SOUTH ASIAN OBSERVER www.southasianobserver.com OP-ED FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2014 7 How Words Can Hurt Sehdev Kumar Dr. Sehdev Kumar, Professor Emeritus at the University of Waterloo, currently lectures at the University of Toronto on Bioethics, Science/ Religion Dialogue and International Films. Author of many books, he is also Distinguished Professor of Culture & Communication in Himgiri Zee University. India. email: Sehdev.kumar @utoronto.ca www.Sehdevkumar.com The dagger is sharp and has a double edge It cuts through deeply making all vanquish Using that dagger to push everyone away Unknowing and yet I slice, mutilate, destroy - monicaspeaks n the great epic Mahabharata, Draupadi mocks Dryodhana with biting words as he fumbles into a pool of water thinking it to be glass: "Andhe ka beta andha hai", 'A Blind Man's Son will remain Blind'. One humiliation leads to another; after the loss of game, Draupadi is dragged into the court and disrobed; Bh?ma vows to take revenge. Humiliation. Revenge. War. Devastation. Can a war be triggered by thoughtless words and acts of humiliation? After the end of the First World War, the Allied Forces heaped humiliation on Germany at the Treaty of Versailles, refusing to give, literally, 'five villages' to them to survive. German currency was reduced to mere paper. Out of this humiliation was born Hitler and his vision of new fascist Germany; over the next two decades he set out to take revenge by burning six million Jews and scores of millions of others, engulfing the whole world in his fury. The tongue has no bones in it, but it can inflict wounds that no dagger can match. In school yards, among brothers and spouses, between strangers and friends, in churches and mosques, sometimes fierce words fly out like I arrows, laced with such venom that puss oozes out of the wounds of the inflicted for years and decades. By labelling others infidel, heathen, kafirs, slut, bastard, Commies, and more, for centuries scorn and destruction have been heaped upon others. Indeed, words have been far greater weapons of mass destruction than cannon and guns. I do not know how far back in the human journey words have had the power to heal or to destroy, to cajole and inspire, to threaten and to devastate, to seduce and to romanticize. But in our epics - in Homer's Iliad no less than in the Mahabharata - and in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales as much as in Man of La Mancha and in Shakespeare's King Lear, what is most evident is the power of words, literally to shake and threaten heaven and earth, and everything in between. ith words, we gossip, chatter, inform, reprimand, explore, invoke, refute, argue, threaten, recite, sing, whisper, grumble, and on and on. The list is quite literally inexhaustible. It is not only our personality, and our self, that are so wrapped in words, it is our very being, the very essence of what we might be, or imagine ourselves to be. Without an adequate words and language, we feel shrivelled, hesitant, clumsy. We do not feel quite human. Language gives us identity. It gives ways to laugh and play with words. It gives us poetry, a way to express thought and a feeling; it even teaches us how to go beyond words; it lets us imagine and build castles in the air. slaves, language too went through transformation: from niggers to Negroes to Blacks to Afro-Americans, there has been a steady appropriateness of language that is meant not to be hurtful to others in social communication. Same is true in India with reference to people who have been treated for millennia as 'untouchables' or 'achhoot', and called by many other words that were meant to denigrate them. Mahatma Gandhi coined a new word, Harijan' - 'Children of God' - to render them some dignity. Today that word is rarely used. W n every culture, however primitive, a civilized man is one who weighs his words carefully; he understands their power to heal or to hurt. As such, he must choose his weapons with all the care he can command. For instance, not too long ago, black people in America were referred to as 'niggers'. With the emancipation of the I Instead, the new neutral word is 'Scheduled Castes', as many of them dismissed the word 'Harijan' as condescending, questioning the very motive behind labelling them 'Children of God'. Many of them now choose to be called 'Dalits' 'The Oppressed Ones". In the same vein, the word 'bastard' was the most devastating word for a child born out of wedlock, of an unmarried mother. We see how this epithet in so many of Charles Dickens' novels humiliated children and adults alike, and was a life-long stigma. Today, in Bin Laden son-in-law Sharma sentenced to life in US prison Kailash : 416-418-7465 most Western societies, such a word would be considered thoroughly offensive. New words then begin to reflect new social morality. To rob a person of his dignity - however heinous a crime he may have committed - would now be regarded as 'Cruel and Unusual punishment'. Even when Saddam Hussein was being hanged for his crimes, it was forbidden to take a photograph of him during the hanging itself, lest it deprives him of his dignity. Religious wars which insult and infuriate people of other faiths as infidels and kafirs now seem increasingly foolish and uncivilized. At present, in all institutional settings - in schools and hospitals, in offices and law courts, in banks and factories - what words and expressions are to be used, or are not to be used, are closely monitored. Any breech of the accepted words and expressions can invite discipline. It is clearly understood by such measures that every member of the institution has a right to her dignity. Not too ago, all over the world, in a family, and between members of the family, what words and expressions were to be used, or were forbidden, were clearly enunciated. That is no longer the case. Family as an institution is faltering, whereas social institutions are defining political and social correctness far more clearly and rigidly. Now bosses and colleagues cannot easily curse and shout without consequences. With use of less angry or more polite words, are we less angry, resentful, frustrated or hateful? Perhaps not. We may seethe with anger and frustration, but mostly inside. We cannot easily express it externally. But we do express it internally. Unless resolved, we slowly burn ourselves. We live in a state of stress. We live in a state that is far from harmonious. How to create such harmony would be the next and a necessary step in our social evolution. For Buying, Selling, Leasing Your Home, Bussiness, Commercial or any other Property Please Call : T H E R E A LT O R W H O E X C E E D S Y O U R E X P E C TA I O N S ! Broker Manager DIRECT A seemingly unrepentant Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday in New York following his conviction on terrorism charges. A Manhattan federal jury in March found the Kuwaiti-born 48year-old guilty of conspiring to kill Americans, conspiring to provide material support for terrorists and providing such support, after a trial that offered a rare glimpse of bin Laden in the hours following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. US district judge Lewis Kaplan imposed the sentence minutes after Abu Ghaith made a statement in Arabic, quoting the Koran and declaring he would not ask for mercy from anyone but God. "Today, and at the same moment where you are shackling my hands and intend to bury me alive, you are at the same time unleashing the hands of hundreds of Muslim youths," the former imam said through an interpreter. "And you are removing the dust of their minds, and they will join the rally of the free men." In response, Kaplan noted Abu Ghaith had expressed no remorse, and cited a video in which Abu Ghaith appeared amused by al Qaeda's September 11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people in the United States. "You, sir, in my assessment, are committed to doing everything you can to assist al Qaeda in its mission to kill Americans," Kaplan said. Prosecutors had painted Abu Ghaith as a charismatic spokesman for al Qaeda in the days and weeks after the attacks, saying he recorded inflammatory videos the group could use to recruit new members. The government also contended that one October 2001 video, in which Abu Ghaith promised the "storm of airplanes will not stop," indicated he knew beforehand of an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to detonate a shoe bomb aboard a jetliner in December 2001 by Briton Richard Reid. "Suleiman Abu Ghaith served at the very highest levels of al Qaeda," assistant US attorney John Cronan told the court. "Abu Ghaith was a proud participant in al Qaeda's conspiracy to kill Americans. And he was someone Osama bin Laden relied on heavily," Cronan said. Abu Ghaith's lawyer, Stanley Cohen, argued his client was guilty only of delivering fiery speeches and that there was not a "scintilla of evidence" to connect him with any specific al Qaeda plots. Abu Ghaith took the stand in his own defense, where he described meeting bin Laden in an Afghan cave the evening of September 11. He said bin Laden told him, "We are the ones who did it." The next day, he said, he recorded his first video at bin Laden's request. However, he denied ever becoming a member of al Qaeda and said his intention was not to speak or recruit for the group. Abu Ghaith would marry bin Laden's daughter Fatima years later, a fact the jury was not permitted to hear. France considers joining Syria air strikes Poroshenko says Ukraine crisis approaching end PARIS: France is considering whether to extend its air strikes to Syria and increase security in public places after militants linked to the Islamic State group beheaded a French hostage, officials said on Thursday. President Francois Hollande's office announced that France will "intensify" its support for Syrian opposition forces fighting the Islamic State extremists. A presidential aide would not elaborate on what kind of support or whether it could involve military action. Hollande held an emergency defense meeting on Thursday, a day after the killing of 55-year-old mountaineering guide Herve Gourdel was announced. Hollande's office said France will increase security in public places and on public transport. Security measures were already stepped up after France started air strikes in Iraq last Friday, becoming the first country to join the US air campaign against the Islamic State fighters. France initially insisted that it would limit air strikes to Iraq. But the French position seems to be shifting since the US extended its air strikes to Syria. Ahead of Thursday's meeting, defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told RTL radio that officials are deliberating whether France's current actions in Iraq are sufficient against the extremist group, which has havens — and oil fields — in Syria. "We already have an important task in Iraq and we will see how the situation evolves in coming days," Le Drian said. "We are asking the question." KIEV: Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Thursday he was confident that his peace deal with pro-Russian insurgents means the "most dangerous" part of the five-month conflict is over. "I have no doubt that my peace plan will work. I have no doubt that the biggest, most dangerous part of the war is already behind us, thanks to the heroism of Ukrainian soldiers," Poroshenko said at his first press conference since he assumed office in early June. The separatist uprising has killed more than 3,200 people and driven 650,000 from their homes. The ex-Soviet country's worst crisis since its 1991 independence has also damaged East-West relations and stoked fears across eastern Europe of Russian territorial ambitions. Ukraine's parliament had last week backed Poroshenko's plan for rebel-held parts of the Russianspeaking east to hold local council elections December 7 that would help restore law and order, but not pursue any independence claims. However, guerrillas brushed off the offer and announced plans to set up their own parliaments in self-organised November 2 polls. Poroshenko said he hoped neither Russia nor the rest of the international community would recognise the legitimacy of the separatist vote. "I hope that neither Russia nor the rest of the world recognise elections called by self-proclaimed terrorist organisations in violation of Ukrainian law," the proWestern leader said. email: [email protected] People's Choice Reality Inc. Brokerage 1780 Albion Road Unit 2&3 Toronto ON M9V 1C1 Website: www.century21.ca/kailash.sharma MULTI AWARD WINNER ● ● ● ● ● ● Centurion Producer Award Continuous 10 yrs. 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