The rapid decline of American newspapers is robbing us of, among many other things, classic headlines. It took the Times of India—in what remains the world’s great newspaper nation—to really capture the events at the U.S. Capitol last week: “Coup Klux Klan,” it blazed across its front page, communicating the sense of giddy white entitlement, like a picnic at a lynching, that gave the event its distinctive and disgusting tone.
Maybe it’s just easier to see reality from a distance. We’re so used to the background noise of racism in this country that erecting a gallows with a noose on the West Front of the Capitol or carrying a Confederate battle flag through the halls of Congress doesn’t register as alarming as it should. Revulsion at the Capitol siege should be, in large measure, revulsion at the bigotry that underlies it—it was, after all, carried out in the service of absurd claims about election fraud, most of which depend on disenfranchising huge blocs of Black voters. And it’s possible that this could be one of those moments that helps us come to terms with that past: the shock of people storming Congress, killing one police officer and wounding several others as they hunted for elected officials, might be a catalyst for really dealing with the ugliness that defines too much of American history.
Or it might slide slowly into joining that history. I’m thinking of India again. In a few years, that country will mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, arguably the most important political leader of the twentieth century. He not only led the subcontinent to freedom against the most powerful empire that the world has ever known; he helped awaken Indians to the evils of caste and developed a theory and practice of nonviolent civil disobedience that has since become one of the world’s most precious possessions. His funeral, the day after his death, was attended by an estimated two million people. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru used the occasion, which came in the wake of the horrific violence of Partition, to call for an end to sectarianism. At the ceremony for the immersion of Gandhi’s ashes in the Ganges, Nehru said, “Our country gave birth to a mighty one, and he shone like a beacon not only for India but for the whole world. And yet he was done to death by one of our own brothers and compatriots. How did this happen? You might think that it was an act of madness, but that does not explain this tragedy. It could only occur because the seed for it was sown in the poison of hatred and enmity that spread throughout the country and affected so many of our people. Out of that seed grew this poisonous plant. It is the duty of all of us to fight this poison of hatred and ill will.”
Over time, however, that resolve dissipated. One of the right-wing Hindu-nationalist groups to which Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, had belonged, the R.S.S., was banned for only a year before its leaders—the Josh Hawleys and Ted Cruzes of their day—managed to have the moratorium overturned. The current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is a graduate of the group, and his Bharatiya Janata Party has governed as bigots, partaking of the same anti-Islam hatred that animated Gandhi’s killer. Muslims have faced the loss of citizenship; those suspected of eating beef have been murdered; Godse is being steadily rehabilitated. In 2017, the B.J.P. named Yogi Adityanath, an extremist Hindu monk, to run the giant state of Uttar Pradesh, in what one political observer called a “final rejection” of Nehru. Adityanath has called for building a temple to the Hindu god Ram on top of a mosque destroyed by a mob, and has proposed renaming one of Uttar Pradesh’s cities in Godse’s memory.
All of which is to say that impeaching Trump will not be enough, nor will prosecuting his followers who invaded the Capitol. Joe Biden has endorsed “unity,” but meaningful change is going to require that the whole nation do what it’s never really done before: grapple definitively with its past. The reaction to George Floyd’s murder—a wave of support for Black Lives Matter—and the increasing shock and revulsion over the events that Trump has provoked are both signs that we might possibly be ready for something akin to a “truth and reconciliation” process that puts solutions like reparations on the table, where they belong. That conversation will be hard, and, obviously, it will provide a chance for demagogues to regroup. But, if it doesn’t happen, we will be back here, eventually. And it will only happen if we take our precarious situation with the utmost seriousness. The ugly infection that has always sapped America’s strength burst to the surface last week. Simply bandaging it will be a mistake—history doesn’t offer many moments when a more thorough cure might be possible.
