Rag and Stag - the breeding grounds for extremists

12 Dec 2009

The people’s conscious of fear and shyness (giri-othap in Pali) for wrong doings (formally called as sin) is a great hindrance for spread of any extreme political ideologies. Therefore it is a necessary condition for these extreme movements to find people devoid of these natural positive qualities. They exercise different mechanisms to get rid of shame and fear for wrong doings in their followers.

Rag
The extreme communist political movements, especially the Janataha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) have employed ragging as the mechanism for this. This strategy is more eminent in the Universities which are their main source of full time comrades.

It is ironic that ragging has been introduced to Peradeniya University as a part of colonial ancestry imitating their counter parts in Britain. Now the same mechanism is effectively used by the political movement on the other extreme.

During ragging time, new students or freshers are made to live in artificial environment where things are mostly taken in to mockery. The people with roots in real world are not meant to teach their foreign extreme political concepts. Therefore they need an artificial ground to seed their political ideology. The ragging period effectively serve this purpose.

It is well known fact sexual abuses and other forms of terror are widely adapted during ragging season. People are forced to behave in abnormal manner. During the ragging period they strategically feed their abnormal and foreign political views to the freshers. Handful of the freshers having weak personality swallow the bate and becomes their full time carders. They no longer ready to question anything but follow whatever their leaders preach.

Stag
While ragging is employed by communist (as they call themselves) extremists, the concept of stag is used by their counter parts in other extreme, namely the capitalists. It is well known fact that Royal college of Colombo plays key role of being the centre of gravity in providing political and business leadership for the capitalism in Sri Lanka.

Unlike other government schools, old boys association enjoys great authority and privilege in controlling culture of the Royal College which is inherited from colonial era. Due to high influence of business savvy old boys associations, Royal College has been forced to retain the Anglican value system even after fifty years since (so called) independence.

Capitalism too was nourished on Western soil under Christian/Jewish culture. Therefore, capitalism is foreign to us. It conflicts with the values of Sinhala Buddhist culture. It is certainly not be foreign to the baby’s who come from comprador families in Colombo 7. But the capitalist approach of extreme aggression and passion for greed and wealth is certainly foreign to innocent students comes to Royal College after passing the grade five scholarship examinations. They had been nourished under Sinhala Buddhist culture that promotes self satisfaction with simplicity and moderation.

However the mechanism of capitalism demands politicians and businessmen and more importantly people for senior management positions of their companies that strive for profit. Aggression and passion are two necessary qualities for the success of business under capitalist system. The hunger for money dominates in their culture. One must forget ethics and shyness for sin when both exploiting labour by way of management tricks and exploiting consumers by way of marketing tricks.

‘Stag’ plays key role in molding people with those necessary qualities. On the stag night naked models (rather prostitutes) are danced to the tune of their music. Ample stocks of liquor and other drugs are supplied to overcome their initial barriers of the conscious. They are given the liberty to touch and make mock with these naked models.

On the stag night the cultured student from the village is christianised to the culture of the capitalist system. Now he is person devoid of fear and shame for sin. Now they can be easily trained to lead exploitation. They no longer fear to lie and do any dirty tricks in management and marketing. So they can now become successful managers at senior level of the multi national companies.

Commonalities of capitalists and communist cultures
It is not a strange that these two political extreme are working together. On the surface they have hardly anything in common and look to be in two distinct extremes. But they share lots of cultural commonalities.