1990s, India. I am at my primary school, standing for the morning assembly. The teacher announces, after the daily prayer is finished, that we would observe a one-minute-silence because a socio-political leader or some other luminary of the country had passed away the day before. There is some indistinguishable chatter among the students and a giggle or two but the students mostly pass the one minute of silence in silence. Though, they do experience time dilation, meaning a feeling that time has stretched in a way that 60 seconds feel much longer than they should be. They also feel a bit antsy towards the end of these surprisingly long 60 seconds.
I experienced the above numerous times in my young life. Afterall, there are plenty of celebrity deaths in a big populous country and observing one-minute-silence seems to be the norm on such occasions. Why, though? We were never told who made this norm or why observing a one-minute-silence would be considered a mark of respect! Or, for that matter, why did they choose the duration of exactly 1 minute?
Over the years, I have come up with some theories. … That’s a lie. I have had just one theory – “Humans are so talkative and so incapable of being silent, especially on purpose, that observing a silence is considered a high mark for one’s respect, nay reverence, for someone”.
There is some merit to this theory. Humans do love to talk. So much that Descartes might as well have said “I talk, therefore I am”. We talk when we have something to talk about. We talk when we have nothing to say (“We have nothing to talk about, huh!” we might say). And we talk (to ourselves) even when we don’t have anyone to talk to. (And some of us write those monologues down and call them essays, much like this one.) With so much talking going around, it seems conceivable that humans would consider silence as unnatural and weird (maybe that’s why we have phrases like “awkward silence”; but more on that later). Also, that might be the reason why “silent treatment” is considered a punishment (though, when one voluntarily does it, it’s considered “silent retreat”; though, it is still a type of “self-restraint” or “self-punishment”). In the same vein, being forbidden to talk is a punishment too. But why would that be considered an action of respect towards a dead luminary?
Punishments and painful actions, especially self-inflicted ones, have always had a sacred value in all human societies and religions. Fasting is a prime example. Pretty much all religions observe it. Then you have things like (extreme) self-restraint of Buddhism and self-flagellation of Shia Islam (on the mourning day of Muharram) or Christianity. Religions all over the world see indulgence in punishment as good and an act of reverence to the god(s) and indulgence in pleasure as morally deviant and a defiance to them. Maybe that’s the indirect reason behind humans subjecting themselves to the punishment of 1 minute of forced silence as an act of reverence towards those deceased social or political leaders. But why 1 minute?
My most beloved theory for that is that humans love numbers and they love round numbers even more. Since the units for time are such that 1 second would be too short a time period and 1 hour too long, 1 minute just plays nicely. We could also choose durations like 30 seconds but that would mean half a minute, not a nice round number. 5 and 10 are beloved numbers too (that’s why they feature so heavily in prices of things) but again, 5 or 10 seconds would be too short a time period and 5 or 10 minutes too long. Had humanity adopted a different unit of time, for example the decimal time from post-revolution France (1 day = 10 decimal hours of 100 decimal minute each , we might be using a different duration for our silences. For example – we might be observing that silence for 1 decimal minute which is equal to 69 “normal” seconds. Or if the Swiss system of dividing a day into 1000 “Beats” has caught on, we might have chosen 1 Beat as the duration for silences and that would mean 86.4 “normal” seconds. Honestly, I am happier with 60 instead of 69 or 86. But I would be even happier if this whole system of observing silences didn’t exist at all!
And by the way, I just googled “Why do we observe a moment of silence” and discovered a whole Wikipedia page on the topic, including the origins of the practice. (It still doesn’t explain why it’s 1 minute. Maybe my theory is the most obvious one after all) You can have a look. For me, the point that stood out is that one-minute-silence is mostly a commonwealth phenomenon, observed chiefly in former British colonies. And you know what, with so many horrible remnants of colonialism in the world (Indo-Pak conflict comes to mind), I don’t begrudge the more benign “1-minute silence” any more!
In the next part, we will discuss why silence is considered awkward sometimes.