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An Apology, Canada and
India
 That Canada has a
ministry for Multiculturalism and that India has never even debated
for having any says something about the state of democracies in both
democracies. The Canadian Parliament's decision underlines the
sensitization of the democratic institutions to the wrongs of
history. The WSN welcomes the move and hopes that the timing and
place of tendering of this apology will be announced soon.
But even as we
welcome this step, it is also an occasion to touch upon and mull
this whole issue of political apologies.
The Canadian
Government has underlined its sincerity with a decision to release a
sum of $2.5 million towards the setting up of suitable memorial in
memory of victims of the Kamagata Maru tragedy. The Diaspora's own
role has also been glorious as seen in the petition signed by 28,000
Indo-Canadians. Earlier, Canada had tendered apology in 2006 to the
Chinese for the racial treatment to them.
376 Indian immigrants
(340 Sikhs, 12 Hindus and 24 Muslims) travelling in 1914 by Kamagata
Maru ship were refused de-boarding rights, and on return, some 20
fell victims to police firing.
Now, compare it with
Operation Bluestar that even a large number of Congressmen in India
consider a blunder. How many died, how many were killed even after
that, and how was the community hurt? There have been occasional
demands that the Congress party and Indian Parliament should
apologize for the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom. Should New Delhi not
apologize for the blunder of IPKF in Sri Lanka?
As we once wrote
earlier, 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. Of course forgiveness does play a role
in repairing psychic damage. The idea is personified in the form of
Forgiveness Institute at the University of Wisconsin.
The Sikhs in India
have for long argued for a Commission along Archbishop Tutu’s idea
of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.
Forgiveness is both a process, whereby 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.
Sonia Gandhi did say
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 see these
as vacuous apologies.
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. For true forgiveness, it is
essential that the side seeking forgiveness is aware of both -an
account of the injury, and an allocation of blame; ideal and
reality, exoneration and fault, are all woven together.
The Canadians have
reached that stage. They are to be congratulated. The Indian nation
state has not even bothered to take the first step. That is a matter
of pity and concern. The injury and the action of seeking an apology
is as important as the final forgiveness. The Indian Parliament has
not been able to find two minutes to observe silence in the memory
of those killed on the roads of the national capital, burnt alive,
made to run for their lives, left to live with the memories of heaps
of corpses in Trilokpuri. Canadian Parliament’s action could have
shamed India, if only shame had been in currency.
Because if it had
been, Narendra Modi would not have been currency.
21
May,
2008
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