The Rediff Interview/K P S Gill
'The queen's visit eventually is just an empty gesture'
KP S Gill, former Punjab director general of police and the newly appointed security adviser to the Assam government, tells Archana Masih in a faxed interview why he believes the storm over Queen Elizabeth's visit to Amritsar and the demand for an apology for the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre is a meaningless controversy.
Do you agree with the PM's initial view that the queen should delete
Amritsar from her itinerary?
Emphatically not. I think the issue has been blown out of
proportion. These things can and should be handled with greater
maturity. The queen should visit Amritsar, Bhagat Singh's nephew
should be allowed his two minutes of fame and be permitted to
present a petition to one of her authorised representatives.
The freedom fighters and survivors of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre
who wish to hold a black flag demonstration should be provided
with appropriate space to demonstrate in a civilised fashion against
some of the uglier aspects of colonialism, and Sir David Gore-Booth
(the British high commissioner) should be given an opportunity to expound further on what he euphemistically describes as the 'sadness of history'.
Ultimately, you will find
that if the visit does come through, the biggest problems that
the administration will face will not be Bhagat Singh's nephew
or black flag demonstrations, but the tremendous crowds trying
to catch a glimpse of the Queen, and the phalanx of Akalis who
will try to squeeze themselves into every frame and photograph
with her when she takes a walk around the parikrama.
What do you think prompted the PM to take this stance?
I think the PM is perfectly capable of explaining his own motives
and is quite accessible to the media, so this question would be
best addressed to him.
Do you think the Queen should apologise for the Jallianwala
Bagh massacre?
What I think or what anyone else in India thinks is hardly relevant.
It's what she freely thinks that matters. Even if political pressure
could extract an apology from her, it would be meaningless unless
it was inspired by her own sense of a grave wrong for which she,
on behalf of the British nation, felt responsible.
During her
visit to Amritsar, according to the original programme, she was
to have gone to Jallianwalla Bagh and to have placed a wreath
at the martyrs memorial there. To my mind, this would have been
no less than an apology. But even if the quibbles did prevail,
and the queen utters the words 'I'm sorry', I'm not sure this
would even begin to right the wrongs and the injustices of a hundred
years of colonial exploitation.
Seventyeight years after the incident, do you think a gesture like this
is really necessary as an act of atonement? The Indian freedom
struggle is full of innumerable sacrifices, many excesses by the
British; is it wise to have the perpetrators of crimes committed
generations ago apologise to us now?
As I said before, if the act is motivated by real feelings of
regret it may have some meaning. If it is prompted by considerations
of diplomacy or of political pressure or expediency, it would,
in fact, detract from the more real issues of reparations or of
the restoration of cultural artifacts and national treasures which
have been plundered.
But even here, it must be understood, demands
by individuals for the restoration of particular heirlooms are
meaningless, they are nothing but ploys to secure a little cheap
publicity. Had there been any seriousness attending these, there
would have been long-term efforts to mobilise public opinion to
pressurise the Indian government to take up this demand in a systematic
manner and at a more opportune moment.
These are issues that have
to be worked out at a government to government level. Somebody
standing along the queen's route with a placard saying "Give
us our Koh-i-Noor," may get his picture in the newspapers.
But that would be the sum total of his achievement. Of course,
for a lot of people, that is the culmination of all their ambitions.
Do you think an apology could be seen as an act of goodwill, and
in turn would help raise the stature of the queen among the Indian
people in a humane sort of way?
In the absence of any radical improvement in our trade relations,
or of the upgradation of Indian issues in the list of British
priorities, I think it would fail to rise above the level of a
spectacle -- mildly embarrassing to the queen, mildly and temporarily
satisfying to some of the smaller minds in India, but eventually,
just an empty gesture.
In fact, this is true of the queen's visit
to India in its entirety. The visit of any head of state or government
is no more than a grand spectacle, unless it is accompanied by
a significant and quantifiable changes in relations between nations.
It will be a slightly greater spectacle in this case, since a
significant segment of our population is still obsessed with British
royalty. But once her tour of India is over, we will go right
back to cursing British colonialism (or, in some cases, romanticising
it). Apology or no apology.
What do you foresee as the outcome to this statement by Mr
Gujral? Is there really a controversy in this?
The immediate outcome appears to be that the queen's visit to
Amritsar has become uncertain. As for the controversy, I think
a certain group of politicians in Punjab are going to discover
their favourite 'brahmanical conspiracy' at Delhi as being responsible
for the attempt to 'deprive' them of the 'honour' of this visit,
and are going to keep talking of this 'evidence' of continuing
'oppression' at every possible occasion over the next ten years.
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