Gagarin in Mumbai

The stamp of professional genuineness often elevates an individual above the political baggage of the regime s/he serves. Thus,Erwin Rommel was the least hated Wehrmacht officer outside the Third Reich. Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was not Rommel,although a military officer; nor was the erstwhile Soviet Union,for all of Stalins crimes,an equivalent of Nazi Germany. The most loved Soviet citizen in the West,Gagarin was never the Soviet Unions hero alone.

A little more than a month after the world marked the golden jubilee of Gagarins Vostok 1 flight on April 12,2011,the Russian consul in Mumbai has requested the new Lalbaug flyover be named after him. Since the flyover is designed to be primarily used by the former mill-workers,and since Gagarin exemplified the views and ideals of the working class of the Soviet Union,wouldnt this be a fitting tribute,given that Gagarin had visited Mumbai after Vostok 1,and since Soviet/ Russian cities honoured many Indian figures with venues commemorating them?

Gagarin,with the smile that lit up the Cold War,was unsurprisingly capitalised on as a propaganda tool. So famous and useful was he that the Soviets forbade him from flying into space again,lest an accident claimed his life. He did die,tragically,in a MiG 15 crash in 1968. A measure of the battle for his legacy would be the initial attribution of Gagarin didnt see any god up there to the man himself a phrase later tied to Nikita Khrushchev during the 1958-64 anti-religion campaign. Gagarin apparently baptised his elder daughter and has been equally claimed by the Orthodox church. If the Lalbaug flyover is to be named after him,let it be named after Yuri Gagarin,the First Human in Space,a legend in his own right,shorn of the political baggage. Theres also a need to look at the default Soviet nostalgia option: why are the Einsteins and Armstrongs always ignored?