Structural Violence…

‘…structural violence is so deeply embedded in everyday life and so thoroughly normalized in our psyche, that we scarcely see it as violence…’ [The Hindu, Thiruvananthapuram, Thursday, July 04, 2013, Op-Ed “Debate’ in p.9]

When one speaks of structural violence, what comes to mind is of politics or state machinery. And none ever even think of such violence in religion, for that matter in the Church. But it is very much there and the hapless victims when retaliate in utter desperation, it is termed real violence! Here, what is meant is not retaliatory violence. What one has to say of the ‘enormous, unacknowledged violence in the poverty and oppression of everyday life’, illiteracy, underdevelopment, deeply dehumanizing situations like public defecation, manual scavenging and so on?

What one says of a people who were insulated by the church from any outside influence, even indirectly from acquiring literacy, involvement in civic activities and so on? It has no qualm in building multi-crore churches, shrines, all convenient priest homes and halls when most of its people live in slum like shackles to be washed away by the monsoon monster waves!

When rather strong churches were demolished to build new ones no one bothered to provide a safe school with necessary amenities or to upgrade decades old schools. No efforts worth the name was taken to educate them in health and hygiene or even to save and be secure etc. Instead they were made dependent for everything from first aid to filing an application for anything!

Now, the situation is changing, not because of the church, but of the media invasion into their homes which none can resist. Even now the church is not proactive!

The above debate asserts, ‘…the texture of politics is enriched by being connected and critical…’ This is equally applicable to any institution, all the more so to the church.

Another article in the same page, “In god’s abode, questions for man” by Ajaz Ashraf states ‘…commercial gains accrue from promoting a religiosity of an irrational kind...’ And it concludes thus: ‘What is needed is to rescue god from meanings and attributes we assign to him. In this, the priestly class could play a vital role. But what hope can we derive from stories of pujaris walking away with the donations, running into lakhs of rupees…’