Colourless. Feckless.
There is a malaise in the country that I’ve been meaning to vent out about.
Despite all my criticism of Islamist politicians and salafists, I do believe that there are many among them who are genuinely led by a desire to do the right thing, even if I disagree wholeheartedly with their narrow, literalist definition of ‘the right thing’. I might be a left-leaning liberal, but I understand the motivations and passion that drives my counterparts on the right, and I fully respect them.
In other words, I sincerely respect people who make a stand for something.
This post is about the other kind of people. The people who stand for nothing. The people who are content with the status quo. The ones that refuse to hold an opinion on anything. The ones who don’t care. The irresponsible. The indifferent. The idiots.
The so called ‘Colourless’ that has emerged after the recent coup d’etat in the Maldives is a prime example. To avoid commenting on the tragic and violent loss of the country’s infant democracy, this group has chosen to hide behind terms like ‘peace’ and ‘non-violence’.
They won’t protest against any obvious injustice or brutality, because doing so would taint them with a colour. They won’t come out and say they are happy with the current state of affairs or the proxy dictatorship, because that, again, would attribute to them a colour.
By doing so, they might think they have broken new ground in achieving ‘neutrality’ and ‘peace’. To dissent, in their minds, is to cause strife. To protest, in their fancy world, is to disturb the peace. To make a stand, by their definition, is to provoke. To express an observation on plainly visible facts, to them, is to become a mindless slave of a party ideology – in other words, to reduce yourself to ‘a colour’.
There is no right or wrong in their world. Just colours. And these folk are above it all, and choose to be Colourless.
Well. Thankfully, I’m not, right? So I’m going to take the liberty to call them out on this moral cowardice.
Peace and non-violence are noble concepts. Indifference is not. Objectivity is a wonderful thing. But fairness does not equal to being blind to facts. You do not become “non-judgmental” by refusing to judge. You become non-judgmental by being fair in your judgment, and not being afraid to judge based on observable evidence.
When they talk about ‘non-violence’, the ultimate paragon of non-violence to me has always been Mahatma Gandhi. ‘Ahimsa’, or non violence, was a creed he lived by. But unlike our friends in ‘colourless’, his belief in peace didn’t translate into inaction, indifference or cowardly silence. He expressed dissent in the strongest terms.
Our noble ‘colourless’ friends might dismiss him as a mere rabble rouser who ‘disturbed the peace’, but today one-fifths of humanity live in an independent society because of Gandhi’s refusal to sit in silence and be ‘neutral’ about the whole oppression thing.Today, I’m afraid, the Mahatma and his movement would have been reduced to yet another colour by these “colourless” folks.
I consider “I am colourless. I chose not to take sides” a criminal statement to make given the crisis the country has fallen into. To watch in silence as tyranny takes place is neither noble, nor admirable.
Furthermore, it is plain ridiculous to assign a colour to every opinion. To say Anni did something wrong doesn’t make you blue or pink. To say the country’s democratically elected government was toppled amid violence doesn’t make you a yellow. It makes you fair. It proves you have a head on your shoulders that can think for itself.
So, please, dear colourless, do not wander in the delusion that your indifference is ‘peaceful’. At best, it is cowardly. At worst, future generations may look back and blame you for watching in smug silence, while the country’s first real chance at democracy got raped in broad daylight.
~Peace!
[First published: 3rd March 2012]
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You should spend some time on it and see what its all about, before you go around ‘judging’ it by its title and making it out to be what you ‘think’ it is. You are obviously entitled to your own opinion, but reading through this article I doubt you have caught the gist of what colorless is about. In case you might experience any further confusion, I would like to clarify that I am droning on about the facebook group named ‘colorless’. The term colorless means that the platform itself is colorless, and you are free to express your colour of choice on that blank canvas, thus representing a sample of the online Maldivian population, painting a somewhat accurate social image of the diverse ideologies that exist within the Maldives.
While most of us choose to drown out voices that disagree with us, Colorless chooses to let the people express these ideas, discuss, debate and learn something of it. While it is human nature to attack those that are different, we are constantly trying to change that attitude to an enlightening culture. We promote critical thinking. While the idea of colorless that you have depicted in your article is based on a meaning that could be derived from the face value of that word, I think you are demeaning a lot of people’s contributions without giving it much thought. You are most welcome to discuss this over at colorless. We do not always succeed, but we try to steer clear of logical fallacy and attempt to place focus on critical and objective thinking. Thank you. 🙂
I dunno. The so-called “muslims” in Colorless make Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge look like peace-loving hippies who sang a duet marathon of Beatles songs with their counterparts.
“While most of us choose to drown out voices that disagree with us”
“Colorless chooses to let the people express these ideas, discuss, debate and learn something of it.”
This is part of the problem of Maldivians. They want to look progressive, modern people, while embracing a culture that’s best described as ‘a bucket full of crabs’. Still, it’s not their fault – they’re just bred and raised that way.
Condolences to Sahaa Asif who was blackmailed to surrender by arab imperialists. I hope he learns that being neutral is a fool’s choice.
What happened at Colorless is regrettable because ‘pacifist’ and ‘silent’ Liberals often take the ‘moderate’ path, making much noise cluelessly from the comforts of their sofas until threat levels climb up the top notch and they finally realize that, when dealing with extremists (of any kind), putting principles in front of practicality is foolhardy — after all, you are dealing with a more complex situation, for how do you ‘dialogue’ with someone who has a dagger to your ‘laadheenee’ friend’s throat?
Hilath, Sulthona, Abraham et al staged the taboo-breaking demonstration in 2011 and that should have been a lesson to all that, as long as you remain in Maldives, you cannot even moderately raise your voice towards secularism because we are dealing with a group who knows no civil nor legal boundaries because they have been brainwashed by what they believe to be the ‘truth’. For them Wahhabism is the truth (whether we like it or not) and it teaches them to create mischief and violence even — if it promotes the cause of Allah. Every member of Colorless, who has ever voiced your support for a “full liberal democracy” for Maldives, should know that you were treading a dangerous path by indirectly calling for secularism.
The lesson for Sahaa & co. should be that, you can only ‘deal’ with this situation ‘head-on’ and that means having the courage to stand up and deal with how bullies have to be dealt with: Delivering a harsher blow so that he cannot rise to bully you again.
Everything is good only in moderation. Being Colorless, at ALL times, is proving to a bit feckless, don’t you think now?