Monday, July 8, 2013

Need for a Structural Change in the Society


Ahimsa reigned the politico-religious discourse of India two times in history: Emperor Ashoka’s time and Gandhian era. Except these two times, Indian social and political arena was or is controlled by violence. The films, literature and other social and entertainment platforms are glorifying various forms of violence, not just in India, but the whole world.
Violence in any form, for whatever reasons, cannot be justified. Animals kill the other species for their survival, for food. Had they known to think, to speak, and to write, they would have justified their violent nature; as humans are capable of doing these things, we are justifying our unjustifiable violence with the help of ideological explanations; in the name of religion, caste, creed, nationalism, social security, and so on.
Whether art and literature fuel violence or just represent violence in the society is a difficult question. Both help each other maybe the safest answer. However, one can easily see that violence, whether genocide or sexual crimes, are increasing in the society because the society favors violence instead of non-violence. As noted earlier, we can find only two instances where a widespread discussion surrounding non-violence dominated. When the national culture itself is that of violence, how can we expect a decrease in crime ratio?
There may be difference of opinion about the argument that the national character of India is violence itself. For that we need to identify the terms that are in use; for example, when the police or army kill someone in an encounter, nobody considers it as a crime, whereas when an individual kills someone for money or for any other reasons, it is a crime. However, in a closer look, we can identify that both are instances of violence, the only difference is that one act of violence is supported by the prevailing ideologies and social norms whereas the other not; one is accepted by the society, and the other not.
We, as a society, favor atrocities of any kind provided it is supported by religion, caste, party system, linguistic group, race and so on. Atrocities against minorities are supported by the national parties as these minorities do not form the part of the so-called “Sanatana Dharma”; violence against other parties are being justified as they are against the ideology of that party and so on.
These often can be exemplified in the movies of our times. We can never find the heroes arguing for non-violent methods, they are heroes mainly because they resort to cruel act of violence. They may give justifications for their violence, may be to save someone, the country, the village and so on. However, they are glorifying nothing but violence.
When the political parties, religious groups, caste leadership, literary pieces, movies and so on propagate violence in this way, what we can expect from the poor masses? They are living in their own imaginary world and whatever they are doing are for a reason (which may be madness for the society). The increased number of violence against women, children, and other socially isolated sections can be because of this reason.
If the continuing glorification of violence is the reasons for crimes in the society, what we need to do? We need to give an emphasis on non-violent ways of thinking in the society. This does not mean we need to reproduce the statements of Gandhi or Buddha; they already said what they want to say. We need to move on from where they stopped. Only through non-violence, we can decrease the crimes in the society.

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