When the Dream Shatters

As the Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa battles for life, police has been put on high alert to prevent the mass hysteria, should the tragedy occur. Suicides, arson, looting – there are no holds barred on the demise of popular figures these days. Prime minister Rajiv Gandhi justified the horrible carnage following the death of Mrs Indira Gandhi, declaring “when a big tree falls, the earth shakes”.

What does a person gain by committing suicide on the death of a popular figure? Why does he become so weak to end life at the death of a person with whom he presumably had no direct contact? And that too, when we carry on with our lives after the death of our closest relatives and friends?

The clue lies in the habit of blind idol worshipping. MK Gandhi insisted throughout his life that he was no saint but a politician; but his followers would have none of it. He was a ‘mahatma’, a great soul, for them. Atal Behari Vajpayee called Mrs Indira Gandhi ‘Durga’, a Hindu Goddess; MF Husain drew her as Durga in his painting; and the Congress President Dev Kant Barua said, “Indira is India and India is Indira”.

You can face very unpleasant consequences if you dare to  differ in opinion with Narendra Modi these days. Be prepared to be shouted out, heckled, or interrogated by the police if you voice an intelligent but different opinion. He, being the current rage, cannot do anything wrong, he is the ultimate authority on everything - believe his followers. They do not realise that Modi, being human, is as susceptible to committing errors as everybody else is. Modi has provided enough proofs of his vulnerability in his speeches. In spite of being a politician, he mistook the 16^th Lok Sabha as the 14^th; in spite of vying for the post of the prime minister he said that the rupee was equal to a dollar in 1947 whereas it was equal to 30 cents then; in spite of being a Gujarati and a BJP leader he assumed that the Bharatiya Jan Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mookherjee was a proud  son of Gujarat and died in 1930 while actually Mr Mookherjee was a Bengali and died in 1953; he placed Chandra Gupta Maurya in the Gupta dynasty and not the Maurya dynasty; he announced that the August 15 speech is delivered from Lal Darwaza while it is actually delivered from the historical Lal Quila; and to top it all, he referred to the father of the nation Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as Mohanlal Karamchand Gandhi.

Humans are humans. They commit errors. They become old, fade and die. The first superstar, Rajesh Khanna, was spotted crying at the Kolkata airport in his later years. Some Indian considered MK Gandhi not worthy of worship but of being felled by his bullet. Ditto with Mrs Gandhi. Her staunch followers turned against her. The Narendra Modi magic is also bound to end one day. But till that happens, the sycophants will butter their bread.

We can either groom the public figures as humans, and get the best of them for everyone’s welfare. Or, we can treat them as idols, worship them, and ultimately immerse them in water.