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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 9/12/17

Burmese Days

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Iftekhar Sayeed
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When a saint loses her halo, you hear a tinkle as it drops to the ground. In the case of Aung San Suu Kyi, one hears a crash.

One always doubted her ability to handle the democratic transition. For democracy is a violent form of government: witness the two World Wars. The Forum Polity has since antiquity been associated with violence.

In Bangladesh, democracy unleashed untold violence; now that democracy is dead, peace has returned.

But what explains The Saint? Western civilization has a hankering after saints. At the Vatican, an entire bureaucracy is devoted to unearthing saints. No other civilization has this craving for saints. Mahatma Gandhi squats uniquely on the cusp of two civilizations.

Sainthood has been secularized. This has mostly been the work of the media and, among other things, the Nobel Prize. Even Princess Diana was canonized - as was Aung San.

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Iftekhar Sayeed teaches English and economics. He was born and lives in Dhaka, à ‚¬Å½Bangladesh. He has contributed to AXIS OF LOGIC, ENTER TEXT, POSTCOLONIAL à ‚¬Å½TEXT, LEFT CURVE, MOBIUS, ERBACCE, THE JOURNAL, and other publications. à ‚¬Å½He (more...)
 
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