merit, and full freedom to pursue knowledge and the arts.

If we find that the factors that foster tolerance are either weak or in certain cases absent in Pakistan, nobody should be surprised at the rise of intolerance. What strengthens the trend towards intolerance is, firstly, denial of the malaise and, secondly, the excuse that the whole world is becoming intolerant or that the threshold of tolerance has to be lowered in view of the threats to the state.

What must be remembered is the verdict of history that while a tolerant society achieves the highest levels of patriotic solidarity, an intolerant people destroy themselves by losing all sense of right and wrong.