A Tale of a Drunkard and a Man Drunk with Power!

As a boy witnessing a drunkard’s antics on a day-to-day basis in the street was our unfortunate lot. Every evening his drunkenness was on full display. Seldom did he go sober. His schedule during the day was idle talk, playing cards and in the evening drinking and wife-beating. The poor woman earned her living through hard labour in the fields and a bottle for her sadistic ‘husband.’ In our neighbourhood, everyone felt sorry for her yet it was commonly held that it was their family affair. Now and then, someone witnessing extreme cruelty stepped in only to hear the drunkard - even while intoxicated - that he could do anything to his wife and none have the right to question him. Normally, the kind-hearted ‘man’ - I say ‘man’ because women hardly came ‘out’ to see the spectacle - used to leave the spot knowing well further intervention would worsen the situation as drunkard’s next line of attack would be ‘what is between you and my wife?’ Wait a minute, I forgot to mention that he was extremely religious for about a month every year. What a relief for the wife!

After two decades the truth of a ‘staged mass murder’ and ever-expanding hatemongering - campaigns for genocide - are out in the open. Instead of facing the hard truth and setting the country on course correction the man drunk with power wishes to ban the truth. It is ‘sedition’ therefore, to see the truth. There is ‘Radio-Rwanda’ like TV channels in the country spewing venom 24x7 and ‘Goebbelses’ calling themselves ‘nationalists’ and branding everyone including students on the campuses as ‘anti-nationals,’ and ‘urban-Naxals.’ To my mind, both the drunkard I saw as a boy in the street and ‘the man’ drunk’ with power are one and the same. To both ‘the other’ is just an object to be manipulated. As the drunkard objectified his wife so too the man drunk with power. He not only objectified the innocent people who were murdered but also the thugs who lost their humanity in the blind pursuit of eliminating the ‘imagined enemies’.

To everyone who says it is our internal matter, we wish to remind them that human rights are inalienable, and universal and must be protected at all costs. We are humans first and then comes every other differentiation. Humanity failed multiple times starting in medieval Europe when bubonic death was attributed to the Jews by the so-called Holy Roman Emperor backed by the clergy of the times, in Idi Amin’s Uganda, in Nazi Germany, in Rajapaksas’ Sri Lanka, and in many other instances. That is why saying human rights violations are an internal matter of any country is an unacceptable argument more so in a democracy. If it is the internal matter of every regime that impinges on the rights of people, why should we have global organizations, treaties, and forums? It is like accepting the archaic argument of the drunkard who beat his wife.

To the drunkard, his religiosity was a form of easing his troubled conscience. Everyone who divides humanity based on religion, setting one against another, has a serious 'psychic issue' since it has nothing to do with ‘religion.’ To the bystanders, we say ‘standby’ truth since hatred spreads, and you could be the target anytime. The antidote to hate is love. To love we must know the truth. The truth is, whether you are a believer or non-believer, - Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jew, or follower of any religion - hating, raping, and killing the other does not make you a better human being!

Did I say that the drunkard lost his mind when his only girl child one day grew up, looked him in the eye and told him that she was ashamed to call him ‘father’? Yes, she did. The drunkard broke down and never recovered. Whenever I pass that way, I remember him lying down under the tree, ‘breathing yet dead’, for many a day. When the children of this country raise their voices in unison to end hate-mongering, we know those drunk with power will meet a fate like that of ‘the drunkard.’