In 2010, Slate writer Grady Hendrix woke up to find that a paragraph from his article on Rajinikanth was lifted by India Today , under editor-in-chief Aroon Purie’s byline. Hendrix went on to write, “only the millionaire CEO of a multiplatform media company who is also editor-in-chief of a major news magazine can write an apology that is defiantly non-apologetic.”
Cut to 2015, and we now have the Rajiv Malhotra issue. His explanation for lifting passages from various publications was that “Sanskrit language has no quotation marks. Yet, scholars cited each other for thousands of years. Western standards are not the only way to apologise.” (Note: This was a tweet that has been grammatically corrected for readability.)
Why is it so hard for us to apologise when we make a mistake? The non-apology has, for so long, been a part of both politics and publicly accessible offices that it has an entire Wikipedia page. The New York Times has even called the phrase “mistakes were made”, a “classic Washington linguistic construct.” Is it so very difficult to admit to the mistake, apologise and move on? In the aftermath of every important event, is someone who says something insensitive or inappropriate and later expresses regret by clearly not taking any blame.
The other issue with a non-apology is that, it shifts the blame on the recipient, instead of clearly assigning blame on the person who deserves it. “I apologise if you were offended,” means less “I’m sorry for what I did,” and more “Well, it’s your fault you got offended, and you wanted an apology. Here you go.” To say what one wants, and to expect nobody to oppose that, is especially unrealistic for a public figure. It then means that the person isn’t prepared for public life and the challenges it brings. After all, if knowing what to say brought one to the attention of many, the loss of that very ability can destroy the pedestal upon which one is placed.
The problem here isn’t with specific individuals or their responses to events, but that we rarely hold ourselves to the standards we expect everyone else to fulfil. While Malhotra may be right about Sanskrit not using quotation marks, he has held himself up as an academic writer, not an arbitrary blogger. Then, he must be subject to the same standards that all academic writing is — painstakingly researched, sources cited, peer reviewed. And most importantly, open to criticism.
It also seems like the more strenuous way around a problem. Where it is simpler to say, “I did it and I’m sorry,” many people tend to take the path ridden with so many questions. Public relations have been around in some form or the other since civilisation began, and yet, it’s surprising that somebody would choose something that is quite obviously bad PR. Meanwhile, Sanskrit may not have quotes, but it wouldn’t hurt to use them as it doesn’t affect the effectiveness of the language.
Published - July 17, 2015 04:51 pm IST
