(a) ‘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. (b) What are the main components of emotional intelligence (EI)? Can they be learned? Discuss.
Approach · directive: “do you agree / justify / what / discuss”
What it asks · (a) Take a stand on whether hatred corrupts personal wisdom and conscience and, through them, a nation's spirit, and justify it; (b) name the components of emotional intelligence and argue whether they can be learned.
The question has 4 parts — answer each
- (a) Do you agree that hatred destroys a person's wisdom and conscience and can poison a nation's spirit: take a stand
- (a) Justify that stand with reasons
- (b) What are the main components of emotional intelligence
- (b) Discuss whether they can be learned
Open with · (a) Hatred clouds judgment and dulls conscience, as the record of communal and ethnic violence shows; (b) emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, understand and manage one's own and others' emotions.
Cover
- (a) Agree: hatred distorts reason through prejudice, stereotype and confirmation bias, and dulls empathy and conscience, so the hater can justify cruelty.
- (a) Nation's spirit: collective hatred feeds communal violence and polarisation, erodes trust and fraternity, and diverts energy from development, as the violence of Partition showed.
- (a) Counterpoint: anger at injustice can be a moral spur; the difference lies in directing it at wrongs, not at persons or communities.
- (a) Remedies: constitutional fraternity, action on hate speech, education for tolerance, dialogue and leaders who model restraint; the Dhammapada says hatred ceases only by non-hatred.
- (b) Components (Goleman): self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills; the Salovey-Mayer model speaks of perceiving, using, understanding and managing emotions.
- (b) Can they be learned? Largely yes: unlike IQ, EI grows with practice, feedback, mindfulness, role-play and mentoring, though temperament sets the starting point.
- (b) In administration: EI keeps officers calm under pressure and improves decisions, public dealing and team leadership; training and case-based exercises can build it.
Close with · Wisdom and conscience need the very skills EI names, self-awareness, self-control and empathy, which are also the best guard against hatred.
Add value (verified)
- Dhammapada, verse 5: hatred is never appeased by hatred, only by non-hatred. Dhammapada, Yamakavagga: Pairs (verses 1-20), tr. Acharya Buddharakkhita — Access to Insight ↗“Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal.”
- Aristotle's doctrine of the mean: anger must never reach the point at which it undermines reason. Aristotle's Ethics — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ↗“Aristotle is committed to saying that anger should never reach the point at which it undermines reason; and this means that our passion should always fall short of the extreme point at which we would lose control.”
- Tehseen S. Poonawalla v Union of India (Supreme Court, 17 July 2018), on mob lynching: mobocracy cannot be allowed to override the law or become the new normal. Tehseen S. Poonawalla vs Union of India, Supreme Court, 17 July 2018 — Indian Kanoon ↗“The horrendous acts of mobocracy cannot be permitted to inundate the law of the land. Earnest action and concrete steps have to be taken to protect the citizens from the recurrent pattern of violence which cannot be allowed to become “the new normal”.”
- Aristotle treats ethical virtue as a disposition formed by habit to have appropriate feelings, which supports the view that emotional competences can be learned. Aristotle's Ethics — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ↗“Aristotle describes ethical virtue as a “ hexis ” (“state” “condition” “disposition”)—a tendency or disposition, induced by our habits, to have appropriate feelings (1105b25–6).”
- Mission Karmayogi (Cabinet approval, 2 September 2020) aims to let every civil servant build behavioural, functional and domain competencies, the vehicle for training emotional intelligence in service. Cabinet approves 'Mission Karmayogi' — PIB, Cabinet, 2 September 2020 ↗“To make available to all civil servants, an opportunity to continuously build and strengthen their Behavioral, Functional and Domain Competencies”
Question: UPSC's CS (Main) 2020, GS Paper IV — paper ↗. Approach: Minimalist IAS, checked 1 Oct 2026 (how we verify) — UPSC publishes no model answers. ·
Model answer · 368 words (UPSC limit 150) · Minimalist IAS
"Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased," says the Dhammapada. Hatred first blinds the individual and then divides the nation; emotional intelligence is the learnable skill that arrests that slide.
(a) Does hatred destroy wisdom, conscience and a nation's spirit? I agree
- Wisdom clouded: hatred filters every fact through prejudice and confirmation bias. Aristotle held that anger should never reach the point where it undermines reason; hatred is anger that has crossed that point and settled.
- Conscience dulled: hatred dehumanises its target, so cruelty stops registering as wrong and a mob calls murder justice.
- A nation's spirit poisoned: collective hatred produced the killings of Partition. In Tehseen Poonawalla v Union of India (2018) the Supreme Court warned that "horrendous acts of mobocracy cannot be permitted to inundate the law of the land" and must not become "the new normal".
- Fraternity attacked: hatred negates the Preamble's fraternity and the citizen's duty under Article 51A(e) to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood.
- The qualification: anger at injustice can fuel reform; the poison lies in hating persons or communities rather than wrongs.
- Remedies: firm action on hate speech, education for tolerance, inter-community dialogue, and leaders who model restraint.
(b) The components of emotional intelligence, and whether they can be learned
Emotional intelligence (Goleman)
- Two models: Goleman's five components above; Salovey and Mayer describe the same ability as perceiving, using, understanding and managing emotions.
- Largely learnable: unlike IQ, EI grows with practice. Aristotle saw ethical virtue as a disposition "induced by our habits, to have appropriate feelings". Reflection and feedback build self-awareness; mindfulness and a pause before reacting build regulation; listening builds empathy; role-play and mentoring build social skill.
- The limit: temperament sets the starting point, not the ceiling.
- In the civil service: Mission Karmayogi (2020) aims to let every civil servant "continuously build and strengthen" behavioural competencies. An officer who reads the fear behind a crowd's anger can calm a riot before it starts.
Hatred narrows the circle of concern; emotional intelligence widens it. Training self-awareness and empathy in schools and in the services is the practical way to secure the fraternity the Preamble promises.
Written by Minimalist IAS from facts checked at source (how we verify) — a little fuller than exam length, so every part of the question is covered; in the hall, keep the structure and trim the detail. UPSC publishes no model answers: compare your structure and coverage with this, then write your own.