Her Majesty's Mission

ROUTES for VIPs visiting Delhi usually head towards Agra, not Amritsar. But on her third visit to India, the Queen of England seems headed for Amritsar not just by intention but now by insistence. Why Amritsar? "It was considered because it is one of the main focal points of the country," says a Bucking-ham Palace spokesman. But Amritsar was clearly not picked as just any one focal point among others within India. Reconnaissance groups from London visited Amritsar, not other 'focal points'. The royal visit to Amritsar, and particularly to Jallianwala Bagh, was drawn up to make a statement. An acknowledgement of wrong, an expression of regret, an upfront apology...one way or the other it would be a statement of some sort of apology. It was a statement prime minister I.K. Gujral tried to stall. But the Labour government held firm: they want the Queen in Amritsar.

Why is the Amritsar visit so important to the British? A visit to Jallianwala Bagh would be in tune with a new 'ethical' policy announced by foreign secretary Robin Cook. An apology was made to the Maori tribe of New Zealand by a Conservative government. A more 'ethical' party in government can't do less. But Labour is selling arms to Indonesia, saying its policies cannot hold retrospectively. April of 1919 was a long time ago. And the British are not known for putting so much energy into retrospective nobility.

The policy reversals regarding the royal visit to Amritsar are unusual, in diplomatic language. First, for the Indian prime minister to speak out against the visit, and then to say she could indeed visit. But, more unexpected than his volte face is the British push for the Amritsar visit despite what Gujral had said. The Indian prime minister was asked to unsay what he had said before. He did.

British officials handling the visit in London were taken aback when Gujral spoke about his apprehensions in an interview to The Observer. His statement, where he had opposed the royal visit to Amritsar, was about as emphatic Gujral could get: "It is a goodwill visit and we would not like to add anything historically that would cause bitterness.... Sometimes some shadow is cast by indiscreet speeches.... I do hope in the interest of building better psychological relations, policymakers in London will be slightly more careful and respectful of our sentiments."

바카라 웹사이트On the face of it, it was a curious request: a prime minister saying, in effect, out of respect to our sentiments, please do not apologise for killing our people. But the apology has at least as much to do with the politics of the day as with events of the past. The Labour government will decide if there is an apology, and what shape it might take. "The Palace," as a spokesman said, "follows the advice of the Council of Ministers." And Labour is not innocent of the implications an apology would create for the Indian government regarding Operation Bluestar. The Golden Temple and Jallianwala Bagh are the two places in Amritsar that the Queen is due to visit. The inference: if someone apologises over killings at one place, would someone else apologise for killings at the other? A connection does not have to be reasonable to be natural.

British prime minister Tony Blair had personally backed a royal visit to Amritsar. Blair had visited Jallianwala Bagh in April 1990 when he was a junior MP. He wrote he had been "moved greatly" by the visit, that Jallianwala Bagh was "a memorial to the worst aspect of colonialism," and that "fortunately the friendship of our two countries has survived this".

On his Amritsar visit, Blair had been chaperoned by the old fox of Labour politics, Gerald Kaufman. Kaufman was specially honoured in the Parliament by the new Labour government within which he is a respected and frequently-consulted leader. More significantly, he has taken credit for authoring a Labour Party resolution that supports a plebiscite in Kashmir and speaks of Kashmir as separate from India.

Indian officials in London are hesitant to think of a royal apology at Jallianwala Bagh as another Kaufman plot. But, says one official: "Labour is aware that Khalistanis would use a royal apology to launch a campaign against the Indian government over Operation Bluestar and the massacre in Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi."

The Khalistanis have lost no time doing that. The Times and several newspapers have quoted Khalistan proponents abusing the Indian government. One of them, Jagjit Singh Chohan, says: "Britain's hands are cleaner in Amritsar than India's". He issued a statement that after Operation Bluestar "the Indian government has not even issued a list of all those who perished, let alone compensate the families of the victims or attempt any meaningful dialogue to negotiate a settlement with the Punjabi people." Besides the several hundred killed during Bluestar, Chohan also spoke of the Delhi massacre. "Thousands of Punjabi Sikhs were attacked and killed, their property looted and homes set on fire."

About 10 times as many died in Bluestar and the Delhi riots as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, when the firing ordered by General Dyer left 379 people dead and over 1,200 wounded. Comparisons would be inaccurate but inevitable. "Already, needless comparisons have been made and we have had needless explanations to give," says an official.

A ROYAL apology could come as a diplomatic sting under the cloak of royal grace. The heat and noise over Gujral's yo-yo remarks have meant that the Indian government is feeling the sting already. Without the British even saying a word, a devious underside to the apology has begun to play out.

Gujral's first remarks on an apology only brought attention to the flip side of the apology for India. And this was a considered government response, revealed off-the-cuff. A short history has developed by now of an apology that might have been, inspired by a very yes-and-no-and-yes prime minister. Would the Queen apologise? What if she did? What if she didn't? Some of the answers are as ambiguous as, well, the British—quirky about their conscience as they are about so many things.

Take the Queen's visit to New Zealand in October of 1995. Amidst all the red carpets and warm welcomes, she was greeted by a group of protesters from the Maori tribe, whose members were killed and cheated of their land by the British 134 years ago. The protesters were not polite: 'Queen Go Home' and 'Imperial Parasite' were typical slogans. They demanded an apology. The government of New Zealand said the Queen must not apologise.

The Queen did and did not. An apology was read out at a function where the Queen was present but did not speak. A representative of the British Crown said that the British government expressed profound regret and apologised unreservedly for the loss of lives because of hostilities arising from this invasion (of Waikato in 1863) and at the devastation of property and social life which resulted. Was it a royal apology or not? Buckingham Palace then said it was not a personal apology. It came from the Crown but not from the Queen. That's how British the British can be.

The British government made a grant of £70 million to compensate the Maori tribe for the loss of their lands over a century ago. A part of that money was given to buy land to return to the Maoris. The Times praised the Queen for handling the hostility with customary grace and poise and with apt sensitivity. But, it warned, the instinct of Britons today to beat their collective chest in retrospective shame should be kept in check, not to preserve history and also to conserve money. The money rider usually decided what form an apology might take. If an apology comes, can a compensation claim be far behind?

There has been much media backing for an apology. "The Amritsar massacre was a black spot on Britain's record of government of the Indian empire," wrote The Daily Telegraph. Moreover, many Sikhs in Britain want the Queen to visit Amritsar. "The Queen has visited India twice, but she has never visited Amritsar," says Tarsem Singh Gill of the British Sikh Federation. Buckingham Palace is aware of the demands for an apology from Indians. It was an exceptional demand, and one that the Palace doesn't consider outrageous. A Buckingham Palace spokesman had even admitted that a number of options were being considered. But at present, the options, and fewer of them, are being reconsidered.

The British are now let off the hook regarding the demand for an apology. If no apology is now made during the visit of the Queen, it would be sensitivity to the Indian government. And yet the talk of an intent to apologise is not that much less than an apology. Going by present plans, the Queen intends to lay a wreath at Jallianwala Bagh. She need do no more. A visit is statement enough. In some way, with a little help from Gujral, the British have apologised already. The rest is diplomacy.