23 December, 1969. Back in Canada for the third time in seven months John Lennon and Yoko Yono had fifty-one-minute private conference with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in Ottawa. They later described him as “more beautiful than we expected” and added that “if all politicians were like Trudeau there would be world peace.”
Unfortunately not all politicians are like Trudeau. But his son is one. Justin Trudeau, the current Prime Minister of Canada, is eminently living up to the exalted pedigree left behind by his father, who was loved by the Canadians. One of the first presidential decrees Justin signed after taking over as PM was letting the first batch of Syrian refugees into his country. He made it a point to personally receive them at the airport, a gesture of humility and humanity at a time of barbed wires, closed borders and threats of giant walls.
Now Justin will say sorry at the House of Commons for the Komagata Maru incident. Komagata Maru, a vessel that reached on the shores of British Columbia on May 23, 1914 with 376 Indian migrants, was turned away by the authorities despite two months’ negations.
Technically, seeking forgiveness for past sins doesn’t change a thing. But the act goes a long way in healing the collective wounds current generations of past victims harbour. First and foremost, it involves the graceful act of admission of guilt. It takes a lot of courage and sense of justice to do that. It should come from the heart. Brains of bloated diplomatic ego won’t be able to do that. Australian PM Tony Abbott refused to say sorry to the Aborgins. That said, in 2008 the then Australian PM Kevin Rudd had apologized to the “stolen generation” of Australia.
British queen, in whose name all the horrible sins were committed all over the world, and her political progeny owe a series of apologies to India (and the rest of the world, too) over the truckloads of colonial atrocities. Alas, one need to jolt out the Indian media that goes orgasmic over the royal weddings and the queen's birthdays.
The Indian list of apology-worthy events is pretty long. Expecting a sorry for Gujarat genocide from the globe-trotting Modi will be asking for the moon! May be that Rs 15 lakhs deposit he promised to every citizen's bank account can happen. Never an apology.
If Rahul Gandhi can offer sincere apologies to the Sikhs for the 1984 Sikh genocide, not an utterance of stilted or insincere words, that can indeed take the burden of guilt off the party’s shoulder. He should atone for the sins of his father who made that now-infamous and tasteless earth-shakes-when-big-tree-falls comment. That should go in tandem with disowning the likes of Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, who according to witnesses, took active part in the riots.
Rahul can take one or two lessons from Justin. He appears to have his heart in the right place, but needs to go the extra mile to reinvigorate the Congress party trapped in its effete ideology and languid existence. May be a sincere sorry can create some modest wonders.
