Confessed, Apologized … What More Do You Want?

(Cartoon by Mike Flanagan)

A derisive Indian response to apologies is अँगरेज़ तो चले गए लेकिन, येह सॉरी शब्द यहीं छोड़ गए (These English have left, but they left behind this word sorry). Indian culture holds Valmiki (the writer of Ramayana) as an ideal. As the story goes, he Ratnakar the looter /highwayman, who had a change of heart – and became the writer of Ramayana. Probably, the tale of termites building their nest around a meditating Valmiki was a metaphor for Valmiki’s rendition process. Particle, by particle – just like termites do. Meanwhile, in the last 25 years it has been raining apologies.

Australia apologized for wiping out the entire aborigine population of Australia – and then conveniently, blaming some disease. Ditto for Native Americans in the USA. And in Canada, too. Belgium, Britain, France, Spain – have all apologized for some of their crimes. Vatican, has resisted. Vatican has been seeing a continuous drizzle of sexual-abuse cases against Catholic priests for the last nearly 40 years now. Vatican, also a State, a Government, and till the recent past (before WWII) a powerful political voice. Vatican’s powers were taken away by Napoleon, when he ‘secularized’ and consolidated large swathes of Europe (1805) hundreds of Euro-lets into State-lets. Would an apology from Churchill or Hitler be worth anything?

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