Give Thy Thoughts No Tongue.....
By Mir Adnan Aziz
10 March, 2010
Countercurrents.org
Give thy thoughts no tongue, or any unproportion’d thought his act. Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar. Shakespeare. Words communicate a message; convey a meaning, feelings and thoughts. It has been said that if the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.
Words have the power to soothe, educate, placate, love or torment. They can change the way people feel, think, act and view the world; bringing hope and pleasure or everlasting pain. Words can change the world for the better or worse being just not a modem of speech but the very platform that produces emotion. The end result is subject to the choice of words and manner of speech. History is replete with instances where prophets, leaders and teachers galvanized people to do good whereas there are orators who led people and countries to doom. Hitler, for one, mesmerized a whole nation transforming the whole country into a war machine.
Unfortunately most of us have become oblivious to our choice of words. In our daily lives we, knowingly or unknowingly, hurt many in our homes, work-places or elsewhere. Many lackluster apologies accumulate within the walls of our own homes hurting the ones we love the most. What we cannot say adorns the walls as graffiti. Our words are limited to our spheres whereas those of in positions of prominence are amplified through the media, spreading further. The effect is more immediate and influential than ever before.
With this common knowledge, more out of political or official expediency than a caring heart, why do not those in power show empathy and understand the emotions of those on the receiving ends of their utterances. Devoid of providing comfort with their acts, their words bring further pain. Their words are detached from our traditional values and virtues. Their words, when picked up and splashed in the media, sometimes evoke a (non) apology. They seemingly believe in Erich Segal's heroine who said that "Love is never having to say you are sorry"; that they are not loved does not bother them at all.
In New York to attend the UN General Assembly session, Musharraf asserted thus in an interview with The Washington Post on the harrowing ordeal of Mukhtaran Mai: "You must understand the environment in Pakistan. This has become a moneymaking concern. A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped." If we insert the name of our spouse, child or sister's name, just imagine how offensively vulgar this would feel.
On the eve of the May 12 massacre in Karachi he declared with raised arms and clenched fists that "the people of Karachi had shown there power". These, as many other, shamelessly crass, insensitive and obnoxious remarks seemed to spew from the tongue of a demented being rather than those of a Chief of Army Staff and an "enlightened" President of Pakistan. The affront seemed more callous sans an apology. Publilius Syrus was right up to the mark when he said: "Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks so he is".
There is an endless cycle of politicians issuing statements that border on the profane. How can one forget the on-air remarks of Musharraf's Law Minister addressed to a senior journalist or those of a sitting lady Minister to a fellow lady parlimentarian. The leaders of the present government, their policies eerily similar to the previous regime, seem at pains to match them in tenor too. President Zardari of “promises are not hadith” fame is prone to the same affliction. What is ironic is that he has a Prime Minister who wants to outdo him in "governence" and speech.
PM Gillani, a pir and murshid to his well-wishers, came up with the heartless rebuke to an expecting lady’s painful ordeal in Quetta that "children can be born in planes too". After some days of silence he decided to stifle the risen furor with an apology. What he came up with instead was what all those in power say when forced to apologize. Starting with a very brief sermon on destiny he conjoined it with the birth of children in unlikely places and finished off with: "but still if I offended / hurt anybody I apologize".
Why do our rulers have to be so condescending? Why do they have to preface their apology (if made) with "if I offended"? Where and why does this "if" come in when a person of limited logic too can understand that the uttered words insulted and outraged all? PM Gillani's apology was contingent on whether or not someone was offended. If he felt that an apology was warranted then why not just issue an apology rather than an 'if' apology? He obviously did not regret or feel remorse for the thing he said; otherwise he would have owned it in its entirety without exception.
Our political leaders should be enabling and not disabling to the people with their words an attractive and inclusive medium to bind people together. The Musharraf comments made global head-lines evoking harsh criticism and rebukes worldwide. We must remember that inspite of living in a wired-up globe connected to the world stage where our reputation as a nation is reflected in the words and deeds of our political leaders, the power of words continues to serve as one of our most important means of communication. All said and done there could be no sounder advice for our "orators" than: Let thy speech be better than silence or be silent.
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