Heroes, mentors, gurus....we seem to have an inherent need to deify someone and put them on a pedestal. As a young boy, I was a big fan of the cricketer Mohammed Azharuddin. It reached a point where his every achievement was mine and the same for every failure. Classmates and friends would congratulate me on his fifties or hundreds and berate me when he didn't do enough to help India win a cricket match. Then the unthinkable happened, Azhar was implicated in a match-fixing scandal. I was in college by this time and I was devastated. My hero, it turned out, had feet of clay. He was a cheat, a greedy cheat. My friends and family had a good time pulling my leg on the issue. In hindsight, I guess I must thank Azhar for his lapse of character and judgement because it taught me very early that nobody was, or should be expected to be, above making mistakes. It was good that Azhar's mistake was such a black and white one. There was no way for me to justify his actions. He was a cheat and that was it.
The almost blind faith people seem to put in Narendar Modi reminds me of that young boy who had implicit faith that all it required was for Azhar to come to the crease and India would be saved. The "bhakts" as the Modi supporters have come to be called seem to have a similar belief in him and his abilities to solve India's problems. No number of failures seem to be able to shake them from this belief. And the list of failures is long. Swachch Bharat, demonetization, GST implementation, CAA, Article 377 abrogation, the Farm laws, his handling of the pandemic, and on and on and on.
If Narendar Modi had been a cricketer, we would have been screaming from the rooftops to drop him from the team.
Even when I agree with some of his actions, he makes sure I cannot support him fully because he would have broken a constitutional promise to achieve his aim.
Let's be clear. I have been just as critical of previous PMs, irrespective of the party to which they belong. Criticism and a questioning attitude towards those in power are the most important ingredient for a successful democracy. We need to start every debate from the point of "the politician is wrong" and then slowly work our way outwards. When we start from the opposite end, we have set up democracy for failure.
Sadly, Narendar Modi's detractors don't seem to be free of this affliction either. Criticizing Nehru or Gandhi or Patel seem to be just as off the plate for them as criticism of Modi is off the plate for the bhakts.
Any conversation about out heroes rapidly degenerates into "whataboutery". Little do we realize that the moment we say, "and what about..." we have implicitly agreed that our side is in the wrong and that somehow the other side also being in the wrong makes our side's wrong okay, or at least palatable. This attitude is okay when you are 8 or 10 and fighting with your siblings. But as adults, we need to be more mature. A wrong is a wrong and must be judge on its own and by itself.
The lesson I learned from the Azharuddin episode was that it was not my job to defend Azhar. The actions were his and his alone. Him being a cheat did not reflect on me or my values. But what would reflect my values was what I thought about his actions. Was it okay for Azhar to cheat just because he is my hero? Was it okay for Azhar to cheat just because someone else cheated?
I faced a similar dilemma when it came to allegations of child abuse by Michael Jackson. I detest child abusers with no room for maneuver. But at the same time, I do enjoy the music he created. How does one reconcile this? Can I listen to his music without being so enamored by him that I justify his actions or worse ignore them?
It is not our job to defend our heroes. Instead, it is our heroes' job to make sure they live up to the high expectations we have of them. When we begin to defend out heroes' mistakes, we in fact enable them to do more because they know there is no cost involved. No matter what they do, their fans will defend them and stay true to them.
This is all I have to say to the Modi and Nehru fans.
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