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The Political Apology
DIALECTICS OF FORGIVENESS
Kalam Nishan Singh
 Sonia Gandhi
must apologize for Operation Bluestar. Indian Parliament should
apologize for the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom.
New Delhi
should apologize for the blunder of IPKF in
Sri Lanka. Some
nation must apologize for the use of “comfort women” during World
War II. Someone still owes an apologyfor making Socrates drink from
the poisoned chalice.
What is an
apology? What good does it do? Will Sikhs really be helped if they
do make the Congress president some day to utter words seeking
forgiveness? How many and which words will amount to an apology?
The late Sardar
Gurcharan Singh Tohra spent many years in the Akali wilderness
asking that Sardar Badal must apologize at the Akal Takht for
denigrating the institution. Finally, both found enough common
ground to claim unity. Was forgiveness a sub text?
Can an apology
be offered on behalf of another? Is it only for the victim to
forgive? Since Socrates is not there, can someone else accept the
apology?
A large number
of 20th century crimes are receding from human memory very rapidly
because the collective guilt and shame of those crimes will be so
much that any composition of demography will find it shameful. So
guilt ensures forgetfulness. That is why the concept of an apology
for these crimes is not on the syllabus of anglophone moral
philosophy. Christ taught that those who ask forgiveness must also
grant it, and enshrined this maxim in the prayer that his disciples
repeat each day. The love-one’s-neighbour idea, which Jews and
Christians believe to be the core of morality, is unintelligible
without the context of mutual forgiveness.
But what is the
larger view on the subject, and is there something for the Sikh
community to ponder on the subject? It was a Hungarian exile, Aurel
Kolnai, who, in 1973, first talked of the subject when anglophone
moral philosophers were analysing the “logic of moral discourse”,
and wondering whether it was different from the logic of “booh!” and
“hur-rah!”.
The idea that
moral philosophy was really about the moral emotions and their place
in human fulfilment, was an idea that Kolnai – steeped in the
phenomenology of Max Scheler – had never doubted. Of course it was
soon to be agreed on that forgiveness does play a role in repairing
psychic damage.
The idea is
personified in the form of a Forgiveness Institute at the University
of Wisconsin. It also merited a great discussion in “Exploring
Forgiveness”, the book edited by Robert D.Enright and Joanna North
(1998) and introduced by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has perhaps
done more than any other public figure to emphasize the necessity
for forgiveness in the healing of communities.
 Archbishop
Tutu’s idea of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South
Africa, often cited by the Sikhs for possible replication in India
to deal with the years of terrorism, greatly influenced the
anglophone moral philosophy. Adam Morton’s On Evil (2004) is a
result of exactly such influences.
But let’s go
back slightly in history and to Adam Smith’s account of the moral
emotions and of their root in sympathy. Also,
Butler,
Aristotle and Hegel too considered the idea of offering an apology
or showering forgiveness as a strong one. One can, and must, mention
E.R.Dodds’s The Greeks and the Irrational (1951) and Bernard
Williams’s Shame and Necessity(1993) as having a significant impact
on the formation of the idea of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is
both a process, where by two people cope with an injury inflicted by
one upon the other, and a virtue. But of course it is necessary that
one understands virtue in the Aristotelian way, as a disposition,
turned towards the good, and promoting the fulfilment of the person
who possesses it. But there is a feeling that in the real world,
some things will always remain unforgiven, and that forgiveness must
be distinguished from forgetting, condoning or turning away in
defeat.
Forgiveness is
not achieved unilaterally: it is the result of a dialogue, which may
be tacit, but which involves reciprocal communication of an extended
and delicate kind. It can happen either way. The one who has
assaulted can go back and seek forgiveness, admitting the mistake,
realizing that a wrong had been done, one that is often impossible
to undo, and then, even then, seek to be accepted into a community
of respectable. Or one who forgives goes out to the one who has
injured him, and his gesture involves a changed state of mind, and a
re-orientation towards the other, and a setting aside of resentment.
Such an
existential transformation is not always or easily attained, and can
only be achieved through an effort of cooperation and sympathy in
which each person strives to set his own interests aside and look on
the other from the posture of the impartial spectator.
But any such
step depends on how one has narrated the sequence to oneself about
which the apology is to be sought. There has been significant work
on “narratology” of this kind. Each side’s narrative is both an
account of the injury, and an allocation of blame; ideal and
reality, exoneration and fault, are all woven together, and
forgiveness can be seen as in part an attempt to harmonize the
narratives, so that the story comes to an end in a new beginning.
Is this
something that has happened as far as Operation Bluestar is
concerned? Have the Congress and the Sikhs actually made any sincere
effort at marrying, or even contrasting, the two highly different
narratives? The injury and the action of seeking an apology is as
important as the final forgiveness.
Any view that
the forgiveness is simply a gift is a negation of the idea of
reconciliation through such a phenomenon. Archbishop Tutu would
never have approved of it, nor can any sane human being. And
Narendra Modi does not want such forgiveness.
No one can
forgive if there is no recognition of the fault, and no one can
recognize a fault if there is an indifference to it, as is seen
among the Congress regarding all its problems with the Sikhs.
Resentment must be felt; but resentment is a moral emotion, founded
in judgement, and can, in the course of rational dialogue, be “set
aside”. Without a rational dialogue,or without a dialogue at all, it
cannot happen.
There is heard
some interpretation of forgiveness idea that does not make the
process of realization incumbent upon the act of granting an
apology. One often hears in this context the example of turning to
God for forgiveness. But then, that is not equivalent to petitioning
an injured party. God cannot be injured, but He can and does forgive
us. By seeking forgiveness from God, we seek to restore our
relationship with Him. But this also comes alongside confession,
contrition, penitence and atonement. The idea of a political apology
is much more complex. And then there remains the question of whether
collective acts can be forgiven by their victims.
The University
of Alabama offered apology in 2004 for its exploitation of slaves in
the nineteenth century. Robert McNamara, the former US Secretary of
Defense, had apologized for the debacle in Vietnam.Were these
forgiven? Sonia Gandhi had said some reconciliatory words about
Operation Bluestar. PM Manmohan Singh had said some touching words
about anti-Sikh pogrom. These are classic Indian political
“apologies”.
Uttered into the
void, a classic way of side-stepping responsibility rather than
assuming it and seeking forgiveness. Missing are the acts of
penitence. The Sikhs must understand that such a vacuous apology, or
a resolution in Parliament, or a two-minute silence for 1984 pogrom
victims, or a Sonia Gandhi paying obeisance at Akal Takht, are no
replacement for the much more serious task of setting the record
straight and executing justice.
Yes, forgiveness
plays a part because human beings are made in such ways that the
demands of justice may not be able to sometimes repair the damage.
But in politics, a real apology should always have justice in mind.
The language of forgiveness too often softens and sentimentalizes
the issue.
Forgetfulness of
a wrong cannot be tagged as an apology and peddled as a political
bargain chip. Then, it will only be a guilt-edged political
security. And it is difficult to forgive anything edged with guilt.
('The Political Apology', World Sikh News,
Dec 19-25, 2007
edition)
10
June 2009
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