I refer to Mr H. L. Seneviratne’s letter about the need to marginalize the supremacists or so-called communalists. This is the key problem in a democracy and it was first faced by the Ancient Athenians the founders of democracy. They realized that rabble-rousers if allowed to roam freely and speak, would poison the masses with their venom and destroy good government which requires statesmanship. They had a social institution called ‘ostracization’ under which any rabble-rouser was sent to permanent exile. They had enough islands to do so. Even the great Thucydides who was an orator was suspected of being a rabble-rouser and escaped ostracization narrowly. Even educated cultured gentleman like SWRD could not forsake the temptation to short circuit the ride to power and resorted to rabble-rousing. We are paying for his sins.

Both Singapore and India have banned such inflammatory statements and recently Varun Gandhi a son of the Gandhi family was charged for inflammatory communal statements. It is high time we introduced a similar law.