Are we really not Intolerant?

Really Mr. Kher?  "Nobody has the right to call our country intolerant.”  Really?  I do.  I have the right to call our country intolerant when I feel it's getting intolerant.  Why?  Because I am an Indian.  And because I love my country.

It is only an idiot who’d associate blind devotion with love and patriotism.  A mother loves her son not because she thinks that he can do no wrong, but because she acknowledges all his bad habits and scolds him and chides him to be a better man.  That is love.  I mean do you really need an Apple ad to tell you that accepting the status quo is akin to slavery?  What if our great souls like Mahatma Gandhi and Shaheed Bhagat Singh had accepted that all was well with the nation and any protest was unpatriotic?  Where would we be? 

Civilizations progress because they are prodded and poked and disturbed, to develop, to be better, to treat their people better.  And that stands true all over the world, from Japan to Germany to the U.S.  The U.S. has a black president today because less than a century ago, the country looked deep into its soul and deemed that there was something rotten within.   And they decided to change.

Acceptance.  Accepting that we are damaged is the first step towards change.

And if all of what I say above is, well, too deep for you, let me present this.  Nobody is protesting against the country.  They are protesting against the intolerance of the government.  See?  The GOVERNMENT.  So, logically it’s not unpatriotic.  Because the government is not the country.

Or maybe it is for you.  I think it is.

But if that’s true, shouldn't the BJP be called traitors and unpatriotic when they were protesting the corruption in the country during Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government?  Huh?  “Scamgress” and all that.

Or how about this: when Prime Minister Modi launched the wonderful Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, wasn’t he essentially calling the country’s streets dirty, that they need to be cleaned?  Isn’t that unpatriotic?

Now I am confused.  What exactly is your argument?  What's your logic?

Really?  You're ready to believe all these people, living lives of the mind: intellectuals, think-tanks, artists, writers, who have spent decades of their lives building up monuments of books and arts, cultivating the culture of Modern India, are totally evil, but you can't find a moment to think up a logical argument? 

Of course, as the great yogi dude says, Shah Rukh Khan is a terrorist, even though he comes from a family of freedom fighters.   So we don’t have to listen to dear sweet SRK.  Okay.  But what about the rest of them?  Surely they can't all be terrorists.  Can they?  Or maybe you think they are.