Cult of personality

First blog of the year and am still not writing anything new. The old miasma that’s so seeped into our DNA is still so hard to get rid of that there is forever a backlog.

I would have loved to start off this blog with a story that is set in ancient Greece. A story that is half true, half legend about a generous and wise king, with an unpronounceable name that still sounds intelligent. A story about how the king reserved one day each week for other wise (and even unwise) men from across the kingdom to come and publicially (verbally) humiliate him. Why? Well, to keep him grounded of course! Well, sadly either this king never existed or I am not blessed with enough aesthetics to know or bother with greek fairy tales.

This is something that is a bee in my bonnet, a fly in my ointment etc, where we (especially Indians) have come to confuse actions with the personality behind actions. One of my favourite examples in this department is the ‘evergreen’ actor Dev Anand. We all remember his films growing up, while certainly not of great cinematic quality, thoroughly enjoyable, fun and with a semblance of a story. We also saw fall from grace with duds that I will be unable to even list out. So what happened? Did he somehow lose his talent overnight?

There are other examples. Nicholas Nassim Taleb, author of the immortal “Fooled by randomness”, then there is a Ram Gopal Verma, whose later works have been really very, very ordinary to say the least. Again, what happened? Did they lose talent almost overnight?

I believe the answer lies in the cult of personality that we Indians foster and that is a blot on the age old culture we claim to have inherited. What is the cult of personality? Nothing but transferring the positives of a great decisions, a great piece of art, a great strategic move, a great victory to the personalities behind the actions. To explain this in terms of my examples above, it simply means this: The moment Dev Anand went from “I make good films, hence people like them” to “I make films, hence people like them”, the downfall started. Ditto for others, IMHO.

But what seems to be a micro issue assumes gigantic proportions when a nation as a whole unconsciously subscribes to this transfer of glory, so to speak. A recent example, we all know of that a prominent cricket player, supposedly the best ever, the God of cricket and what not had requested for a tax waiver on a ‘gift’ conveniently given to him by a company whose products he hawked on TV. However anyone pointing this out suddenly becomes a persona non grata in India because the God of cricket cannot be wrong. Which doesn’t make sense! People transfer his talent on the pitch to every other action he performs. So because someone bats or bowls well, he cannot commit tax fraud?

There are several examples in the political class that meet this criterion as well. He or she cannot do anything wrong because they carry a certain surname or because they participated in the independence struggle or some other equally irrelevant reason. This is when this ‘cult of personality’ becomes serious. This is how people get elevated to saint-hood, and we all know once that happens, that person could literally stop his car in the middle of the street, kill the person nearest and proceed to cut, cook and eat his flesh in public, strip down and rub blood all over himself and it will still be ok. Of course I am exaggerating, but you get the gist.

I wonder what it is that pre-disposes Indians to this transfer of glory process. It has to be the feudal mindset that we have inherited from our ancestors How deep is this mindset, you ask? Check out simple everyday epithets, no one is a great actor or a star, he is the ‘baadshah’ or ‘shahenshah’ or ‘king’ of bollywood. We don’t have business heads or monopolists or captains of industry, we have, real estate ‘kings’ or liquor ‘barons’.  We don’t have upcoming politicians, we have ‘yuvraajs’, we don’t have good batsmen from small towns, we have ‘nawabs’ of najafgarhs.To use the latest pop phenomenon as a representative, the names of our IPL teams, start counting now, Chennai Super Kings, Rajasthan Royals, Kings XI Punjab, Royal Challengers, Kolkata Knight Riders and Pune Warriors. If 6 out of 10 teams have a ‘royal’ lineage, it is very reflective of this mindset.

It is this very mindset that gives even someone like Shah Rukh Khan the courage to protest because he was subjected to a routine search in the USA. Unlike India, USA is a bit more meritocratic and hence doesn’t care about his perceived social status. So I can understand his exasperation at being searched, afterall isn’t procedure for the cattle class, the ryot, the junta, the ordinary public to whom God hasn’t handed the rulers crown? It was this very reason that someone like Nusli Wadia can get into a international flight with absolutely no checks (http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_nusli-wadia-detained-with-gun-in-dubai_1075253, incidentally I was sitting on the seat next to him on the flight), because his glory in business is transferred to his personality. He is royalty and hence not subject to laws. This is what allows some of our Dabang film actors (?) to get away with perhaps murder, literally.

It is this very mindset that allows someone to ask a question like “Do you support Anna Hazare?” instead of “Do you support the Jan Lokpal Bill?”. If we do not check ourselves we may land into a situation of making Anna another Mahatma Gandhi, whom we (oh well our grandparents anyway) obeyed even when we knew he was wrong.

If I was the ‘king’ of India, in honour of this fictitious greek king, I would devote half a day every week to inviting my severest critics to verbally abuse me personally, because only when the personality takes a back seats do people (esp Indians) concentrate on policy. . With so many kings and nawabs, the lure of royalty, the divine right to rule, the divine right, period, is too hard to resist. But resist we must, for the sake of the future of the country. Appreciate or criticise actions and thoughts, but not the person behind them, for if we do that then we can be sure of downfall.