Rishi Sunak, the 'proud British', are you sorry for Jallianwala Bagh massacre?

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, by his own account, is a 'proud British Hindu'. Sunak has expressly embraced his Indian and Hindu heritage. At the same time, Sunak's moment of reckoning as a person of darker skin tone residing and working in 10, Downing Street – a former powerhouse of colonialism – has been widely celebrated by the people of former British colonies, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. 

The UK Prime Minister also holds a unique cross-sectional attribute as British person of colour of 'double-migrant' heritage, whose ancestors came to Britain from imperial India via Africa.  

The exhibition and celebration of one's heritage, such as lighting diyas on Diwali or visiting temples, is an obvious attribute of cultural rootedness. But an absolute absence of addressal of some tough questions on the same heritage, such as 'Who caused the Jallianwala Bagh massacre?', reflects a perilous state of imperial ignorance in Sunak’s leadership.

That it were the British who committed the Jallianwala Bagh massacre from inception to nadir is a fact rather than a contested assertion. That an official count of dead, widely held false, from that bloodied Amritsar ground showed 379 Indians killed, is a fact at the face of brutish smugness of the Raj.

ALSO WATCH | Britain refuses to apologise for Jallianwala Bagh massacre

As my colleague Prisha details here, General Reginald Dyer, the British Army officer who ordered the massacre, had 'made up [his] mind that [he] would shoot all men to death if they were going to continue the meeting at Jallianwala Bagh', located a short walk away from holiest Sikh shrine of Golden Temple in Amritsar in North India.

If Sunak, as a person of colour in the Downing Street himself, cannot issue a clear and unequivocal apology for a British imperial crime as staggeringly monumental as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the case for British 'historical amnesia' remains a proven one. 

Why apologise now, since so much time has passed?

On a hot noon of 13th April, the Lee-Enfield rifles of General Dyer’s troops penetrated the Indian psyche to the point that even 104 years later, the colonial wounds from that tragedy have not become scars, which often fade away with passage of time. Sunak, with an apologetic atonement, can attempt to initiate the making of India’s Jalllianwala Bagh wound, an imperial scar of history.

Every day, over 150,000 people visit the Golden Temple shrine, passing through the site of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. An apology would not undo the generational trauma hundreds of thousands Indians encounter in Amritsar every day. But it will definitely have a cleansing effect on the collective Indian psyche which continues to face colonial horrors of the past in the remnants of British loot, signs of subjugation, racism and killings scattered all over the country every day. 

It would constitute a step towards atonement against a nation's colonial crimes. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre symbolises two centuries of horrors Indians faced under British rule. A British Prime Minister of colour showing moral courage to deliver an unequivocal apology for the same would go a long way for over a billion people still overcoming generational trauma of colonialism. 

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)

WATCH WION LIVE HERE

You can now write for wionews.com and be a part of the community. Share your stories and opinions with us here.