When Silence Is Not Golden

CROSS time and cultures, the adage 'silence is golden' has come to embody the virtue of restraint in speech.

- A FAIZUR RAHMAN

CROSS time and cultures, the adage 'silence is golden' has come to embody the virtue of restraint in speech. It perhaps originated in the ninth-century Arabic saying: "If speech is silver, then silence is gold."

The sentiment it conveys echoes in religious traditions, too.

Prophet Muhammad, as reported in Sahih al-Bukhari, advised Muslims to either speak good or remain silent. The Epistle of James in the New Testament urged Christians to be "quick to listen and slow to speak". And in its 17th chapter, the Bhagavad Gita describes silence (maunam) as an "austerity of the mind" (tapo maanasam).

Such pronouncements have strengthened the belief that silence is not the absence of speech, but the presence of meaning—deep, intentional, and spiritual. However, this perception often overlooks the fact that what the aphorisms endorsed was judicious restraint, not muteness born of indecision or avoidance. In other words, silence is noble only when it is chosen as a form of prudence in the face of great responsibility. When it accompanies oppression, it joins in the crime and becomes its voice.

Hence, Prophet Muhammad declared that the highest form of jihad is "a word of justice" (kalimatu adl) spoken against a tyrannical ruler (sultaanin jaa'ir). Jesus too inspired courage in his followers saying: "What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the rooftops." And in the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna tells Arjuna that there is nothing more honourable than fighting a righteous war (dharmyam sangramam) to uphold justice.