A remedy for past wrongs
By Manohar Malgonkar

NIKE’S advertising slogan — ‘Just do it’ — in essense condenses the Bhagavadgita Karmanyevadhikaraste! Work alone is thy right. ‘Just say no’, America’s anti-drug campaigners tell the nation’s school children. Somewhat in the same manner, world leaders seem to have found a mantra to assuage the victims of past wrongs: Just say sorry.

Sorry for what?

For butchery, robbery, savagery, enslavement. .. you name it, in the certainty that there is no country, no race, no religion, no community or class or ethnic unit in the entire world which has not, at some point in history, done something for which it bears a feeling of guilt.

It is in this spirit that the Natal Law Society has tendered an apology for something that it did 105 years ago. It had refused to allow a young Indian barrister, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to plead cases in the Natal courts on the ground that he was black. At the time, Natal, which is a province of South Africa, was a British Colony. Its judges were white as were the lawyers who conducted cases in Natal’s courts. But over the years, South Africa has undergone some drastic political transformations: From Colony to a racist state to an independent democracy. For several years now, most of the lawyers who practice in Natal’s courts are of the non-white races, Indian or African. None of them had any part in disallowing Gandhi to appear in Natal courts. And yet it is these lawyers who have now expressed regret that Gandhi should have been debarred from their courts because of the colour of his skin.

At that it is a civilised gesture. People who have themselves committed no wrong apologising for the insults and injuries perpetrated by their predecessors. A gesture of grace and politeness. But one cannot help wondering: Would the Natal Law Society have gone to the trouble of passing that resolution for some other lawyer — who, too had been debarred from appearing in courts because of his race?

Then again, we know that the prohibition against Gandhi was later overturned and he did conduct cases in Natal Courts, but not before putting up with yet another insult: Gandhi appeared in court quite properly dressed, but wearing a pagree on his head, which the Judge asked him to remove, because it was an offence against the dress code of the courts for lawyers to keep their hats on while pleading. This objection, too, was later withdrawn, and Gandhi pleaded cases while still wearing his pagree.

A public apology seems to be the civilised world’s substitute for the orthodox Hindu’s dip in the Ganga — a sure-fire means of washing away all past guilt, be they mere pin-pricks such as the Mahatma was subjected to in Natal, or horrifying slaughters and inhuman excesses perpetrated against conquered people.

It must have been in this spirit that the British Queen, on a visit to New Zealand, said sorry to the Maoris, the original inhabitants of the land, whom pioneering Englishmen had driven away their settlements so that they themselves could set up sheep farms and play cricket and croquet on emerald lawns.

John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia, also sought to make token amends to the aborigines of the land who were driven out of their habitations and killed in large numbers for no other offence than the fact of being there, as it were, and inhabiting the land. Howard was careful to make it clear that his act of contrition was a purely personal gesture, that he was saying ‘sorry’ as John Howard, not as the Prime Minister of the country. The nation, it would seem, had either nothing to say sorry for, or that whatever had been done when the country was taken over was irreversible. History.

Anyhow, it was so long ago. Why bring it up now, scratch old wounds? —- revive old hatreds?

Why indeed? It is just that people all over the world who have some historical grievance against erstwhile colonial powers and empire builders, seem to want apologies from them for past crimes.

Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, a trend-setter among world leaders and god’s gift to Britain’s Labour Party was quick to catch on. He told the people of Ireland that he was sorry for something that the British had done to the Irish in the year 1845.

Eighteen forty five. Twelve years before what the British called the Indian Mutiny, began. Nothing that any country did to any people since the days of the early Muslim invasions could have equalled the horrors that were performed by the British against us. Yet, who in India remembers 1857 ? So, why should Britain get worked up about something that the British did in Ireland in 1845?

But Tony Blair knows the Irish — that they never forget. Every summer, the Protestants in Northern Ireland take out processions to glorify their victories in battles fought against the Catholics 300 years ago! To the Irish, 1845, must be like yesterday.

In comparison to Northern Ireland, Canada is a vast land which has been free of political turmoil. In taking possession of Canada, the British used the same methods that they used in other continents: Seized the lands from the original inhabitants and killed them in large numbers. In Canada too, the Prime Minister tendered an apology to the descendants of the original Red Indians who, so one hears, are now fully absorbed in the nation’s ethnic compost.

Just as it does not seem right that a Hindu should be able to atone for the evil deeds of a lifetime by a dip in the Ganga, so does it not seem right that the great horrors of history can be erased by someone making a public apology. There is a world of difference in what Natal’s Law Society did to Gandhi and the drive for ethnic cleansing in Serbia. Fifty or more years from now, some Serbian political leader can atone for today’s ethnic cleansing by standing in a public square and saying ‘I’m sorry’.

O.K. We treated the original inhabitants of South Africa as a race of serfs. But we’re sorry. We obliterated a bustling city with an atom bomb — sorry! We devised a neat ‘final solution’ for all the Jews and gypsies of Europe. Sorry!

An elderly Japanese gentleman dressed in a black suit, hair slicked down and wearing spectacles, makes a shoulder-bow and says he is sorry — sorry not for something he himself had done because he was not born then, but what his grandfather’s generation had done to British prisoners of war in Malaya.

It seems that the few survivors from those POWs, now in their eighties, were not appeased. The wording of the apology was not sufficiently contrite. They would have preferred the Japanese word for ‘sin’ to describe what had been done to them and not the open actually used, meaning something like ‘wrong doing’. The fact is that leaders of nations, no matter how eager they are to establish friendly relations with past enemies, cannot make abject apologies. National pride is at stake. Then again, as E.M. Forster wrote social decencies cannot be made applicable in political relationships.

But even the word ‘sin’ is too weak to describe some of the things done by otherwise civilised people in past wars. For instance the rounding up of the respectable men and women of Kanpur and making them clean the floor of a scene of some earlier butchery with their tongues. Or the rounding up of young and attractive women in China to serve as comfort-women to Japanese soldiers even as the same soldiers were busy killing off the brothers and fathers of those women.

Sin? ... if only for want of a more appropriate word.