A lesson in how much our outrage, limits and violations are defined by the English language. And also why you should never use the word ‘suck’ again
A study of 168 cultures in American Anthropologist found that smooching is common in only 46 per cent (77) of the cultures sampled. The remaining 54 per cent (91) simply did not practise romantic kissing. Illustration by C Y Gopinath using Midjourney
How would you feel if an 87-year-old spiritual leader playing with your son stuck his tongue out and asked the boy to suck it? What if that person was the Dalai Lama?
Like millions of people all over the world, you revere him. His words move and inspire across borders. And yet here he is, in front of the public and the world’s cameras, openly asking a child to perform what looks and feels creepy. Almost an act, as journos did not hesitate to claim, of paedophilia.
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The incident took place on February 28 at the Dalai Lama’s temple in Dharamsala, where the religious leader had been greeting some students. The video that went viral shows a boy called Tutu asking if he could hug the Dalai Lama. After the request is translated into the Dalai Lama’s functioning right ear, he welcomes Tutu with hugs. He then points to his cheek, saying, “First here”; the boy kisses his cheek. Pointing next to his lips, he says, “I think here also”; he kisses the boy on
the lips.
Then he puts his forehead to the boy’s, sticks out his tongue and says in his clumsy English, “And suck my tongue.” The boy comes close and then both of them pull back. No tongue was sucked.
My question goes to you looking horrified at the back of the hall: do you think the Dalai Lama has been outed as a pervert who preys
on children?
The religious leader’s four words sparked a global tsunami of moral outrage. One newspaper called him either senile or a closet paedophile. Another opinionista stridently dismissed the Dalai Lama’s apology as feeble, saying, “What is relevant is why he thought it was appropriate to do that to a young, impressionable child in a room full of adults and media.”
But that itself should tell you something: he did it in a room full of people and TV cameras. The child’s mother was sitting to his right. This is not how paedophiles do their dirty work.
A strong statement of defence came from the incest and child abuse survivors of the RAHI Foundation, who did not think the Dalai Lama’s behaviour predatory or sexual. Sexual abuse, they wrote, “tends to be insidious. It thrives in silence and secrecy, it is normally pre-meditated and often the child is groomed to be abused. It happens when the abuser finds an opportunity to be alone with the child”.
Still, the language of our outrage, boundaries and violations is English and the westernised cultural norms it carries. Suck, unfortunately, is an irredeemable word in English. Something sucks when it is worse than rotten. Being asked to suck something is insulting.
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It’s called western ethnocentrism, the belief that whatever western culture deems pleasurable or offensive must be universally so.
You might wonder what a Tibetan might have thought about the famous thing Monica Lewinsky sucked in her day. And why so many Americans may be heard from time to time inviting someone to kiss their ass.
I found myself thinking about a truly disgusting habit of western cultures: sucking each other lips and tongues to show how much they love each other. I was utterly mortified by the first kissing scene I saw as a boy. But countless steamy Hollywood films later, I, like you, believe that drooly lip- and tongue-sucking is how our species expresses deep love.
It is not. A study of 168 cultures in American Anthropologist found that smooching is common in only 46 per cent (77) of the cultures sampled. The remaining 54 per cent (91) simply did not practise romantic kissing.
There is nothing universal about all that passionate lip-sucking.
South Africa’s Tsonga people don’t hide their disgust. When they saw Europeans lip-kissing, they said, “They suck each other! They eat each other’s saliva and dirt!”
The Trobriand Islanders of Melanesia noted that white people “will sit, will press mouth against mouth —and seem pleased with it.” But they thought it was rather insipid and silly.
Saliva isn’t bad news universally either. Among the Nuer of Sudan, men spit on their children’s heads when returning from long travel. Spitballing shows warmth and affection. Two girls who have not seen each other for a while will spit on each other when they meet again.
Turns out that in Tibetan culture there’s a loving history to the sucking of tongues, especially in the Amdo region that is home to the Dalai Lama. A grandfather playing with a beloved grandchild will sometimes, between kisses and horseplay, pass candy to the child mouth to mouth. No one is offended. When the cuddling is over, he will stick out his tongue and say “Che le sa”, literally, “Eat my tongue.”
The old man is saying, “Child, I have given you all my love as well as a piece of candy and now I have nothing more left. You can eat my tongue.”
The Dalai Lama’s big mistake, it turns out, was translating Tibetan to English, and picking that terrible, terrible word — suck.
You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper
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