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The Political Apology
Kalam Nishan Singh
 Canadian
Government has
apologized for Komagata Maru. In 1998, the
Vatican
issued a 14-page report that apologized for the Catholic Church’s
silence during the Holocaust. Apologies have always been in great
demand. Apologize for what Columbus did. Apologize for the fate of
the native Red Indians. India must apologize for Operation Bluestar
is a cry often heard from even the Sikh intelligentia, not just the
ordinary gurdwara going Sikh folk. Why has the Indian Parliament not
ever apologized for the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom? Some nation must
apologize for the use of “comfort women” during World War II.
Someone still owes an apology for 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? What is the sub text of forgiveness? Has the meaning of
an apology changed during the post-modernist era? 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?
Who represents the victim? Can a victim, by the fact of being a
victim, be a claimant of true representation?
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 “hurrah!”. 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 the 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, 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
fulfillment 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 undone, 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, a reorientation 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 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.
4
June,
2008
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