Moral consciousness on the decline - Prof. Siri Hettige

By Manjula FERNANDO

It has stooped to such lowly levels that I have begun to mistrust my beloved parents, look at my husband of 14 years with suspicion and fight a strong inner urge to abandon my longstanding occupation and stay at home to protect my two young children from sex maniacs. But unfortunately what I read in the papers these days have made me distrust even myself. How do you face a situation of this nature?

The details and numbers of child abuse incidents are so vivid and disturbing that many of us have been unable to think and speak of nothing else in the past few days. It has made you go to sleep with horrific thoughts and wake up with the same thought if not worse.

How could a deeply religious society driven by values and ethics,lower ones moral standards to such an extent as to do things so reprehensible. Incidents of child rape and sexual abuse have become so alarming that it is now part of media’s daily reportage.

The Sunday Observer spoke to Senior Professor of Sociology at the Colombo University Siri Hettige to shed light into this social menace and find answers to some pressing questions. We inquired as to the reasons why Sri Lanka is seeing a sudden surge in child rape, sexual abuse and molestation as well as the heinous crimes of incest where ones own father is responsible for sexual crimes against his own offspring.

Excerpts of the interview:

This is part of a bigger social issue. For instance, these are not isolated cases that is happening here and there. Over the last few decades society has become ‘de-humanized’.On the one hand everybody knows that we have the highest level of religiosity in any part of the world.

When you go out you see how religious the people have become, there is a huge contradiction here. People are flocking to the temples in their thousands, engage in all kinds of religious activities. The television is full of religious ceremonies, politicians are going around sermonizing, there are so much of happenings in the religion front.

‘De-Humanisation’

A religion is sending two kinds of messages, one is the moral message – that you have to be good, you have to be nice and must uphold good morals. The other message is the discipline – people must respect the law of the country, respect traditions and cultural values. How can we understand a situation where on one hand religion reign supreme but on the other you have a massive collapse of morality in society.

I would explain this in terms of ‘humanizing’ of society. How do you humanise a society? The religion has a key role to play in humanizing a society. You have to come to the conclusion that the religion has completely failed in the present context. Despite so much of activities observed on the surface. Because it is a fact that you cannot have it both ways.

We have so many Buddhist monks, famous preachers. This was not so in the past. But it seem, these sermons have had little impact on the society. When I say religions, this includes Hindus and Muslims as well. All religions help educate and instil in people certain values and morals.

How do we understand the situation in this country where on the one hand you have religious happenings at a peak while we witness a complete erosion of morals among people on the other hand. When you wake up in the morning, you hear sermons of all religions. When you turn the TV on, you see people talking about values and ethics, religious discussions, and so on. Obviously there is a big contradiction.

If religion has not been able to humanize the society then we have to turn to other institutions. One way is through Education. Education is not just to acquire skills. It helps mould a better citizen. If you see this type of moral decay in society we have to come to the conclusion that education has also failed in this instance.

Child abuse takes place due to erosion of moral values in people. Instead of protecting children, the adults abuse them! The adults are supposed to protect the children, there is no one else to protect them, the police cannot go behind children and protect them! It is the responsibility of the adult.

If the religion has failed and if education has failed, then what we see is a major erosion in the moral fabric of the time. I would explain this in terms of social and economic gauge.

Observe

For instance, we know that everyone is rushing around to make a living. You only have to go out to observe how people behave on the street to understand the seriousness of the situation. Everybody is in a frenzy.

Why are they in a frenzy, that is to earn a living – to meet the basic needs of their family. We have about two million people working abroad – expatriate workers. That is more than 10 % of the population and nearly 25 % of the labour pool. They are actually not the elderly, they are young and middle aged people. Let’s say that there is a million middle aged expatriate workers, where are the families of these people? They are left behind in Sri Lanka. A family is about parents and children. When one or both parents are not there then there is no family. How can there be a family without parents. We know what happens when children are abandoned.

The point is that economic pressure has really pushed people around. Not only migration for employment overseas, we also have lots of people here, both men and women running around on a daily basis to make a living. I think this has been major factor.

The point is when you cannot take care of your children the way it is required, you are exposing them to danger. This has been a major factor to a lot of things that we are witnessing today.

Children in the past by and large walked to school. That is to say most of the children attended the nearest school to the home, situated in walking distance. Our generation did not travel 10-15 kilometres to reach school. Walking to school has become the exception today. The children leave home very early and return late. In between they can be exposed to various risks.The changing economic challenges has led to the kind of dehumanising of society.

The prolonged conflict that lasted for three decades too has had a direct and indirect impact on social values. There are thousands of fatherless families. When the father is no more, somehow the mother has to take care of the children alone.

It is difficult when she has to divide the time between making a living and looking after the children alone. There is a danger that children of such families being exposed to exploitation. Young people are brought into mainstream society, via two processes, one is the source of primary socialisation which happens through ones’ own family.

Parents and other adults instil values, norms and ethics in the minds of children and young people. That is what we call the Primary socialisation. When the families are disrupted this process is also disrupted, the primary socialisation is not taking place in the way that it should happen. Thus children are not brought up in a way that is acceptable to broader society.

Number two is secondary socialisation – that is socialisation taking place beyond the family. This is the socialisation that is taking place within the school, something that is not happening any more. The schools today basically prepare children for exams. Moral education is not an essential part of our education now. Schools are graded entirely on the basis of their examination results – exam performance – number of ten As in GCE OL and three As in GCE AL, etc. This is really wrong. The schools of which children are well behaved, disciplined are never highlighted.

When you have primary and secondary processes of socialisation being disrupted like this, we find an erosion of values and ethics in a greater proportion. There is no single explanation for the evils that we witness today. There are so many contributory factors that needs to be found out and addressed.

Media

I think it is wrong to impose a ban on reporting child abuse cases. In the 1990s the media reported incidents of youth suicides. The Government appointed a committee and formulated certain quality intervention.

The youth suicide rates came down partly because of these preventive interventions not the ban on media reporting.Media cannot report something that has not happened. If there is a rape case they report it. What is wrong in that. They report it because it has taken place. If it did not happen there will not be anything to report. Media is responsible for the way they report it, especially if it involves a child but reporting itself is not wrong.Because of the reporting it becomes a social issue. You will not address an issue until it becomes a social problem. It is the media, it is the public discussion that makes an issue a social problem.

Therefore, highlighting what is going on in the country by the media is important. When such things get highlighted people start asking questions. These things cannot be sweep under the carpet and pretend nothing has happened.

You have to bring it out, focus your attention to the problem and address the social issue.