Comment by throwaway638637
10 hours ago
That's just a manner of speaking in former British colonies, or at least the subcontinent. Much of formal speech like a bureaucrat wrote it because, well, the civil service ran India and that's who everyone emulated.
It’s still passive voice, the kind used when trying to avoid blame or responsibility. So pretty much fits in bureaucratic places.
That’s just…mistakes were made.
This pattern of writing goes back to the Spanish conquistadors at the very least. They frequently described their actions in a passive voice when doing something they knew was horrible, only to switch to aggrandizing active voice when writing about their successes. It’s a standard way to blur responsibility and present violence as an almost natural “fact” rather than a deliberate action by identifiable agents.
It didn’t escape everyone’s attention though. Bartolomé de las Casas definitely noticed it.
> That's just a manner of speaking in former British colonies, or at least the subcontinent.
Which is still a good example of when you shouldn't use passive voice.
Clarifying where “optimising language to evade a responsibility” evolved does nothing to justify it, which you imply with “that’s just”.