25 November 2023

The word as a sword held to the throat of truth

 

Kaduwa. That’s the Sinhala word for sword. Kaduwa in certain contexts is a reference to English. Whoever came up with the idea was truly inspired. English is a weapon. Cuts. Divides. Puts down. Differentiates. It is an instrument conferred by the British to those who willingly submitted themselves to serve the colonial rulers and be their adjuncts in the exercise of control, theft and bloodletting. The British left. English didn’t. Those who continued to look after the interests of the colonial masters found it quite useful. For years the sword of coercion and that of domination worked hand in hand. Still does.

Swords are unionised, I sometimes feel. One cuts and the other approves. For a long time it was guns-in-booty-out with invaders finding a useful ally in the priest. ‘The gun and bible’ is a colonial story. Language was and is the unnamed third in the triumvirate. Indeed, one could argue that in non-colonial context too, language is a sword; it approves, mis-narrates and silences.  

This is not a Sri Lankan story though. It is not a long-ago story either. It’s today. All over the world.  Let’s take a look at some choice cuts.  

The BBC, having played cagey over the unprecedented violence unleashed by Israel against Palestinian civilians and civilian targets, reluctantly started covering ‘the other side’ only after massive protests broke out in London and in fact all parts of the world. Then again, it had the word and therefore the twist.

Right now, the hot story is about an agreement over the release of hostages taken by Hamas. Hasn’t happened yet, so it is a story that is unfolding. The story is being frequently updated.

Here’s how the BBC headlined it: Israel and Hamas agree to pause fighting for release of 50 hostages. Here’s the ‘afterthought’ in considerably smaller font: ‘As part of the deal, Israel will release 150 Palestinian women and teenagers held in Israeli detention.’ 


Two categories: hostages and detainees. The Israel citizens captured by Hamas are hostages, yes. They were captured. They were not arrested. Hamas does not have any legal authority to arrest anyone in Israel. When Israel authorities capture Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank, it is also illegal simply because Israel is an occupying force. In any event, to say these 150 women and teenagers are detainees and not hostages is just crass wordplay. If someone lists all the restrictions imposed on Palestinians without naming the community and asked reporters working for such media houses to name the condition, I have no doubt that terms such as detention, imprisonment and hostage would be uttered. Not if the name 'Palestine' is slipped into that narrative. Oh no! The BBC, the New York Times and other such media houses will never acknowledge the undeniable truth that Israel has held all Palestinians hostage for years.

The BBC, like most mainstream Western media outfits, knows the language. English, that is. As I write, over 14,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israeli forces executed the genocidal intent articulated by her political leaders. To the letter. And yet, that’s not the way Western media reports it.

There’s a big difference between ’14,000 dead’ and ’14,000 killed.’  The tendency is to insert a quote about killing (for example, ‘Hamas-run health ministry says more than 14,000 people — including more than 5,000 children — have been killed in Israel’s campaign.’). So it sounds like a claim. Unverified. The numbers related to the Hamas attack are mentioned as fact. No quotes. No ‘someone said’ or ‘someone claimed.’

But it’s not about the numbers only. It’s about the difference between ‘killed’ and ‘dead.’  Hamas killed. Israel, technically, has not killed anyone. People just ‘died.’

So this is why I have been dwelling on the ways in which language can inflict harm or cause damage. Whoever said that the pen is mightier than the sword probably believed that the written word could best instruments that can cause physical injury. In certain instances, this may be true. In general though the pen is as pernicious an instrument as a sword or gun or bomb or bayonet. It cuts, it incapacities, it diminishes victims.

When reporters of outfits like the BBC or New York Times hammer out their news stories about the deliberate targeting of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank by the occupying forces of Isreal, blood does not ooze out of keyboards. It’s a cut nevertheless, each and every one of them.

The word is a sword held to the throat of truth. That's the gist of what the mainstream Western media is doing with regard to Palestine. There's a lot of 'kaduwa' in it.
 

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 275th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

malindadocs@gmail.com

Other articles in this series: 

Residents of and residency in heart and mind

Merit, integrity and seniority in the superior courts

Hunters and 'victims' of immemorial light

The unbearable lightness of pause

Magic carpet to Dutuwewa

Gauze, blood-stained and torn

Seasons bookeneded by leaves on park benches

Writers' blocs and dead lines  

Stop Press!

The world shall not be emptied of poetry

Reclaiming the everyday with solidarities of tender fury

An Aussie broke a SLan heart in Ind for Afg

Writing magical pieces about something beautiful when time permits

The scattered archives of art and protest

Friendship that keep friends permanently at 16

Amherst: silent, rural, poetic and serendipitous 

The virtues of unemployability

A breathless hush at the close

Ahmed Issa, fearless and audacious in Gaza

Let us take a deep breath now...

How Grolier Poetry writes 'Harvard Square'

Let us write beautiful poetry

Following children and their smiles

Let's plant words in cracks and craters

Re-weaving lives and love

When the earth closes upon us...

Let us now march to the battleground of words

The most pernicious human shield

Who bombed Frankfurter Buchmesse

The truly besieged 

Love's austere and lonely offices

The mysteriously enjoined in the middle of nowhere

Serendipity now!

Reflections on the unimaginable 

Jackson Anthony is a book and will be read 

A village called Narberth Bookshop

Gateway drugs to A-B-C

'Irvin' and other one-word poems

Earth pieces Kerala and Sri Lanka

Obligation as bomb and ocean

In the land of insomnial poets

In and out of shadows

Over to Eve

When you don't need an invitation, it's home

When the Canadian House of Commons applauded a Nazi...

Touching the touch-me-nots

The importance of not skipping steps

No free passes to the Land of Integrity

Hector Kobbekaduwa is not a building, statue, street or stamp

Rajagala and the Parable of the Panner

Let's show love to Starbucks employees!

You've got mail?

Octavio Paz and Arthur C Clarke in the stratosphere 

Enduring solidarities 

Coco 'Quotes' Gauff!

9/11 and the calm metal instrument of Salvador Allende's voice 

What a memory-keeper foregoes 

Whitman, Neruda and things that wait in all things

Thilina Kaluthotage's eyes keep watch

Those made of love will fly

Profit: the peragamankaru of major wars

Helplessness and innocence

The parameters of entirety

In loving memory of Carrie Lee (1956-2020)

Mobsters on and off the screen

Transfixing and freeing dawns

We're here because we're here because we're here

Life signatures

Sha'Carri Richardson versus and with Sha'Carri Richardson  

A canvas for a mind-brush

Sybil Wettasinghe's shoes

Love is...

A stroll with Pragg and Arjun along a boulevard in Baku

Meditation on tree-art

Daya Sahabandu ran out of partners but must have smiled to the end

Gentle intrusions 

Sleeping well

The unleashing of inspiration

Write, for Pete's sake

Autumn Leaves Safeness

 Sapan and voices that erase borders

Problem elephants and problem humans

Songs from the vaekanda

The 'inhuman' elephant in a human zoo

Ivan Art: Ivanthi Fernando's efforts to align meaning

Arwa Turra, heart-stitcher

Let's help Jagana Krishnakumar rebuild our ancestral home

True national anthems

Do you have a friend in Pennsylvania (or anywhere?)

A gateway to illumination in West Virginia

Through strange fissures into magical orchards

There's sea glass love few will see 

Re-residencing Lakdasa Wikkramasinha

Poisoning poets and shredding books of verse

The responsible will not be broken

Home worlds

Ownership and tenuriality of the Wissahickon

Did you notice the 'tiny, tiny wayside flowers'?

Gifts, gifting and their rubbishing

History is new(s)

Journalism inadvertently learned

Reflections on the young poetic heart

Wordaholic, trynasty and other portmanteaus

The 'Loku Aiya' of all 'Paththara Mallis'

Subverting the indecency of the mind

Character theft and the perennial question 'who am I?'

Innocence

A degree in people

Faces dripping with time

Saji Coomaraswamy and rewards that matter

Revolutionary unburdening

Seeing, unseeing and seeing again

Alex Carey and the (small) matter of legacy

The Edelweiss of Mirissa 

The insomnial dreams of Kapila Kumara Kalinga 

The clothes we wear and the clothes that wear us (down) 

Every mountain, every rock, is sacred 

Manufacturing passivity and obedience 

Precept and practice 

Sanjeew Lonliyes: rawness unplugged, unlimited 

In praise of courage, determination and insanity 

The relative values of life and death 

Feet that walk 

Sarinda's eyes 

Poetry and poets will not be buried 

Sunny Dayananda 

Reunion Peradeniya (1980-1990) 

What makes Oxygen breathable?  

Sorrowing and delighting the world 

The greatest fallacy  

Encounters with Liyanage Amarakeerthi 

Beyond praise and blame 

Letters that cut and heal the heart 

Vanished and vanishing trails 

Blue-blueness 

A forgotten dawn song from Embilipitiya 

The soft rain of neighbourliness  

The Gold Medals of being 

Jaya Sri Ratna Sri 

All those we've loved before 

Reflections on waves and markings 

A chorus of National Anthems 

Saying what and how 

'Say when' 

Respond to insults in line with the Akkosa Sutra 

The loves of our lives 

The right time, the right person 

The silent equivalent of a thousand words 

Crazy cousins are besties for life 

Unities, free and endearing 

Free verse and the return key

"Sorry, Earth!" 

The lost lyrics of Premakeerthi de Alwis 

The revolution is the song 

Consolation prizes in competitions no one ever wins 

The day I won a Pulitzer 

Ko? 

Ella Deloria's silences 

Blackness, whiteness and black-whiteness 

Inscriptions: stubborn and erasable  

Thursday! 

Deveni: a priceless one-word koan 

Enlightening geometries 

Let's meet at 'The Commons' 

It all begins with a dot 

Recovering run-on lines and lost punctuation 

'Wetness' is not the preserve of the Dry Zone 

On sweeping close to one's feet 

Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California

To be an island like the Roberts... 

Debts that can never be repaid in full

An island which no flood can overwhelm 

Who really wrote 'Mother'? 

A melody faint and yet not beyond hearing 

Heart dances that cannot be choreographed 

Remembering to forget and forgetting to remember 

On loving, always 

Authors are assassinated, readers are immortal 

When you turn 80... 

It is good to be conscious of nudities  

Saturday slides in after Monday and Sunday somersaults into Friday  

There's a one in a million and a one in ten 

Gunadasa Kapuge is calling 

Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California 

Hemantha Gunawardena's signature 

Pathways missed 

Architectures of the demolished 

The exotic lunacy of parting gifts 

Who the heck do you think I am? 

Those fascinating 'Chitra Katha' 

The Mangala Sabhava 

So how are things in Sri Lanka? 

The most beautiful father 

Palmam qui meruit ferat 

The sweetest three-letter poem 

Buddhangala Kamatahan 

An Irish and Sri Lankan Hello 

Teams, team-thinking, team-spirit and leadership 

The songs we could sing in lifeboats when we are shipwrecked 

Pure-Rathna, a class act 

Jekhan Aruliah set a ball rolling in Jaffna 

Awaiting arrivals unlike any other 

Teachers and students sometimes reverse roles 

Matters of honor and dignity 

Yet another Mother's Day 

A cockroach named 'Don't' 

Colombo, Colombo, Colombo and so forth 

The slowest road to Kumarigama, Ampara 

Sweeping the clutter away 

Some play music, others listen 

Completing unfinished texts 

Mind and hearts, loquacious and taciturn 

I am at Jaga Food, where are you? 

On separating the missing from the disappeared 

Moments without tenses 

And intangible republics will save the day (as they always have) 

The world is made of waves 

'Sentinelity' 

The circuitous logic of Tony Muller 

Rohana Kalyanaratne, an unforgettable 'Loku Aiya' 

Mowgli, the Greatest Archaeologist 

Figures and disfigurement, rocks and roses 

Sujith Rathnayake and incarcerations imposed and embraced 

Some stories are written on the covers themselves 

A poetic enclave in the Republic of Literature 

Landcapes of gone-time and going-time  

The best insurance against the loud and repeated lie 

So what if the best flutes will not go to the best flautists? 

There's dust and words awaiting us at crossroads and crosswords 

The books of disquiet 

A song of terraced paddy fields 

Of ants, bridges and possibilities 

From A through Aardvark to Zyzzyva  

World's End 

Words, their potency, appropriation and abuse 

Street corner stories 

Who did not listen, who's not listening still? 

The book of layering 

If you remember Kobe, visit GOAT Mountain 

The world is made for re-colouring 

The gift and yoke of bastardy 

The 'English Smile' 

No 27, Dickman's Road, Colombo 5 

Visual cartographers and cartography 

Ithaca from a long ago and right now 

Lessons written in invisible ink 

The amazing quality of 'equal-kindness' 

A tea-maker story seldom told 

On academic activism 

The interchangeability of light and darkness 

Back to TRADITIONAL rice 

Sisterhood: moments, just moments 

Chess is my life and perhaps your too

Reflections on ownership and belonging 

The integrity of Nadeesha Rajapaksha 

Signatures in the seasons of love

To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows 

Sirith, like pirith, persist 

Fragrances that will not be bottled  

Colours and textures of living heritage 

Countries of the past, present and future 

A degree in creative excuses

Books launched and not-yet-launched 

The sunrise as viewed from sacred mountains 

The ways of the lotus 

Isaiah 58: 12-16 and the true meaning of grace 

The age of Frederick Algernon Trotteville 

Live and tell the tale as you will 

Between struggle and cooperation 

Of love and other intangibles 

Neruda, Sekara and literary dimensions 

The universe of smallness 

Paul Christopher's heart of many chambers 

Calmness gracefully cascades in the Dumbara Hills 

Serendipitous amber rules the world 

Continents of the heart

 




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