It is likely that the word ‘apology’ has been mentioned several times in public recounting of sexual harassment that has gripped urban India recently. I myself heard it at least twice. A friend who had suffered sexual harassment several years ago admitted that she mustered enough courage to go public only after the #MeToo campaign had started but wouldn’t have done so if the offender had written a private letter of apology. Public naming and shaming wasn’t easy, she said. Morally confused for days, she was deeply conflicted before she finally decided to act. Another victim was more categorical to the media: if the sexual assaulter offers a public apology even now, she would forgive him and not press legal charges. Alas, to no avail.
Hearing these accounts, I was reminded of a news story about an Algerian Muslim pilot who was falsely accused of training the 9/11 hijackers and who spent nearly five months in a prison in London before the court exonerated him. The pilot asked for a public apology, not only for the falsity of the charge but also for the emotional turmoil that it caused him and his family. But the apology was never given and he was forced to resort to legal action. To restore his own dignity and the self-respect of his family, he was left with no option but to sue the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Repairing relationships
Plainly, an apology is not a meaningless ritual. Our everyday life is replete with apologies. This is not surprising. Humans derive comfort from relationships. Our own sense of self-esteem depends on how others assess us. And that, in turn, depends on how we treat them. And yet, our daily interactions with family, friends, colleagues, ‘subordinates’, and even the wider community in which we live are beset with blunders. No relationship is free of at least temporary disfigurement. We behave insensitively by failing to respond to the needs of others, by ignoring rather than recognising them, by wrongly holding others responsible for things they haven’t done, by treating them unfairly, by inferiorising, humiliating and degrading them. This causes immense distress and damages interpersonal relationships. Sometimes these wounds fester and grudges congeal, deepening an already spiralling estrangement. In other, more self-reflective, moments, we acknowledge the wrong we have done, apologise for it and thereby arrest further deterioration in relationships. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a person’s private life without apologies. But arguably, an apology has an important role to play even in more formal, public interactions. Apologies are immensely worthwhile in social practices of restorative justice. And if properly introduced in our criminal justice system, they may even improve it, transform its current cold and heartless character. Would it not make a real difference to the victim and more generally to our damaged social life if, apart from accepting legal punishment for the wrong done, the perpetrator apologises to the victim?
Shallow versus genuine apologies
How then does an apology work? From where does it draw its power? For a start, it is best to clarify that shallow, insincere and fake apologies are morally useless and socially ineffective. Far from repairing fractured relationships, they only cause further damage. They betray the sickness of the wrong doer because he continues to treat his victim as an object to be manipulated, as an instrument with which to expunge his own sense of guilt. Such flawed rituals of apology are failed attempts at self-appeasement, a kind of window dressing. They do absolutely no good to the already wronged.
The structure of a genuine apology is pretty simple: the offender must properly acknowledge responsibility for the wrong done and show remorse for his act. Mostly expressed in words, it can also be effectively conveyed non-verbally. I learned this when my wife and I visited her father’s former home in Lahore. When its current owner learnt of our connection to the house, he invited us in, gave us a cup of tea, begged us to stay there for the rest of the visit and as we left, wrapped his hand around mine with such a mysterious warmth that I felt a whole people were apologising for the displacement of my wife’s family. It was as if he was saying that he wished this must never happen to anyone again. That, to me, is the crux of the matter. An effective apology comes with a commitment that the offence will never be repeated. An apology can never undo the wrong, but instead of asking the victim to forget and move on, it conveys that without acknowledgement and regret, there is no forward movement.
Imagine the opposite: where the offender refuses to admit that he did something wrong. Surely, in doing so, he reinforces that he is not part of the moral world of those he has violated, does not abide by their rules. This remorseless outsider has neither shame nor sorrow and is likely to repeat the offence, be a serial offender. How then can the victim feel safe in this uncertain moral universe? How can she stop feeling insecure and threatened? On the other hand, by apologising, the offender demonstrates that despite his past acts, he partakes in a shared moral world. This rebuilds trust in the offender. Assured that she is safe from any further harm, the victim copes better with past suffering. Genuine apologies help repair broken relationships. They help restore a common moral world and thereby give us hope that life can begin afresh.
