Apologise, Your Majesty

Britain's enthusiastic observance of India's fiftieth year of independence is threatening to boomerang, with the cry going up that the Quee...

Britain’s enthusiastic observance of India’s fiftieth year of independence is threatening to boomerang, with the cry going up that the Queen’s visit to Jallianwala Bagh should be accompanied by an apology for the outrage of 1919.

The Queen may squirm, but she can take comfort from the fact that she is not alone in her embarrassment. The season of apologies has been here for quite some time, causing many a nervous twitter in the corridors of power in mighty lands as far-flung as Japan and the United States.

The Japanese expressions of regret for the Korean comfort-women phenomenon, China’s insistent demands on apologies and compensation for Japan’s Manchurian invasion, Bill Clinton’s apology for the Vietnam war, the Australian Prime Minister’s apology to the aborigines of his own country for the bad treatment they have had to put up with…In this age of political correctness “apology” is a good word and the pedigree of the Indian demand for one is impressive. It is only fitting that fate should catch up with the power on whose empire the sun never set in the year when it actually did set, for all practical purposes, with Hong Kong’s transfer.

What is more, the British have sought this trouble out for themselves. Why would the Queen visit Jallianwala Bagh if not in an implicit expression of regret? Treating history with retrospective effect is probably not a wise idea, and there is no limit to demands for apology that can be made for historical wrongs worldwide. But the demand has been made, and it behoves the Queen to oblige if she and the greatest imperial power the world has known are not to appear ungracious and unrepentant about an undeniable wrong: the apology is sought not for empire but for a horrific massacre. God forbid that intransigence on one side should lead to stridency on the other.For that matter, Britain has a way of even better living up to the assertion that she has been far more honourable in the relinquishing of her empire than she ever was in acquiring it. An apology, no matter that it can be a real salve, is only high symbolism. Britain can go one better not only to establish that all is forgiven but also that some symbol of what India lost to empire has been restored. So how about the Queen making a present to India, on her fiftieth anniversary as an independent nation, of some of her plundered treasures? Few Indians who have had to pay and queue up at the Tower of London to catch a glimpse of the Kohinoor or the peacock throne could have failed to feel resentful. Such a gesture would be of real, not symbolic, value to India, an act of true decency and generosity of spirit. It would also be a good way to reinforce happy Indo-British ties. And if precedents must be sought here as well, they are not lacking. They exist in the moves to restore art plundered from European countries during the Second World War. They exist in the contrition that Swiss banks have expressed for their cupidity at the expense of Holocaust victims. Of course, the action had to be forced on an unwilling bunch of banks on pain of financial disaster. But surely Britain values its good name no less than these banks covet their riches?