![]() A militarised value system is thus profoundly anti-democratic. Militaries are hierarchical systems their members must extend servile obedience to superiors and are entitled to lord it over subordinates in return. In a militarised value system physical strength is glorified and weakness despised. Discipline is his god and unquestioning obedience the required mode of worship. A ‘good’ soldier must be ready to kill and die, whenever ordered to do so. In military ethos, ‘good’ has a meaning antithetically different from civilian ethos. Instead, militarization is being intensified and a military ethos which celebrates strength and glorifies violence inculcated. Post-war, Lankan rulers should have made a conscious, consistent effort to de-militarize the country and to inculcate a value-system based on non-violence, tolerance, equality and compassion in society. Infecting Civil Society with Military EthosĬountries which had been immersed in long conflicts are particularly prone to societal violence. ![]() In post-war Sri Lanka, Tamils, political opponents, media personnel and children are all Untermenschen because the Rajapaksa ethos despises weakness almost as much as it abhors dissent All the majority has to do is to slink into indifference and drowse in apathy, while an active minority turns the land into a moral desert. History teaches, time and again, that for abominations to breakout, for outrages to become common-or-garden, the participation of the majority is unnecessary. Dissanayake who hailed the closure of village schools as a sign of development can also argue that village schools must be closed because they endanger the safety of village children? Last week a 15 year old girl on her way to school was “dragged…off the cycle she was peddling and raped” by a soldier attached to the Welikanda camp (Ceylon Today – ). Unfortunately, in a society addicted and inured to violence even the most careful parent may not be able to protect his/her child. So the regime, compelled to address the epidemic of child rape, callously blamed the parents for failing to protect children. ![]() The rest of the populace is treated with benign or malign neglect, evident in the blasé manner in which the Siblings impose economic hardships on the overburdened masses, even as they and their acolytes revel in cocoons of luxury. Thus the Rajapaksa kith and kin are protected even when they are implicated in murder (the CID and the AG’s Department are yet to move a muscle to investigate, question or apprehend Duminda Silva) and opponents are hounded for little or no reason. Rajapaksa’s language is emblematic of his family’s rule which guarantees impunity for friends, is violently intolerant of opponents and indifferent towards everyone else. But when they emanate from men who wield immense power – and do so with the finesse of a crowbar – it is terrifying, since their verbal violence can be translated so very easily into the physical variety. Such outbursts, if they come from adequately restrained inebriates/bedlamites, can be dismissed as harmless ravings. But when Gotabaya Rajapaksa shrieks, “Your type of journalists are Pigs who eat Shit… You shit journalist trying to split this country”, that is far from funny because he is very, very real. Suppress him! Pinch Him!”, that is funny because she is just a character in a book. When the ‘Queen of Hearts’ in Alice’s Wonderland shrieks, “Collar that Dormouse! Behead that Dormouse!. Those are signs of the times as is the torrent of verbal-violence unleashed by Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Frederica Jansz. These violent outbursts were regarded with near-indifference by religious and political leaders (including the JHU, which believes, against all evidence, that monks can bring morality and civility into politics) and by society. The rights and the wrongs of either case is immaterial what is revealing is that self-proclaimed adherents of Buddhism, a teaching premised on absolute non-violence, had no compunction whatsoever in using violence to settle a doctrinal disagreement. On both occasions mob-violence was used to ‘resolve’ a ‘religious’ dispute, with ‘true Buddhists’ assaulting ‘false Buddhists’. The extent to which the virus of violence has infused the national-bloodstream can be gleaned from two recent outbursts of intra-Buddhist conflict. In post-war Sri Lanka, violence is becoming the method-of-choice to resolve a conflict, fulfil a desire, deal with an opponent, enrich oneself or just vent out. Murders (including custodial murders) are so common they barely make the news. Over 700 children were raped/abused in the first six months of 2012 – a horrendous rate of four a day. In post-war Sri Lanka, violence is everywhere.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |