An Apology Note to the victims of our nationalism

Dear Assamese, Kashmiris and other victims of our strident nationalism

I am truly sorry for your loss and your pain. You have put up with us and our failed experiments and for this, I owe you a debt that can never be repaid. As a citizen of India, and therefore represented by the various Governments that have failed you, I feel responsible for your hardship. I am deeply sorry. I may not have voted for these regimes, but they govern in my name, and so I must apologise for the evil acts that they perpetrate in my name as well.

There can be no redemption for us. We sit comfortably ensconced in our ivory towers, convinced that we know what's best for you. We, who have never shivered through a cold night in a refugee tent, not tasted fear as bullets whizz past us, not run from mobs baying for our blood, nor sat restlessly anticipating that knock on the door demanding we prove our nationality and our identity. We who have never lost a moment's happiness, nor had the fate of our children impacted by the thin sliver of hope that this nation has held out to you, now sit in judgement on what should be the fate of you and your children. We cannot be redeemed.

There can be no penance for us, for we are unrepentant. Time and again we pretend we know what we are doing, and wreak unspeakable havoc in your lives as easily as we crack nuts or screw open wine bottles. But people are not walnut shells. Or wine bottle corks. They bleed. They break. They burn. In our thirst for vengeance and our greed for power, we forget our humanity. Your humanity we have already forgotten, buried under mounds of paper. Until there is only dust. We hope to rewrite the past in order to build our future, but on a crooked pedestal shall be wrought all these great works we hope to accomplish, and I fear that in the end we too will be dust.

Your voice reached my ears. And in my self pity and fear and insecurity, I shut it out. I am sorry. I am afraid of losing what I have. Of going through the Hell  we have made your life. Of standing up to the injustice of the state. Of catching the eye of the state machinery. I am afraid of becoming the dust and the mounds of paper I have made you. For my fear, for the failings of my character and my courage. I am sorry. 

Yes, perhaps this is not an apology, but an admission of guilt. In my silence, in my fear, in the prison of my weak spirit, I am just as much your culprit as those I would claim to denounce. I am truly, deeply sorry for what I have become.