Explosive language

Using violent language, even if it is not completely insensitive to local culture, only encourages violent tendencies

In March 2011, a powerful earthquake hit Japan, with powerful tsunami waves causing further destruction. Almost 16,000 were killed, and the economic cost was estimated at $235 billion. The disaster also created an environmental crisis, mostly due to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, but at a lesser level, due to the loss of trees. One example is a 70,000 tree forest in Iwate Prefecture, where only one tree was left standing once the water receded.

A few years earlier, a quarter of a million people died in the Indian Ocean tsunami, making it one of the worst natural disasters in human history. The word tsunami is, for such reasons, synonymous with death and destruction, and one of the most painful words for the people of countries in tsunami-prone areas.

Yet, an Oxford-educated politician managed to sully the reputation of his alma mater’s standards by choosing to use this term for a bringer of destruction and destroyer of life as his political slogan.

And the people bought it. We now see people celebrating and anticipating the ‘coming tsunami’.

Now some may feel the point here is to mock a political leader or party. This is not true. If there is one golden rule in politics, it is that politicians eventually make mockeries of themselves, some more so than others.

We need to be sympathetic and understanding of others, especially a country that regularly fills our begging bowl, such as by providing us with advanced technology to hold elections — plastic ballot boxes which nuclear Pakistan apparently cannot arrange for itself. Wait, maybe the above-mentioned politician doesn’t care for Japanese sentiments because Japan donated the boxes through which the elections were allegedly rigged? Is ‘go Japan go’ next?

Seriously though, would it be acceptable to have a ‘Tree Plantation Suicide Explosion’? After all, a suicide jacket spreads deadly shrapnel over a large area, which could be compared with sowing seeds over large areas.

Using violent language, even if it is not completely insensitive to the local culture, only encourages violent tendencies. ‘We will destroy our enemies’ creates a militant mindset in which people call for mob justice and public executions for petty crimes. ‘We will show our enemies the error of their ways’ creates forgiveness.

Yet, given the vitriol and nonsensical populist messages the politician has been spewing from the tops of cargo containers and podiums, maybe death and destruction is the ultimate goal.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 5^th, 2015.