A Finer Balance - An Essay on the Possibility of Reconciliation
Text of an address delivered at the Documenta Symposium on Truth, Justice and Reconciliation, New Delhi, May 9, 2001.
Introduction
I begin this address by a simple reflection on the key words in the title of this symposium - truth, justice, reconciliation. They mean a great deal to me intellectually and emotionally, and they are always accompanied by a question mark - is there any such thing as truth, will there ever be a just society, may we dare hope for reconciliation? Like all great concepts they are too full of meaning to admit of any certitude. The title goes further - it speaks of experiments with truth, transitional justice, and processes of reconciliation. These phrases in turn, contain much food for thought, especially for Indians. It was an Indian, one of the greatest figures of the past century, who coined that germ of a Brahmasutra, “experiments with truth”, as his unique contribution to ethical philosophy. In its own way, this concept challenges the epistemological authoritarianism of market-liberalism, Leninism, and the monoliths of identity, while (in conjunction with the concept of ahimsa), suggesting an alternative to the nihilist ethics of post-modernity.
The concept of transitional justice is also one to which Indian experience speaks in a special way. Our transitions are different from the stark changes in South Africa and Germany yet they remain as painful. We are in perpetual states of temperamental, cultural, geo political and economic transition. Our social space is suspended between tradition and modernity, we exist as a people comprised of communities and also as a democratic nation state of individual citizens, our economy lies poised between regulation and the lack of it, our cultural and religious psyche does not know what to preserve and what to forget. Our notions of justice veer between a hierarchical sensibility that calibrates punishment according to the status of wrongdoers, and a jurisprudence that theoretically considers all citizens equal before the law. We know we are in transition. The only problem is that we don’t know where the transition is headed.
Again, the practice of reconciliation is something we desperately need to learn. Vast areas in the sub-continent have remained under martial law for decades. The number of orphans in the Kashmir valley run into the tens of thousands. Violence and terror have acquired a seamless trajectory. Communal and ethnic hatreds lurk beneath the surface of everyday life. The glorification of “masculine” virtue is a national pastime. And yet we Indians prefer to cling to our favourite symbolised grievances than to take the smallest steps towards comprehension and resolution.
The Threads of an Argument
The logic of my arguments will take the following trajectory, and base itself on the recognition that:
truth, justice and reconciliation are sorely needed;
that because they mean so many things to so many people, we must adopt certain rules of restraint and non-violence while we live and discover what they are,
that a society whose proclaimed leaders do not adhere to such rules, or have an equivocal stance towards political violence, is headed for self-destruction,
that democracy and human equality are relatively youthful concepts in the Asian polity - and even globally; that the extension of these principles to the world economy is still not acceptable to those who occupy its commanding heights,
that destitution and oppression are still the common experience of millions of people and while this lasts, the preservation of democracy is crucial to the fulfilment of modest aspirations
that reconciliation is only possible between equals, and cannot even be attempted when various conflicting parties humiliate and stifle one another
that a properly functional judicial system is crucial to social stability; and,
that judges, like the rest of us are mere mortals, and that therefore the sense of justice and fair play has to be sustained by a social ethos and enlightened public opinion.
