Dharma Files | The righting of historical wrongs: How in a free society, some are guilty but all are responsible

It is true that The Kashmir Files raises issues of contemporary wrongs rather than historical ones, but it is only a matter of time before the present turns into the past and biography becomes history. Even more significantly, the issue of the righting of wrongs, or what we less cumbersomely call justice, constitutes the heart of the matter. Both historical wrongs, and the wrongs suffered by the Kashmir Pandits, raise one key question: How does one render justice in a situation complicated by the passage of time, or what we might call time-lapse?

Even in the context of delays in the administration of justice in the normal course, we have the saying: justice delayed is justice denied. How much more then, in the case of historical wrongs. And yet, although the need in the case of historical wrongs may be proportionately greater, the difficulty is also exponentially greater because of the generational chasm which yawns between the original victimizers and victims and their successors, and the distancing from the original wrong resulting from the passage of time, leading to the frequent despairing throw of the hands, with the exclamation: how far back can one go?

Notwithstanding the difficulties associated with the exercise, the reaction to The Kashmir Files signals that the exercise may have to be undertaken. At one time it was customary to dismiss cases of sexual harassment as ‘in the past’, or, in its legal expression, as ‘time-barred’. But not anymore.

The first obvious candidate here is clearly the question of righting the historical wrongs of caste discrimination in its two manifestations: (1) those committed against the Dalits or former untouchables, and (2) those committed against the lower castes (who are not Dalits). This involves a period of almost 3,000 years, if we go by current chronological calculations.

Close on its heels follows the second candidate for redress — the wrongs against women. Indeed, sometimes the first and the second cases go together, as in the exclusion of both the lower castes and untouchables, as well as women, from Vedic studies in classical and medieval Hinduism. Again, the period involved here may be as long, or even longer.

The third candidate, which emerges for consideration, is the Hindu community, as a whole, for the wrongs committed against it during the period of Muslim rule over India, usually rounded off to a period of a thousand years, with perhaps some exaggeration. This involves three dimensions; (1) the human cost of Muslim rule; (2) the destruction of temples; (3) the enslavement of women and children; and (4) the amount of wealth confiscated. Nadir Shah carried away so much wealth from India that he was able to give his subjects a tax holiday for three years. This wealth was seized from both the Hindus and Muslims of India at the time.

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The fourth candidate would include all Indians — Hindus and Muslims alike, who need to be compensated for the wrongs committed against them during the two hundred years of British rule. This would involve the dimensions of (1) the human cost of British rule; (2) the destruction of existing structures, as, for instance, in Delhi after the Mutiny; (3) the atrocities committed after the Mutiny; and above all (4) the amount of wealth transferred, calculated by economist Utsa Patnaik at $45 trillion for the period extending from 1765 to 1938, also from all Indians.

The fifth candidate would be the Hindus in the post-Independence period, who need to be compensated for the wrongs committed against them in a secular India. Prominent among these is the amount of wealth appropriated by the various state governments from the Hindu temples in the guise of managing their secular affairs. The amount remains to be calculated.

The righting of these wrongs presents formidable problems and would require the wisdom of many minds to be resolved. I would just like to emphasise that even if our first reaction is characterised by a fear of the enormity of the burden which might be imposed on us, we should, nevertheless_, not fear this exercise._ The higher caste Hindu might panic that one has to compensate for three thousand years of oppression, but one should remember that one also is eligible for receiving compensation for the period of Muslim rule; the Muslim might panic that he or she has to compensate for a thousand years of oppression of the Hindus, but he or she is also eligible for receiving compensation from the British, and so on.

Compared to the enormity of the problems involved in compensating for historical wrongs, the biographical wrongs which need to be compensated in the case of the Kashmiri Hindus are far less complicated and cry out for immediate redress. In this way redressing the wrongs of the Kashmiri Pandits could be the first step in the more general exercise of the righting of historical wrongs. (Some steps in this direction have already been taken through affirmative action programmes in India.) It will also provide an answer to the question: how far back do we want to go? Perhaps it would make more sense to start with historically proximate wrongs first. It will help us from falling into the trap that no historical wrong should be corrected until all historical wrongs are corrected.

Another point needs to be addressed before we conclude. People avoid a discussion of historical wrongs out of the fear of being made to feel guilty for some of them. This is clear from the defensive reaction one sometimes encounters. For instance, when the question of compensating blacks for slavery is brought up in the United States, many whites respond by saying: ‘I don’t own slaves, why should I be held guilty for something my ancestors did’? The matter is a sensitive one. More than half of the first 20 Presidents of the United States were slave owners, beginning with George Washington.

This is a matter in which we need to learn to not only think clearly but also to feel clearly. One needs to distinguish clearly between feeling guilty and feeling responsible. One need not feel guilty if one was not involved in the act individually, but one can still feel responsible, as someone with a social conscience, for involuntarily being part of a system which involved injustice, and from which one may have benefitted indirectly.

Support for this comes from a statement made by the Jewish Rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-72), the celebrated scholar of Judaism in the United States. This statement was shared with me by his daughter, Susannah Heschel, a distinguished scholar of Judaism in her own right, when I met her in Philadelphia in 1982. It runs as follows: “In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”

The author, formerly of the IAS, is the Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University in Montreal Canada, where he has taught for over thirty years. He has also taught in Australia and the United States and at Nalanda University in India. He has published extensively in the fields of Indian religions and world religions. Views expressed are personal.

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