Not Justice – But Hunger!
Sajeeva Samaranayake
It is rather superfluous to have debates on a question of ‘justice’ when our central issue is one of unappeased hunger.
Dealing with hunger first
There is hunger for food; and there is hunger for wealth, power, position and influence. In this rat race there is an insatiable appetite for ‘more’ and ‘better’ things – but hardly any concern for sharing. So long as our temples of ‘democracy’, ‘justice’, ‘nirvana’, ‘progress’ and a growing culture of five star hotels can co-exist with one third of our children being malnourished, we cannot afford to speak of one society – still less of ‘rights.’ Our true values have excluded social justice and integrated the egoistic pursuit of personal satisfaction to the fullest measure.
The Second Republican Constitution of 1978 has now unraveled to its logical conclusion. In the immortal words of Dr. N. M. Perera we are fully committed to a bogus value system which ensures “justice for the rich and freedom for the poor to starve.” While the poor hunger for food, a voice and access to justice, the rich hunger for better food, leisure, entertainment and power. It is all about food for the body and food for the mind; and we desire more and more variety as we stumble upon the feasts and riches only the kings and nobles enjoyed in the past. Both the rich and poor are essentially united by a mindless hunger, and alienated by everything else.
We discuss matters of justice as if we were a society of human beings. My humble submission is that we are not; that this talk about justice is yet another aspect of the self-deception we have clothed ourselves with. Not having asked ourselves what it takes to be human we have not attained to this status yet.
Truth of violence
The noble truth of suffering is inextricably interwoven with the truth of violence. Nyanaponika Mahathera (Four Nutriments of Life) referred to the reality of violence involved in our incessant search for food:
If we wish to eat and live, we have to kill or tacitly accept that others do the killing for us. When speaking of the latter, we do not refer merely to the butcher or the fisherman. Also for the strict vegetarian’s sake, living beings have to die under the farmer’s ploughshare, and his lettuce and other vegetables have to be kept free of snails and other “pests,” at the expense of these living beings who, like ourselves, are in search of food. A growing population’s need for more arable land deprives animals of their living space and, in the course of history, has eliminated many a species. It is a world of killing in which we live and have a part. We should face this horrible fact and remain aware of it in our Reflection on Edible Food. It will stir us to effort for getting out of this murderous world…
Beginning with this way we get our food we can go on to the whole structure of human society and ask ‘on what do we stand?’ This question is important because we assume in our critical mode, at least at the sub conscious level, that we are respectable men and women of worth. We have learnt to separate the good from bad in our society under the terrible influence of the criminal law. As such we take this frivolous attitude that individuals are to blame for the chaotic state of society. In fact all individuals – however powerful externally, are powerless inside. We would never concede that we are suffering together because we are collectively culpable.
