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Why are we tolerant?

We Indians, specifically Hindus are well known for our broadmindedness and religious tolerance. Have you heard otherwise? Well, the intolerant ones are misguided people. Ignore them.

Let us see the reason behind this. We are polytheistic. Every morning, we pray to many gods, by showing arathi to many idols. I have 5 of them in our puja room. And I sing (I think I am singing, but neighbors don't ) hymns (of course in Sanskrit) of at least 10 gods every morning. Why not two more? Along with Shree Ganeshaya namaha, Shree Vishnuve namaha etc, I can easily add Shree Kristuve namaha and Shree mahammadaya namaha. Not so difficult, see.

And not only that. Each of us will our own mane devaru (house god??) and grama devatha (village god??) etc. And we accept another person whose mane devaru is not Ganapathi but Venkatramana. So we can accept people whose God is Jesus or some other. We should and we had been, all these years. Until recently, when Ram, the new form of intolerant Ram came into picture.

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