The Culture Thrust

As my wife has to go somewhere she was dropping me off to work this morning.

So I was sitting in the front passenger seat and biting off the toasted Rye bread and listening to Radio.

With my pot belly, my sitting posture and listening to the radio, I would have looked like Garfield (not sobers).

What we were hearing on the radio was pretty serious. It was about muti killing in South Africa. In other words, killing people in name of sacrifice to the god or ancestors (we can relate it to pilly sooniyam). The guy in the radio was interviewing an anthropologist who is doing his research on this so called traditional Doctors (Sangoma). The interviewer was prompting the researcher to term all these as crime as it involves killing humans at some cases and the researcher was tactfully resisting it.

I just started thinking. Why not I be the Devil's Advocate (ha! I love that term) here and asked a couple of questions to Kshama. Why is it called bad? Why can't they leave this people alone and let their society deal with this in their own way.

It may sound outrageous but think about it. All the law and the so called ethics and the life style that most country have at present is very heavily influenced by Europeans. These guys have set their foot on every nation in the name of exploration and expeditions and slowly started occupying all these country and just did not stop there. They started influencing the local people and made them believe that they are inferior and also made them accept that the European way of living and culture is the right thing to do and what the locals do is Barbaric and Uncivilised. I think 'Civilised' has become the most inappropriately used (or abused) word.

I do agree that killing someone in the name of sacrifice is a bit extreme and not so good. But, in the hindsight, am I telling this because I have been brought up in a certain way and made to believe certain things from a very young age?

Same way the locals will have their own way of living. To thrust our way on them is going to be OK for now as they believe your way is the way. Once they have had enough, it will be really bad for everybody.

India also had these things (killing people in name of sacrifice) but there was always a social resistance for this even before the British came. Here when the European came it was not as organised as India. And keeping the locals isolated and making them live their own life and not mixing with them only made these traditions to live longer.

When the apartheid fell and ANC took over, the new constitution was framed. Again, heavily based on the European way of living.

Instead of totally criticising the traditional doctors and criminalising them blindly, shouldn't they be counselled and made more aware of the current government and constitution that has been adopted by majority of people and the consequences of their acts?

I think this discussion is valid for any country not just South Africa and for any cultural happening not just human sacrifice. (Just want to emphasise that human sacrifice is just one thing that we are discussing here but there are a lot of other culture specific activities that are termed taboo just because we are not familiar with it).

Anyway, to end it, I am not encouraging or trying to justify the killings. Like I implied earlier, I am just trying to see the world without the filter provided by my upbringing.

--- Satish