Revision summary
Tolerance is respect for difference without using the stamp as a communal weapon. It is essential to impartiality in a plural district. It is not indifference to crime, hate, or cruelty. Constitutional morality still ranks dignity above a majority custom. Daily tests are language, festivals, hearings, and refusal to let a crowd rewrite the queue.
Model answer
Introduction
Tolerance is the habit of letting others live, speak, and worship without using the stamp as a weapon. For a civil servant in a plural State, it is a working value of the first rank, but it is not a licence to tolerate crime or humiliation of the weak.
Body
Meaning in office
- Tolerance is patient respect for difference of faith, language, caste, party, and custom, so long as the Constitution is not broken.
- It is not indifference; the officer still decides, still enforces law, and still protects the weaker party.
- It is not moral emptiness; a communal lie or a lynching is not a “viewpoint” to be hosted at the desk.
- In India it sits beside secularism, Article 14, Article 15, and Article 25 as the administrative face of equal citizenship.
Why it ranks high for a civil servant
- The officer serves a whole district, not a biradari; every file will contain someone the officer does not privately like.
- Without tolerance, impartiality collapses into quiet favour for “people like us.”
- A hearing that lets a minority speaker finish, a festival order that is even-handed, and a language used at the counter are daily tests.
- In Uttar Pradesh’s density of identities, intolerance at the thana or tehsil becomes a public order risk, not a private taste.
Limits of “supreme”
- Tolerance of corruption, delay-money, or cruelty is not a value; it is collapse.
- Tolerance of hate speech that is already an offence is not liberalism; it is failure to protect.
- The supreme test remains constitutional morality: dignity and equality bind even a majority custom.
- Ranking values, integrity and compassion stand with tolerance; one cannot buy the others by being merely polite to the powerful.
Practice
- Recuse when one’s own community is a party if fairness will not be believed.
- Record reasons in a language the loser can follow.
- Refuse to let a crowd’s impatience rewrite a legal queue.
- Train staff that mockery of a petitioner’s dress or accent is misconduct, not humour.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD T[Tolerance] --> I[Impartial hearing] T --> L[Law still binds] I --> U[Equal citizenship] L --> U
Conclusion
For a civil servant, tolerance is a first-rank working value because the office belongs to every citizen. It is supreme in the sense of daily necessity, not as a blank cheque for crime or for the humiliation of the weak.
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Must an officer tolerate an illegal custom?
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Is tolerance the same as weakness?
No. A calm, even order that a mob dislikes is strength. Panic firing or communal targeting is not strength.
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