The Hindu Business Line : Healing the wrongs of the past

Conquests often meant not just political but also cultural subjugation. We are now coming a full circle when assimilation is giving way to cultural diversity, and past actions that look wrong today are being admitted.

C. Gopinath

A dark spot in the history of many countries is how they have treated their own people. Often the problem begins with recognising who their ‘own’ people are. When one group of people occupies the land in which another group has been living for many generations, this confusion gets compounded. The newcomers fight first to exist, then to dominate, and finally to acculturate the original residents into their mores.

Conquests often meant not just political but also cultural subjugation. Forcing those conquered to convert to the conqueror’s style of life and religion came under the garb of assimilation and nation building, but was also a way of denying the violence and the atrocities of subjugation. Cultural conquest came in the form of religion, dress, and language.

Coming a full circle

We are now coming a full circle when assimilation is giving way to cultural diversity and past actions that look wrong today are being admitted. On June 12, the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, formally apologised to the country’s natives for abusive policies in the past. Sure, land was grabbed when white settlers occupied what is Canada today. But this particular apology was to do with what the settlers did to the children of the natives. They were forcibly removed from their families, and sent to residential schools run by churches.

The objective was to “kill the Indian (i.e., native) in the child” as one enforcer of that time put it succinctly. These children, aged six or seven, were given numbers in the place of their names, were not allowed to speak in their native language, and allowed to go home for only a few months in a year during school vacations.

Over a period of time, they lost their language skills, the knowledge of their culture, and felt uncomfortable when they went home since they could not understand what was being spoken or the practices that were being followed.

The mission of killing the native culture of the children was accomplished, but in addition, it turns out, many of the children were sexually abused by the leaders of the churches who were given charge of them. Some of the victims, who have come forward to tell their stories, have also suffered from alcoholism and drug abuse which may have been triggered by their traumatic early years. Over a 100-year-period, about 1,50,000 children were caught under this programme and housed in about 130 schools. The last one closed only recently in the mid-1990s.

‘Stolen generations’

In February this year, Mr Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister, similarly apologised to the aboriginal people just a day after his government was sworn in. In a programme similar to the Canadian one (they must have been sharing ‘best practices’ at that time!) thousands of children were forcibly removed from their families as part of a programme that ended only in the 70s. The Australians call it the ‘stolen generations’ and a group called Link-Up works to reunite families.

Much kudos must be given to Harper and Rudd for doing what their predecessors shied away from in spite of vocal demands. Apologising does not come easy for any one, for it is an admission of a fault or guilt. But it must be at least a little bit easier when some one else made the decisions and implemented the policies years ago that you are now apologising for. Even today, there is opposition to their efforts at apology for hardliners don’t think there is anything to be sorry about.

The South Africans added another layer to the apology process. When rule by the minority white community through a policy of apartheid was overturned, it was not enough for the government to just apologise for past actions. All those who suffered under the system needed to have their say in the open and those who committed the crimes also had to admit to what they did. The apology needed to be taken to a stage of catharsis. Moreover, there was not always enough evidence to take many of the cases of repression to court. So they came up with an ingenious plan to hold hearings under a Truth and Reconciliation Commission where many families learned, first hand, what happened to people who were taken away at the middle of the night and vanished. Society spilled its emotions in a more controlled manner.

Mr Harper is planning such a commission in Canada. The government has also settled a class-action suit and has provided for compensation packages for the victims. The Australians do not plan any compensation, at least for now. Perhaps their past needs to eat into them a bit more before they seek catharsis.

Indigenous people have had more to worry about than their cultures. In the US, there has been a long running federal lawsuit about mismanagement of trust funds. After years of wiping out native groups, the government began a policy of reserving land for them. Then began a policy of the federal government violating its own treaties. In 1887, the government passed a law allowing whites to settle in land previously kept separate for reservations. In return, the federal government granted individual natives land allotments, and took on the responsibility of managing the land too. The income from grazing, quarrying rights, mining, etc. was to be collected by the government and distributed to the individuals. Over the years, the government agency responsible for this, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has mismanaged the funds, lost records, and so on that the current lawsuit estimates that over Rs 4,27,800 crore is owed to the native tribes by the government.

Hot button issue

The question of apologising to the natives has never been pushed in the US. Even the question of apologising for slavery is a hot button issue. Affirmative action programmes in the US was a means of assuaging the guilt of ill-treatment (such as reservation for the downtrodden in India). But with increasing evidence on how much of today’s prosperity can be traced back in many communities to their exploitation of slavery, the day is not too far when America will get the courage to apologise to its own people for what was done to them.

The poor treatment of indigenous cultures in the Americas, and in Australia also arose from a feeling of superiority by the occupying culture. “Since we are able to overpower you, we are a superior people, and therefore to progress, you must be more like us” is a straightforward logic that dominated that thinking. This process must have felt a bit easy when the ‘others’ were given a separate alien nomenclature, such as in the Americas, where they were called ‘Indians.’

It was no different in the colonies. The colonial power felt that it must aid the progress of the natives by substituting their indigenous culture with a new one. This is reflected in the infamous Macaulay’s minute on education. Over a sufficiently long period of time, the subjugated culture adapts by incorporating elements from the new culture. Some of these are being reversed with renewed efforts to preserve cultural diversity.

There are several efforts to try and revive lost languages. One such is that by a native American, who is now a professor teaching English, who is compiling a book on the grammar of the Ojibwe language, one of the native languages facing extinction, and is on a mission to revive its use.

For some, such delayed efforts and apologies seem irrelevant and they believe society must move on. But for those who were affected, such an apology, even if not accompanied by compensation, is another step in the healing process.

(The author is professor of international business and strategic management at Suffolk University, Boston, US. He can be reached at cgopinat@suffolk.edu)

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