Sorry seems to be the hardest word...

If David Cameron finds the Jallianwala Bagh massacre ‘deeply shameful’, why stop short of a full apology?

There are many ways in which we use the words, ‘I am sorry’ in our everyday lives. We say ‘I am sorry’ when we hear that a friend has lost a parent, a rather inadequate way to express our sympathy but most commonly used nonetheless. ‘I am sorry’ trips off our tongues when we can’t make it to a cousin’s birthday party, and indicates that we would have loved to come if it had been at all possible. ‘I am sorry’ is the standard response when we break the neighbour’s flower vase or window pane, to express contrition for something that is fairly and squarely our fault, and to indicate that we are ready to make reparation for the loss.

And yet, as the words of the song go, sorry ‘seems to be the hardest word’ when an apology is called for the most. It is when we have hurt someone very deeply that we find it most difficult to summon up words of remorse. It is when our actions have caused irreparable damage that contrition is often the hardest to express. It is when the sin is unforgiveable that forgiveness is so hard to ask for. (Just ask Narendra Modi.)

Over the last week or so, the media have been full of reports of David Cameron and the apology that never was. Should the British Prime Minister have apologised for the British imperial government’s decision to open fire on peaceful protestors at Jallianwala Bagh, which resulted in the death of 379 people while more than a thousand were injured? Yes, the incident occurred in 1919, decades before Cameron took office, but as a representative of Britain did it behove him to say sorry for what had been done in the name of the British people?

As it turned out, Cameron steered clear of the ‘s’ word. Instead he wrote in the visitor’s book, “This was a deeply shameful event in British history – one that Winston Churchill rightly described at the the time as ‘monstrous’. We must never forget what happened here. And in remembering we must ensure that the United Kingdom stands up for the right of peaceful protest around the world.”

Even if you gloss over the fact that it is hardly politic to invoke Winston Churchill – who was adamantly opposed to granting India independence and who famously referred to Mahatma Gandhi as a ‘half-naked fakir’ – at the site of one of the greatest atrocities perpetrated by colonial Britain, Cameron’s comment falls well short of a full-throated expression of regret. But the Prime Minister remains convinced that this was the right thing to do.

“In my view,” he said, “we are dealing with something that happened a good 40 years before I was born...So, I don’t think the right thing is to reach back into history and to seek out things that you can apologise for. I think the right thing is to acknowledge what happened, to learn from the bad and to cherish the good.”

So, is it really necessary, or even helpful, to reach back into history and apologise for wrongs that happened a century or more ago. Well, the Americans, great proponents of what they term ‘closure’, certainly think so. Which is why in 2009, the US Senate passed a resolution apologising for slavery. So, if US representatives can apologise for the collective guilt that all White Americans bear for the enslavement of the Blacks, then why can’t the British government, in the person of the British Prime Minister, apologise for the crimes of colonialism? Even the former German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, went on his knees at a Warsaw memorial to the victims of the Holocaust to express contrition 40 years after the event.

So, even if Cameron could not say ‘I am sorry’ in the sense of ‘I have broken your vase and it is entirely my fault’ why not just say ‘I am sorry’ in the sense of ‘I am sad to hear of the tragic passing of your father and I feel for your loss’? But for some reason, the British Prime Minister, who has apologised for everything from the Hillsborough disaster which left 96 people dead 23 years ago to the killing of a Belfast lawyer, Pat Finucane in 1989, thought that apologising for the deaths of hundreds of innocents at Jallianwala Bagh was a step too far.

As someone who says ‘sorry’ almost reflexively – even when it is patently the other person’s fault – I find that a bit hard to comprehend. After all, nobody asked David Cameron to travel to Amritsar, visit the memorial to the victims, lay a wreath, and write a comment in the visitors book. It was his decision to visit Jallianwala Bagh, to reach into the past and examine wounds that had lain long buried. And when you have gone that far, why stop short of an apology which may actually help heal some of these wounds? When you use words like ‘deeply shameful’, regret is implicit in them. So, why shy away from voicing it?

There is nothing quite as disarming as a heartfelt apology. When someone says ‘I am sorry’ with patent sincerity, it is hard not to forgive, whether it is a spouse, a parent, a child or a nation that is expressing regret. But sadly, Cameron failed to do that. I can only hope he’s sorry now.

No laughing matter

Why has all the wit and humour disappeared from Indian politics?

Did you catch President Barack Obama’s rousing performance at the White House Correspondents Association dinner last week? In case you missed it, here are some of the highlights. Speaking at the roast, where Presidents are traditionally expected to skewer their critics – all in good humour, of course – Obama decided to take on Donald Trump, the latest in a long line of Republicans to cast doubts on whether Barack was really born in America (and hence, whether he is really entitled to be the President of the United States).

Referring to the fact that his birth certificate had finally been released by Hawaii, Obama chortled, “But no one is prouder to put this birth certificate issue to rest than Donald and that’s because he can get back to the issues that matter, like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell?”

As Trump tried to raise a tight smile from his seat in the audience, Obama went on to poke more fun at the tycoon’s bid for the American Presidency, showing a video of the ‘Trump White House’ with gold columns and bikini-clad girls in the fountain.

As I watched Obama’s performance I couldn’t help but wonder (yes, I know, that’s a bit Carrie Bradshaw, but what the hell!) why we can’t muster up the same kind of wit and joshing humour in Indian politics. Our politicians conspicuously lack the light touch that Obama demonstrated to demolish his putative opponent in the Presidential race. And certainly, none of them displays the same kind of rapier-sharp wit (or has the speech-writers to do it for them).

It wasn’t always like this. Many decades ago, the legendary Parliamentarian Piloo Modi was celebrated for his quick wit and scintillating repartee. On one occasion when the Speaker had reprimanded the members for using unparliamentary language in the House, Modi insisted on referring to Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed – then a government minister – as ‘Mr Ruddin Ali Ahmed’ throughout the day’s proceedings. Needless to say, he brought the House down every time he said that.

The late Rajiv Gandhi, too, had a nice line in witty repartee. I still remember watching his first press conference in America as Prime Minister, when he was asked a question about the Khalistan movement, then at its peak. Rajiv smiled, looked at the group of Khalistani supporters at the rear of the hall and said, “I would like to remind my friends at the back that when there was last a Sikh kingdom, its capital was in Lahore.”

Mani Shankar Aiyar, a close aide of Rajiv Gandhi in those days, was also a master of the acerbic put-down. The story goes that he once attended a function at his old college, St Stephen’s, along with another political colleague, K. Natwar Singh. As they were leaving, both of them were asked to write in the visitor’s book. Natwar Singh wrote: “Everything I am today, I owe to the College.” It was Mani’s turn next. So, tongue firmly in cheek, he wrote below this: “Why blame the College?”

In a sense, this was a legacy of our British colonial past. Just as the British had left us with a Parliamentary democracy, they had also bequeathed us the art of pithy one-liners perfected by them down the centuries. Who can forget Sir Winston Churchill’s legendary put-down of his political rival: “An empty taxi drove up and Mr Attlee got out.” Or, my personal favourite: “Mr Attlee is a modest man with a lot to be modest about.”

That tradition still thrives in Britain, where politicians attack each other with humour and sarcasm rather than abuse and insult one another. David Cameron, for instance, inaugurated his spell as Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons by announcing: “I want to talk about the future.” He then turned to Tony Blair and added: “You used to be the future once.”

Unfortunately, we have lost that tradition of cutting humour in India these days. Now, we have invective rather than wit, bile instead of humour, and abuse in the place of repartee. Gone is the lightness of touch that our politicians showed in the past. Gone is the gentle good humour that often characterised parliamentary debate. Instead, we have the sorry spectacle of our leaders going at each other with a venom seldom seen before on the nightly chat shows on television.

Debate these days has been taken over by derision, with every politician vying with the other to come up with the most inventive insults. The only time wit makes an appearance in our Parliamentary debates is when the finance minister or railway minister make some very laboured jokes when delivering their annual budget. Otherwise, the House remains a humour-free zone, with nary a one-liner in sight.

If you ask me, more’s the pity. All of us lose out when humour and wit cease to have a place in our public life. And yes, it’s no laughing matter.

Feet of Clay

Why do we expect our heroes to be epitomes of all-round perfection?

Doing my usual trawl of news sites recently, I came upon an interview with Nelson Mandela’s eldest daughter, Dr Makaziwe, popularly known as Maki, the child of his first marriage to Evelyn Mase (whom he left for Winnie Mandela).

A child when her father was sent to prison, she was grown up with kids of her own by the time he was released. But all her hopes of establishing a close father-daughter relationship with him were soon belied. She says now that while Mandela may be a warm, extroverted presence for the entire world, with his own family he seems incapable of expressing his love, always remaining a distant, emotionally unavailable figure.

As I read through the long interview – in which Maki is at pains to point out that she no longer holds his emotional coldness against her father; that’s just the way he is and she has made her peace with it – I couldn’t help but be reminded of all the other larger-than-life political figures who seemed to have failed those closest to them.

The most famous example of this phenomenon – in which an iconic leader wins over the world but fails to gain the affection of his own immediate family – is, of course, Mahatma Gandhi. Those of you who remember the controversy over the film, Gandhi, My Father, will recall the salient facts. The Mahatma had a strained relationship with his first-born, Harilal Gandhi, who became a drunk, converted to Islam in an apparent attempt to provoke his father, then reconverted to Hinduism before dying a penniless alcoholic.

He said famously of the man who was referred to as the Father of the Nation: “He is the greatest father you have…but he is the one father I wish I did not have.”

Ironic, isn’t it? That Gandhiji, the man who was affectionately called Bapu by the entire country, failed his own son so spectacularly? That Mandela, the man who is held up as a symbol of hope and reconciliation in the entire world, couldn’t emotionally connect with his own daughter?

But while it may be jarring to discover that our idols have feet of clay, perhaps we really shouldn’t be that surprised. So, our heroes also have dysfunctional families just like the rest of us. Of course, they do. We may have built them up as larger-than-life mythological figures on our imagination. But at the end of the day, they are only human, made of the same flesh and blood as you and me. Just as we struggle with the various facets of our personality, so do they. And yes, just like us, sometimes they fail at one thing or the other.

Some of them may turn out to be spectacular failures as fathers. Others may be revealed as terrible sons. Some may fail at being faithful husbands. Others may fall well short of our modern standards of political correctness.

But for all their faults, there is still something about them that marks them out as leaders of men. They may be bad at the small stuff, but by God, they know how to deal with the big picture.

Take Winston Churchill, for example. If he were alive and in British politics today, he would be exposed for the racist bigot that he was. His view on Indians – whom he derided as “breeding like rabbits” – was that they were a “beastly people with a beastly religion”. He damned Hindus as a foul race “protected by their mere pullulation from the doom that is their due”. He hoped for “bitter and bloody communal violence” in India so that the Raj could last longer. And yet, despite these racist views that were expressed all too often privately, who can deny that Churchill’s leadership was pivotal in defeating Hitler in World War II?

If the media had been as intrusive at the time that John F. Kennedy was President of the United States, Camelot would not be the one thing that JKF is famous for today. Instead, he would have been seen a Clinton-esque figure best-known for his serial adultery and the fact that he had sex in the White House pool with a succession of women. Several years later, Bill Clinton went one further by having sex in the Oval Office itself. But unlike Clinton – whose entire Presidency became a late-night show gag after the Monica Lewinsky episode – JFK got away with it, until more recent biographies unearthed all the dirt about what would today be termed his ‘sex addiction’.

And more’s the pity, if you ask me. Think about it. Do we really need this kind of intensely personal, sometimes distressingly private information about our leaders? Do we really need to know if they are cheating on their wives? Or that their sons and daughters are disappointed in them? Quite honestly, what purpose does this serve?

At the end of the day, we have to judge our public figures by their public lives and their achievements in this arena. And if we want to do that, then their private lives should remain just that: private.