INDIA'S VERY OWN TRUTH COMMISSION

We can learn from South Africa’s remarkable experience with a truth and reconciliation commission. Its idea of ubuntu, or communal fellowship, can create a path to peace

- SHIV VISVANATHAN

SOMETIMES news gets ignored or condemned to a little footnote. A piece of history disappears between news of G20 and IPL. On October 2, the Indian Social Institute in Bengaluru, a group of Jesuits dedicated to research, established a Peace and Reconciliation Unit for India. Such an announcement should have been accompanied by celebration and analysis, yet all it faced was silence. This column is an attempt to relive that event by discussing what a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) for India would look like.

There have been dozens of truth commissions worldwide, but most have been attempts at amnesty, as political acts of hypocrisy and compromise. A TRC in the authentic sense was only conducted successfully in South Africa. The commission that Bishop Desmond Tutu built was legendary and demands a different kind of storytelling.

The battle against apartheid in South Africa was fought by the guerilla and the satyagrahi. Individuals like Nelson Mandela and Chris Hani were militants, while Tutu, Albie Sachs and Albert Luthuli were satyagrahis. After his stay at the Robben Island prison, Mandela felt violence could not be the way of post-apartheid Africa. He asked his friend Desmond Tutu to set up a TRC.

Desmond Tutu was an extraordinary man. An exemplar. Part Shaman and part clown, Tutu realised that the TRC had to be a moral experiment of an unexpected kind.