Cheap Catharsis, Expensive History

Sathnam Sanghera recently alluded to a moment from his 2019 Channel 4 documentary The Massacre That Shook the Empire. In it, the great-granddaughter of General Dyer, the man responsible for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, is brought face-to-face with descendants of the victims.

In the clip, Dyer’s descendant calls the massacre victims “looters” and praises her great-grandfather as an “honourable man.” Twitter was predictably outraged. KJo chimed in. Think-pieces bloomed.

But why does her opinion matter?

This wasn’t justice, it was television. And like most televised reckonings with Empire, it was a performance. One more entry in the growing archive of aspirational brown catharsis, where the goal is not transformation but temporary relief; therapy instead of revolution.

Yes, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre was horrifying. No one disputes that. But to repeatedly stage these moments of inherited guilt and symbolic outrage is to substitute emotional spectacle for actual change.

Britain is not closer to redress. The Commonwealth isn’t inching toward reparations. British Asians are not about to own a fairer share of land, institutions, or equity. But we are expected to feel healed by the awkward mutterings of a descendant who’s not even sorry; just embarrassed that another cousin openly defended their ancestor.

This is not about historical accountability. It is about managing the mood of postcolonial subjects. Keep us emotional. Keep us visible. Keep us grateful.

But don’t give us power.

That is the unspoken logic of these curated moments: mourn the wound, not the cause.

And it works — because so many of us still seem to want respect more than justice. To be seen, included, affirmed.

But history will not be rewritten through awkward Channel 4 moments. It will only be reckoned with through real structural change.

Until then, let the Twitter mobs rage. But some of us will remain quietly asking the harder question:

What are we really performing here?