It is getting late for atonement, but not too late: I, for one, dearly hope

that
a British prime minister will find the heart, and the spirit, to get on his or
her
knees at Jallianwala Bagh in 2019 and beg forgiveness from Indians in
the
name of his or her people for the unforgivable massacre that was
perpetrated
at that site a century earlier. David Cameron’s rather mealy-mouthed
description of the massacre in 2013 as a ‘deeply shameful event’ does
not, in
my view, constitute an apology. Nor does the ceremonial visit to the site
in
1997 by Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh, who merely left
their
signatures in the visitors’ book, without even a redeeming comment.
Whoever
the PM is on the centenary of that awful crime will not have been alive
when
the atrocity was committed, and certainly no British government of 2019
bears a shred of responsibility for that tragedy, but as a symbol of the
nation
that once allowed it to happen, the PM could atone for the past sins of
his or
Fair enough, but this elides the sense of national identity and
responsibility that characterizes most countries. When Willy Brandt was
chancellor of Germany, he sank to his knees at the Warsaw Ghetto in
1970 to
apologize to Polish Jews for the Holocaust. There were hardly any Jews
left
in Poland, and Brandt, who as a socialist was persecuted by the Nazis,
was
completely innocent of the crimes for which he was apologizing. But in
doing
so—with his historic ‘Kniefall von Warschau’ (Warsaw Genuflection), he
was
recognizing the moral responsibility of the German people, whom he led
as
chancellor. That is precisely why I called for atonement rather than
financial
aid.