The question of forgiveness

Shiv Visvanathan in The Hindu



On May 18, standing before the House of Commons, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will offer a full apology for the Komagata Maru incident. File Photo


Canadian leader Justin Trudeau is to tender a full apology for the Komagata Maru incident of 1914. It should trigger similar repentance elsewhere for other sins of the past.

History rarely produces moments of epiphany, where politics appears as a creative act of redemption and the future becomes a collective act of healing. Each society carries its wounds like a burden, a perpetual reminder that justice works fragmentarily. Suddenly out of the crassness, the crudity of everyday politics, comes a moment to treasure. On May 18, standing before the House of Commons, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will offer a full apology for theKomagata Maru incident.

The drama of the ritual, the act of owning up to a wrong and voluntarily asking for forgiveness is rare in history. One immediately thinks of Willy Brandt, the West German Chancellor, kneeling down during his visit to the Warsaw Ghetto and apologising to the Jews. The act was moving. For once instead of the mere word, the body spoke in utter humility as Brandt knelt before the monument. It was a sheer act of courage, responsibility and humility, an admission of a politics gone wrong, a statement of a colossal mistake that needed redemption.

Hundred years to atonement

This movement for forgiveness is important. Forgiveness adds a different world to the idea of justice. To the standard legal idea of justice as retaliation, compensation, forgiveness adds the sense of healing, of restoration, of reconciliation. Society faces up to an act of ethical repair and attempts to heal itself. Memory becomes critical here because it is memory that keeps scars alive, and memory often waits like a phantom limb more real than the event itself.

The Komagata Maru incident is over a hundred years old. But like the Jallianwala Bagh atrocity, it is a memory that refuses to die easily. It is a journey that remains perpetually incomplete, recycled in memory as Canada would not allow the homecoming.

Komagata Maru was a ship hired by Gurdit Singh, a Hong Kong/Singapore-based Sikh businessman, a follower of the Ghadar Party, who wanted to circumvent Canadian laws of immigration. The journey of 376 Indians, 340 of them Sikhs, began from Hong Kong. They finally reached Vancouver where a new drama of attrition began. British Columbia refused to let the passengers disembark, while Indians in Canada fought a rearguard struggle of legal battles and protest meetings to delay the departure. Passengers even mounted an attack on the police showering them with lumps of coal and bricks.

The ship was forced to return to Calcutta, 19 of the passengers were killed by the British and many placed under arrest. Komagata Maru was a symbol of racism, of exclusionary laws, a protest to highlight the injustice of Canadian laws. When Mr. Trudeau apologises, he will perform an act of healing where Canada apologises not only to India but to its own citizens, many of whom are proud Sikhs. The index of change is not just the ritual apology but another small fact. The British Columbia Regiment involved in the expulsion of the Komagata Maru was commanded between 2011 and 2014 by Harjit Sajjan, now Canada’s Minister of National Defence.

Apology and forgiveness

This incident echoes the need for similar apologies, acts of dignity which can repair political rupture. Imagine the U.S. apologising to Japanese prisoners imprisoned in World War II. Imagine Japan apologising for war atrocities. Think of the U.S. apologising for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Press even further and dream of Narendra Modi apologising to the victims of the Gujarat riots of 2002. One senses some of these dreams are remote and realises that, after nearly two years in office as Prime Minister, Mr. Modi does not have the makings of a Willy Brandt. Truth and healing are still remote to the politics of the majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party.

The very act of apologising and forgiveness reiterates the importance of memory and the vitality of the community as a link between past, present and future. It raises the question of the responsibility for the past and its injustices. Somehow for many politicians, the past is a different country for which they have no responsibility. Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard refused to apologise to the Aborigines, contending that present generations cannot be responsible for the past. Tony Blair was ready to apologise for the mid-19th century Irish potato famine but refused to apologise for the depredations of colonial rule. One is not asking for facile or convenient apologies, one is asking for a rethinking of politics. David Cameron, in February 2013, came close to an apology for Jallianwala Bagh. More than that, I think what one needs is a British apology for the Bengal famine of the 1940s which eliminated over three million people. It is a pity that it has not received a Nuremberg or a Truth Commission. I realise apology is a mere moral act without the materiality of reparation, but apology returns to the victim and the community the acknowledgement of human worth and dignity. Without the axiomatics of dignity, no human rights project makes any sense.

One must emphasise that forgiveness and apology are not sentimental acts constructing melodramatic spaces creating what French philosopher Jacques Derrida called “the grand scenes of repentance and theatricality”. Here, as Derrida claimed, is that rare moment where the human race shaken against itself examines its own humanity. Anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu is even more hard-headed when he says, “In almost every language, the most difficult words are ‘I am sorry’.” Mr. Tutu adds that spurious reconciliations can only lead to spurious healing. For him forgiveness is a wager, an ethical wager on the future of a relationship. This is why the few events of apology which stand up to critical scrutiny deserve to be treasured.

India’s own chequered past

One must realise the past haunts India. Truth-telling, truth-seeking and the dignity and the courage of rituals of apology and forgiveness may do a lot to redeem the current impasses of Indian politics. Indians have not forgiven history or what they call history for its injustices. Yet, the language, the philosophy of forgiveness adds to the many dialects of democracy. I am merely listing moments of apology which could change the face of Indian politics. I am not demanding a census of atrocity but a set of ethical scripts whose political possibilities could be played out. The effort is not to provoke or score points, but to help create a deeper reflection and reflexivity about the growing impact of violence in the Indian polity.

First, I would like Narendra Modi to apologise to the Muslim community and to India for the horror of the 2002 riots. The genocide of 2002 froze Gujarat and India at a point, and the thaw can only be an ethical one demanding the humility of truth and forgiveness. A lot has been written about the unfinished nature of the 1984 riots in which over 5,000 Sikhs lost their lives. I know Manmohan Singh did offer an apology, but the Congress’s behaviour has turned this into an impotent mumbling. In the rightness of things, the Gandhi family owes an apology to the Sikhs, something it has not had the ethical courage to venture. Third, as an Indian, I think one not only has to withdraw the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act but also apologise to the people of Kashmir and Manipur for the decades of suffering. One must request Irom Sharmila to end her 15-year-long fast demanding the withdrawal of the Act with dignity. There has been enough violence here, and it is time that we as a nation think beyond the egotism and brittleness of the national security state.

Each reader can add to the list and to the possibilities of a new ethical and moral politics which requires a Gandhian inventiveness of ritual and politics. What I wish to add is a caveat. The rituals of apology and the question of justice, reconciliation and ethical repair are not easy. They require a rigour and an inventiveness of ethical thinking which necessitate new experiments with the idea of truth and healing in India.

Mr. Tutu makes this point beautifully and wisely. He talks of the man known as the Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal. In his book, The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, Wiesenthal spoke of a Nazi soldier who had burnt a group of Jews to death. As the Nazi lay dying in his deathbed, he confessed and asked for absolution from Wiesenthal. Wiesenthal found he could not forgive him. In the end, he asks the reader, “What would you have done?” — and The Sunflower is an anthropology of various responses.

We need an equivalence of The Sunflower experiment to ask Kashmiri Pandits, Kashmiri Muslims, Manipuris, Dalits, tribals, women what it would take for forgiveness after an act of atrocity. In fact, each one of us is a potential citizen, as perpetrator, spectator and victim, in that anthology. Is forgiveness and healing possible in the history of our lives? Democracy needs to think out the answers.

Migrating to Canada? Changes in Canada's immigration policy

Murtaza Haider in The Dawn

It used to be a sure shot thing: arrive as a foreign student in Canada, graduate with a degree or a diploma, and apply for permanent residency.

But the changes in the Canadian immigration regulations, which came into effect on January 1, have turned a sure thing into a game of chance, where the Canadian government will draw names from a pool of candidates, who will then be invited to apply for permanent residency.

If you were planning to take on huge debts to finance your studies in Canada in hope for a permanent residency later, be careful. After accumulating huge student loans, you will still have to compete with other skilled workers to get a shot at permanent residency — for only those jobs for which no Canadian worker is available.

While the new regulations have added new challenges for foreign students in Canada, they have also improved the odds for highly-skilled professionals and trades. Instead of a 'first come, first serve' basis, the new immigration regulations will fast-track those prospects whose skills are more in demand in Canada.

As a prospect, one needs a job offer from Canada for advance standing, even before one applies for permanent residency.

 The Canadian immigration system was a huge mess. In 2012, 280,000 applicants were waiting to hear back on their applications. The system lacked coordination with the labour markets. Physicians were getting permanent residency, whereas their odds to practice medicine in Canada were very low. This changed in 2012, when the government returned all under process applications and started afresh.

While the changes may look drastic, they benefit those whose odds of finding an employment and adjusting in Canada are stronger.

Despite the changes, Canada will still welcome over 172,000 individuals under the economic class of migrants in 2015.

Application by invitation only

A key difference in the new system is that only those prospects who meet a certain threshold will be invited to submit a formal application for permanent residency.

The two-tier system invites prospects to create an online profile with the government. A new scoring algorithm will automatically score the prospect; for which the maximum achievable score is 1200. Based on the current needs of the labour markets, the federal government will draw names from the pool of prospects several times during the year to admit over 172,000 skilled workers.

These changes guarantee that the system is not overburdened by applicants who are less likely to adjust in Canada.

Who wants to be an immigrant?

The new regulations make a direct connection between the needs of the labour markets and the skill sets of aspiring immigrants. The government has made the task rather simple for applicants to determine the labour market needs in Canada. The aspirants must visit the Canada job bankto learn about the vacancies.

Most readers of this blog will be up for a surprise. Canada is not particularly looking for engineers, doctors, research scientists, or journalists. In fact, the largest number of vacancies are for retail sales clerks (5,572 openings), followed by cooks.

For South Asian men with higher qualifications this may not sound very appetising: Canada needs caregivers (nannies), cashiers, and cooks – not computer scientists.

Canada’s higher education system produces enough highly educated and trained professionals to fill the entry level positions in engineering and applied sciences. The Canadian labour markets demand skilled trades (plumbers, electricians, and truck drivers), retail sector workers, and obviously caregivers to look after the very young and the very old.

The engineers and doctors who immigrated in the past 20 years learned this bitter lesson after they landed in Canada. The new immigration system now links the aspirants to jobs, thus minimising the risk of a mismatch between immigrants’ skills and labour market needs.

—Graphic drawn by Murtaza Haider using data (http://www.jobbank.gc.ca) on February 11, 2015.

Over the past 20 years, I have met with numerous Canadian immigrants from Africa, Eastern Europe, and South Asia who claim to have been duped into immigrating to Canada. They were surprised at how hard it was to find a job, let alone pursue careers as immigrants. In fact, recent immigrants are the new face of urban poverty in Canada, which I reported on earlier in 2012.

 The immigrants have, to a large extent, themselves to blame.

They applied to immigrate to Canada without researching their odds for employment. Doctors, for instance, arrived without exploring the licensing requirements to practice medicine in Canada. They are the most vocal group among the disgruntled immigrants.

The Canadian government also shares the blame for the archaic point system it used to qualify applicants for immigration. Even when Canada faced serious shortages for truck drivers (the most common profession among Canadian males), the government was busy admitting doctors and engineers.

Instead of prioritising younger applicants, the system brought in middle-aged workers, who were schooled before computers became ubiquitous. The older workers were educated, but not necessarily skilled for Canadian needs. In addition, they were set in their ways and found it hard to change habits and work ethics. The result was obvious:

Canada has the most educated cab drivers and security guards in the world.

The new regulations are not without risks and inherent shortcomings.

For instance, the aspirants with a job offer from Canada will be given priority to apply for permanent residency. The invitees will have up to two months to send in their formal application, which the Canadian government promises to process within six months. The process may take up to eight months before the worker with a job offer is allowed entry into Canada.

What employer will be willing to hold a vacancy for eight months for a worker living thousands of miles away?

Still, the new system does a better job of setting expectations for aspiring immigrants and Canadian employers. Though the critics of the system are wary of the discretionary powers assumed by the government, they must realise that when immigrant workers fail to adjust in Canada, the governments have to bear the burden of supporting the families of unemployed workers.

By prioritising those applicants whose skills are more in demand, the system improves the odds for new immigrants to succeed in Canada and not be a burden on the taxpayers.

For Scotland, the independence debate is about more than the economy, stupid

Salmond and Darling will batter viewers with data in Tuesday’s TV debate, but in the end the heart will outweigh the wallet

• 
• • Chris Huhne
  • The Guardian, Sunday 3 August 2014 19.19 BST

A report from the Scottish government suggested Scots would be £1,000 a year better with independence, but a UK Treasury report suggested the opposite. Photograph: Ken Jack/Demotix/Corbis

In Scotland, if you doubted the stakes, wait for Tuesday’s ­televised independence debate between Alistair Darling and Alex ­Salmond. The race remains close, and is likely to get closer. This weekend’s Survation poll put “no” ahead by just 6%. That is uncannily close to the polls six weeks before the Quebec referendum in 1995, which the Canadian federalists won by a nail-biting 1.2%.

The downside of these two TV champions for their cause is that they are both so economic: the former UK chancellor of the exchequer against the former Royal Bank of Scotland oil economist (and a good one). The danger, as a non-economist Treasury minister once said after a mandarin’s briefing, is that the viewers will be just as confused at the end – but at a higher level.

I have been reading the Scotsman – an excellent paper – and the Glasgow Herald day after day, which has given me a sympathy for Scottish voters who must be punch-drunk from rival, largely economic claims about the future. The two campaigns recently excelled themselves by producing on the same day apparently authoritative assessments that diametrically contradicted each other.

For the unionists, a UK Treasury-sponsored report suggested that each Scot would be £1,400 a year better off in the union. For the nationalists, another report from the Scottish government suggested that Scots would be £1,000 a year better off outside it. This is bemusing enough for anyone with a background in ­economics, let alone anyone without one. It is also largely irrelevant. Both sides are deploying spurious precision for economic issues that are largely unknowable in the current state of economics.

In one of my past lives, I used to assess the strength and risks of different economies for potential international investors. “Sovereign risk”, as it is called, is an art, not a science. Politics matters as much as economics, and big or small size has both advantages and disadvantages. Scotland’s population, at 5.5 million, is similar to the 5.6 million in Denmark – a perfectly respectably sized nation that has proved to be a rich success for years. The upside of being the size of Denmark, as opposed to the size of the UK or France, is that you can be nimble in reaction to global economic shocks and opportunities. The state can help businesses adjust and respond. All the key players can meet up and reach consensus in a reasonably sized room.

This helps. Of the 10 most prosperous nations on Earth, measured in the most effective manner by the World Bank’s national income per head allowing for purchasing power, only the US is big. The next biggest countries are Sweden (9.5 million people), Switzerland (8 million), Denmark and Norway (5 million). Germany comes in at 13th, France 18th and the UK 21st.

If we take culturally similar countries that share a language, small usually trumps big. Irish income per head is now 0.5% higher than the UK’s, even after profits have been paid to foreign investors. Austria is 0.3% ahead of Germany, and Belgium is 8.7% ahead of France. One exception is that Canada is slightly poorer than the big US.

The major disadvantage of small size is that you can be buffeted by global shocks if you specialise in particular industries. Finland was hit by the collapse of the Soviet Union, because it exported so much there. Iceland and ­Ireland were particularly badly hit by the banking crisis. Big countries are naturally more diversified, and therefore less vulnerable to shocks.

If the Scots vote for independence, there may be some transitional costs where there are economies of scale with the UK – embassies and so forth. I cannot see how the Bank of England could be lender of last resort to Scottish banks after independence, so there may be losses as financial services companies prefer a London regulator and backer. This was the experience with Quebec, where the fear of independence drove Montreal-based insurers to Toronto. But the big picture suggests that these will be small and short-term effects.

Natural resources such as oil and gas matter much less than both Salmond and Darling will pretend. The truth is that rich countries do well because of their human skills and ingenuity, not their resource windfalls. Look at Switzerland. On education, Scotland’s performance in the OECD international tests of student achievement is a little better than England for reading and maths, and a little worse for science.

If Scotland goes, it will be in everyone’s interest to have a “velvet divorce”, as the separation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia was described. A nasty and messy separation would damage both sides. London will want early certainty, and for Scotland to be an EU member alongside the rest of the UK. The result on 18 September may rewrite history, but not geography. We will all still share the same island. Their mess will be ours, both sides of the border. So we will all have an interest not to make a mess.

If Scotland stays, as I hope it will, the UK will never be the same again. More fiscal powers – including the power to borrow – will provide a new impetus to decentralisation, not just to Edinburgh but to Cardiff, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle. We will need a new constitutional settlement, and new ways, as all federal states enjoy, of legally settling differences between levels of government. These are challenges already met and mastered in Canada, Australia and elsewhere.

The main motive, if Scots opt for independence, will be their desire to shake off the incubus of English conservatism. The natural centre of gravity of Scottish politics will be more leftwing than that of the UK. Scotland could be a successful, liberal-minded and social democratic nation on the Scandinavian model. Nothing wrong with that, except for English progressives who will have to contend with a centre of gravity that has moved to the right. For England and Wales, politics will adjust. The Labour party would become more rightwing to ensure a competitive system.

In the end, it seems to me offensive on the part of both sides in the debate to concentrate so slavishly on the economics, when realistically the economic outlook cannot and should not be decisive. It is as if they have both leased their campaigns, in the old adage, to people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. It is the heart that will decide the future of our island, not the pocketbook. That is surely right.

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