In the apology saga, Rahul Gandhi emerges both powerless and powerful

BJP seeking apology from Rahul Gandhi over his remark in UK is pure power play—name, shame, and induce guilt.

Shruti Kapila

It might be spring, but it has become the season of apology-seeking.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been seeking and waiting on an apology from Rahul Gandhi. The demand is specific, as the BJP has taken offence to the Congress leader’s recent comments on Indian politics in a foreign land. In yet another apology mini-drama, only last week, BJP’s Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar regretted his remarks against a high court judge when an apology was sought from him. In Britain, too, there is mounting pressure on King Charles to, at the very least, acknowledge the link between slavery and the royal household. Apology-making, big or small, is having a global moment.

My two pence is that an apology asked for is no apology. It is an exercise in power and shame. When given without being asked, an apology is proof of a change of heart that redeems the accused. Every Indian knows this instinctively — after all, the British are yet to apologise for their colonial rule.

One of India’s politically iconic events has indeed been apologised for. Few can forget former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s apology to Parliament on 7 December 1992, a day after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Yet, from the point of view of the current inexorable political unfolding that sees a cross-party and widespread clamour for the Ayodhya temple, Vajpayee’s apology begs the question whether apologies are meaningful at all. If not, what purpose do they serve? One thing is clear — apologies today are no longer what they used to be.

Arguably, the most famous personal apology in Indian politics was former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Madhukar Dattatraya Deoras’ to Indira Gandhi. According to a controversial co-traveller of the Sangh Parivar, Deoras was said to have apologised to Indira Gandhi and sought to dissociate the RSS from the Jayaprakash Narayan or JP-led anti-Emergency movement, besides offering to work for the former Prime Minister’s 20-point programme.

History is witness to several BJP leaders coming of age in the anti-Emergency years; many of its stalwarts cut their teeth in that era, inside or outside prison. Much like Vajpayee’s apology, in the current Indian political life, Deoras’ apology counts for little. But it shows the ambivalent outcome of any apology whether it is asked for, given, or taken as it ties the accused and the accuser into a new equation. In contrast to today’s culture, the Deoras episode stands out as a controversy and is not entirely lost in the soon-forgotten litany of recent apologetic psychodramas.

In seeking to humiliate or humble the accused, an apology is an aspiration to power.

Consider the apology drama over Rahul Gandhi’s statements in the UK. He made remarks that point to well-known facts that he has spelt out before. In the UK, in fact, he was rather cautious. Parliament was immobilised. The demand for an apology is pure and simple power play about policing boundaries and their perceived transgressions. Today, the BJP’s apology-seeking has become altogether meaningless, given that Rahul Gandhi is no longer a Member of Parliament, and it’s also curtains for that parliamentary session.

Psychology or politics?

In the apology saga, at least, Rahul Gandhi has emerged both powerless and powerful. On the one hand, he was given little choice by a powerful ruling party, and on the other, this single issue overshadowed the already heated parliamentary session. He seemed to have set the terms of debate and disagreement. But lurking under this desire for an apology is guilt as an accusation seeks to shame while demanding an apology.

In his refusal to do so, Rahul Gandhi carries neither guilt nor shame, although apology games are as much about them as they are about power. For that matter, in quickly expressing regret, Khattar too killed off the apology games before the voluble shamers got any more active or angry.

Shame and guilt have fuelled theories of politics. Soon after the Holocaust, at the height of global decolonisation, anthropologists divided the world into guilt and shame cultures. No prizes for guessing that the East was defined as a shame culture while the West was deemed as a culture driven by guilt. Today, with the apology fest powered by digital warfare, it is a time for global shaming. So much so that we often forget the guilt at hand but only recall the shame game and the shamed party.

So why bother asking for apologies?

I blame the outsized role of a new kind of poor and easy psychology that has overwhelmed contemporary life. Precisely because I take Freud and psychoanalysis seriously, the current psychobabble of apologies is entirely misleading and even dangerous. Simply put, it is fast-seeking and succeeding in replacing politics with psychology. This can only be bad for both. To speak after the raging fashion, it is traumatising to see this fundamental confusion of categories of psyche and politics.

Take the big counterfactual and consider, for instance, that the British had apologised for the Empire’s doings either then or now. Would it change anything? Most likely not. It might momentarily quieten those who are seeking the apology. But without a fundamental recognition of and reparation for the violent remapping of the world and deep economic depredations, an apology will be meaningless. Even without the question of reparation and if such an apology were forthcoming, it could indeed make the British look morally good.

Yet, it’s not a price any politically powerful or realist British figure is willing to pay. After all, Britain’s national identity is tied up with the Empire, and no pragmatic politician is going to succumb to the pressure to apologise. Fundamentally, the non-apology correctly conveys the colonial relationship as primarily political and defined by power that was killed off by Indian nationalism. The tables have indeed turned. Ditto with Rahul Gandhi who remains steadfast on his comments despite all the moral and psychic preening and apology demands. He has reinforced his statements as primarily partisan, concerning, above all, political differences and the drawing of electoral battle lines.

Politics, thus, is and will be a conflict of opinion and worldviews. It will wound, no doubt. But politicians are not doctors, much less therapists. Their healing will demand a price mostly in the form of taking positions, handing over your vote, and sharing ‘likes’ on social media. Apologies seek to undo old divisions, but, in effect, create new ones. No one knows this better than politicians, which is why, be prepared as it is election season everywhere, bringing with it a long — and unsatisfying — season of apology dramas.

Seeking emotional succour in an apology depletes the true promise and potential of politics, which is fundamentally about change through power. But in policing transgressions through psychic warfare such as apology-taking, we only create a truly sorry state of politics.

Shruti Kapila is Professor of History and Politics at the University of Cambridge. She tweets @shrutikapila. Views are personal.

Courtesy : The Print

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