Opinion Watch your words

Because,in the way we go about things,not only are our heroes nice guys,but nice guys are never capable of not doing quite enough for their friends as their friends would like them to.

It is difficult to pin down why this subcontinental aversion to criticism — or even to nuance,and shades of grey — in how we assess those we consider great should have evolved. Is it a thin skin born of the sustained humiliation of colonialism? Is it because India remains,at its heart,a society where hierarchy is all,and one doesn’t badmouth one’s betters in public? Or perhaps,and this is to me the most persuasive idea,it is the flip side of our well-known tolerance. Just as,in India,secularism suddenly becomes universal respect,here achievement means we are starry-eyed.

More,if one person is starry-eyed,so must we be all. So,in our eagerness to avoid arguments — who wants to fight when it’s so humid — we seem to have invented postmodern laziness well before we got to modernity. How can I criticise your icon? Sab maya hai,after all: we can both be right. (Even if we can’t.) I won’t tell you what’s wrong with your guy if you don’t tell me what’s wrong with mine. Everybody’s happy then — as far as we know — since all interesting conversation is off-limits.

The most obvious example: Gandhiji. You’ll struggle to remember the last time he was criticised,or even praised only mildly,in public. Yet,in private,all of us will have at some time expressed or heard expressed an opinion that isn’t quite so rosy: that his anti-technology stance was short-sighted,for example,or that “village republics” were an unworkable idea. And we’ll even have run into people perfectly willing to declaim,loudly and at tiresome length,about his “appalling” softness on Muslims or his “suspicious” blindness to Nehru’s flaws. But articulate any of these ideas,rational or irrational,in public,and you would be attacked on all sides for blatant disrespect and for trifling with the feelings of the Gandhigiri-performing multitudes. So they never are articulated in public — and their private votaries never see their assumptions challenged on a larger stage.

This happens everywhere that politics,the way that we organise our public disputation,retreats from dealing with what figures in our history stood for. Gandhiji never convinced everybody when alive. But one set that disapproved was split off into Pakistan; another set was told by Moscow to stay silent; and the third was so discredited by the sympathies of his killers that they had to shut up about him for 30 years and now half-pretend he was one of their own. So he was canonised,moved above criticism — and became near-irrelevant.

That’s the real danger that canonising historical figures represents. And it happens more and more,especially for individuals adopted by assertive groups as mystic standard-bearers for their pride. So,as Mani Shankar Aiyar discovered,diss Savarkar at your peril. That offends Maharashtrian pride,or at least the pride of the more vocal,starred-question-asking,bus-burning among Maharashtrians. And we wind up with the illogicality of putting beyond debate both a man we call the father of the nation and a man most believe had something to do with murdering the father of our nation.

It goes beyond Savarkar and Shivaji: suggest that incorporating princely states into India wasn’t the toughest job ever,and you have belittled the industry and initiative of all Gujaratis. And then there are the many and multifarious sacred cows of my own beloved Calcutta: Ray never made a bad movie,beneath Netaji’s fondness for uniforms beat a committed liberal heart,there’s not a wrong note in all Rabindrasangeet,and Ganguly was never lbw.

To see this process as it happens,look south. In Andhra Pradesh,Telugu bidda N.T. Rama Rao is fast becoming the sort of sub-national icon that transcends politics. His Telugu Desam claims his legacy; but their rivals in the Congress don’t have a bad word now for a man they vilified during his lifetime,and have roped in NTR’s daughter Daggubati Purandareswari to show the electorate who his real heirs are. And another popular filmstar-turned-populist politician,Chiranjeevi,has staked a claim to NTR’s crusading,anti-establishment style.

And to see its dangers,look even more south. C.N. Annadurai,who led Tamil Nadu’s Dravidian movement for decades,has left a legacy now beyond debate. The DMK had him while he was alive; the All-India Anna DMK carries his name. But put the fiercely,inspiringly argumentative Anna’s ideas beyond criticism,and suddenly you don’t need to defend them any more,either. And when you don’t need to defend them,they die in practice. So you get one democratic party that is beginning to look like a family firm,and another that is abandoning all that the anti-Brahminical,atheistic Anna actually believed.

Sometimes,our heroes have feet of clay,and we should celebrate them anyway. That’s what Nehru would have done — after all he,to encourage critical thinking about his leadership and personal style,once wrote a pseudonymous article criticising himself. Or elsewhere in the world,where Lincoln,America’s greatest president,is also remembered for being (till recently) the only one to suspend habeas corpus; where tours of the achingly beautiful house Jefferson designed for himself include the crushingly depressing slave quarters. Sometimes,the lives they lived and the choices they made can move us even if we think they’re wrong.

Sometimes,even,they comfort us. Sachin Tendulkar is a great batsman. He also comes across as one of the nicest men in public life. If sometimes he falls short in helping out a friend,I at least don’t blame him for it,nor do I blame the friend for telling us. And I feel,perhaps,a little better about mistakes I might have made.

mihir.sharma@expressindia.com