UPSC Mains 2020 GS Paper 4 Q2a: model answer
Hatred is destructive of a person's wisdom and conscience that can poison a nation's spirit. Do you agree with this view? Justify your answer.
What the question wants
Give and justify your view on whether hatred destroys personal wisdom and conscience and can poison a nation's spirit.
How to structure it
Agree, at two levels.
- Individual: wisdom and conscience
- Nation: social fabric
- Antidotes
How to think it through
Agree. Individual: hatred distorts perception (confirmation bias), blocks empathy, justifies cruelty, dehumanisation. Nation: communal riots (Partition 1947 ~ up to a million died), Rwanda 1994 genocide fuelled by radio hate (~800,000 killed), hate speech on social media; SC on hate speech (Tehseen Poonawalla 2018 lynching guidelines, 2022-23 suo motu hate speech directions). Gandhi: 'an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind' (attributed). MLK: 'Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.' Antidotes: education, inter-group contact, law against hate speech, leaders' example, Constitution's fraternity.
Model answer
In 1994, radio broadcasts in Rwanda called Tutsis 'cockroaches' for months. In about a hundred days, roughly 800,000 people were killed, many by neighbours. Hatred had done its work long before the machetes did.
I agree: hatred destroys the individual's wisdom and conscience
- It distorts perception: a person who hates sees only evidence that confirms it.
- It kills empathy: the 'other' stops being human, which makes cruelty feel justified.
- It silences conscience: acts once unthinkable start to seem normal.
- It consumes the hater before it harms the hated.
Hatred poisons a nation's spirit
- Partition (1947) violence left scars that still shape South Asian politics.
- Mob lynchings led the Supreme Court in Tehseen Poonawalla (2018) to issue guidelines on preventive measures.
- Online hate spreads faster than corrections, weakening the fraternity the Preamble promises.
Antidotes
- Contact and dialogue between communities.
- Firm, even-handed enforcement against hate speech and violence.
- Leaders who model restraint; Martin Luther King Jr. said hate cannot drive out hate, only love can.
A nation can survive poverty and defeat; it struggles to survive the hatred of its own people for one another.
Draw: Two concentric circles: inner 'individual' (lost wisdom, conscience), outer 'nation' (riots, broken fraternity), with antidotes as arrows pointing in.
Keywords, cases and data to drop in
hatred, dehumanisation, confirmation bias, conscience, Rwanda 1994, Partition 1947, Tehseen Poonawalla 2018, mob lynching, fraternity, Preamble, contact, Martin Luther King Jr.
Where most answers lose marks
- Agreeing with no examples, or confusing anger at injustice with hatred of people.
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Fresh examples from current affairs
Supreme Court: no prior approval under Section 17A needed to probe a bribe demand
In a judgment of 16 October 2026, a Supreme Court Bench of Justices S.V.N. Bhatti and N.V. Anjaria held that investigating a bribe demand by a public servant does not need prior approval under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Asking for a bribe, the court said, is not part of discharging official duties.
UPSC angle: Prelims: Sections 7, 7A, 17A and 19 of the PC Act. · Mains GS-II/GS-IV: honest officers versus accountability.
19 Oct 2026Learn the concept
Question text as printed in the official UPSC Civil Services (Main) question paper. The model answer is original Battle IAS work; use it to learn structure, not to memorise.
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