Sunday Leader Editorial

Lankans Losing The Human Touch?

18th October 2015

Sociologists, psychiatrists, criminologists, journalists, amateurs and political quacks associated with these disciplines have been at pains to analyse a supposed change in the behaviour of Sri Lankans. Aggressive social behaviour, tending to extreme forms of violence reported in the media has been the cause of this interest.

It has been generally assumed that Sri Lankans of yore in all communities were calm and collected following the teachings of the four main religions. But whether it was really so is not certain because even in the fifties Sri Lanka was reported to have a very high homicide rate. A news report quoted an IGP saying: If the homicide rate is to be reduced he would have to station a policeman under every coconut tree.

Thus, is the current wave of crime, a result of intense coverage of events with reporters in search of sensational news and their reports inspiring more criminal acts? Or is it that during the past few decades of organized violence and change in life styles, spurred on by consumerism resulted in the transformation of holy men and women into raving criminals and sex maniacs?

Horrendous crimes of pedophiles on little children have shocked the nation. In Kahawatte area, where innocent women have been attacked and killed, have given rise to suspicion that a deranged person was roaming the region.

Hitherto unknown and unimaginable acts committed on even fathers have been reported. Last week at Balagalla (near Kandy) a police patrol found a 74-year-old father locked up in a dog kennel. This report said he had been put in the dog house by his own 42-year-old daughter because the old man was unable to contain himself and was urinating all over the house. Another amazing part of the story is that the dogs in the kennel had been put by the daughter in the old man’s room. The woman had been produced before the Menikkhina Magistrate.

Another incident reported last week was of an old man in Polonnaruwa being found locked up in a fowl cage by his family. The report said that sympathetic neighbours had been providing him his meals.

These two incidents have been reported from rural areas, where old values such as respect and care for the aged was a byword. They did not happen in Colombo – not Colombo 7 which Lanka’s writers, intellectuals, leftists consider to be the font of all evil. Colombo people, according to some stories, care for their parents better. A family that wanted to go on holiday but couldn’t take their parents with them are reported to have warded them at an expensive private hospital for a medical check up.

Consumerism and the media, particularly TV, are having a severe impact on middle class behaviour. Today’s ‘teledramas’ illustrate it well. The former mild and gentle Sri Lankan housewife turns into a virago in these dramas berating their drunken husbands and advertisements shower free cheap gifts galore on avaricious housewives whose sole purpose in life seems to be to get the better of the neighbouring Silvas and Pereras.

These are women whose mothers walked six feet behind their husbands and did not have their meals till the husband returned home. Mothers of daughters who lock up their fathers in kennels today before going to school, dropped on their knees and worshiped their fathers.

China is a country that the West – with all its professed humanitarianism – shows as one devoid of feelings towards fellow beings. But in 2013 China enacted a law, Rights and Interests of Elderly People requiring adult children to visit aging parents and care for them. Caring under the law means looking after the spiritual and physical needs as well.

Shouldn’t the government for the sake of good governance also consider such laws in the light of its aging population?

Finally a story from the Monarto Zoo in Australia, which should inspire us Sri Lankans to emulate Chimpanzees. Chimpanzee mother Soon died on Friday (Oct 16) while giving birth to her baby Boon. Besides the dying mother was another pregnant chimp, Zombi who immediately took care of Boon and is nursing her now with great care, while she is expecting her baby. This kind of chimp humanitarianism should surely inspire us Lankans.