“What did he (Kalam) know about extracting, making explosive-grade uranium? He didn’t know a thing. By being the President he appeared to wear the stature. He relied on atomic energy to gain additional stature.” (H.N. Sethna, the former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, who was the guiding force behind Pokhran I in 1974)
“What is so sacrosanct about Abdul Kalam? Even Albert Einstein made mistakes. Before the scientists on the site called New Delhi to confirm the tests, they should have checked the yield of the thermo-nuclear bomb with the seismic centre in London , with which India
Trust us Indians to demolish the honor of our Heroes – however small numbers we may have of them.
It takes a lifetime for one to build his/her image through hard work, honesty, integrity, devotion and dedication. It, however, takes a few ambiguous comments by critics and doubt-mongers to destroy the reputation of such revered men. We are one of those societies in the universe who are as close to being hypocrites as possible. We never scrutinize our own selves even once in life – but when it comes to others and especially the ones who have achieved something in the society – My Gosh – we are the best at lynching them. By all available evidence, we in our country have some in-born “specialization” on the subject.
If the above example were to be the only such incident of practical annihilation of ones’ reputation – perhaps I would not be writing this. I am writing this after having lived a lot of matured years in this country and am practically fed up with questions being raised over integrity and dedication of Gandhi, Nehru, Indira, General Manekshaw, Patel, Vajpayee, great sportsmen, great musicians etc. As it is, none of the pre-1857 freedom fighters or Kings has been able to achieve the status of Hero or a Champion. And whatever small bunch has achieved greatness in this land of Ganga
Why - if I may ask? What makes us so nervous about letting proclaimed heroes (of yesteryears and/or a few of current times) live in peace? Why do we need to keep writing critically about such heroes? And if we do have to – why only highlight the critical aspects? As it is, it’s always the controversial bits that get propagated/ reported/ discussed as “News”. And that is what stays in ones mind. So why do it at all? I mean, look at Jaswant Singh. In trying to propel Mohd Ali Jinnah to the Hero’s group in this country (which has always proclaimed him to be the villain of the Partition saga) – he has gone ahead and criticized Gandhi, Nehru and to a minimal extent even Sardar Patel (Another of our Heroes). This is a classical case of how one can subtly raise doubts over integrity and decisions taken by some Great men of our society (with a hindsight advantage). Now tell me, how many of us have read that book of his? Hardly a few I guess. But what do we know about contents of that book? Well, we surely know it tries to prove that Jinnah was never in favor of Partition and that he was “forced” to opt for it due to the fact that Nehru (and in turn Congress) wanted to lead the Nation after Independence and that Gandhi supported his ward. There are other incidents during that period of history, quoted in the book, that Jaswant Singh claims to have lead to Jinnah finally realizing that there is no future for Muslims in the idea of “secular India” being propagated by Gandhi, and thus he (and his team of followers) were almost “forced” to ask for a separate state for Indian Muslims (which he eventually got in form of Pakistan). Oh, simple, isn’t it.
When you read the above – what impression do you get? Well to start with – Gandhi, Nehru (and the Congress team) were a bunch of selfish people primarily responsible for Partition (and all the ills of that event, suffered by us till date). In turn, proclaiming Congress party as the villains of the Partition saga. In one stroke Jaswant Singh decimated the great work done by some of these past greats and freedom fighters. To be fair – Jaswant is not the first one to do that. There have been many in the last 60 years. Today one is forced to ask if they really were the heroes our forefathers have been telling us proudly about?
Take examples of some of our sporting heroes, primarily, Kapil Dev and Leander Paes. Rarely has India
Then again, there are so many incidents of our defense personnel giving “the ultimate” sacrifice in the line of duty and their Parents and dependents running from Pillar to post to get some well deserved (though meaningless) compensation. No compensation can ever fill the gap of a son/daughter and/or a Husband. Can it? Losing someone in the family, even in normal circumstances, is bloody painful – and for whatever worth sacrificing one’s life for the country is – our “great” administrators do not show even the basic desired sensibility to quickly handover the required compensation to the family members without making them go through all the harassment. Wah re India
It is really hard to fathom. I mean, how hard can it be to ensure that the honor of such few Heroes, that we have, is not tarnished with our unwarranted criticism? Do we really think it is helping our society? What service does it do to the nation? Being critical of someone, making allegations, raising doubts etc gets good press – no doubt about it. But it also brings one more hero “down” in this “hero-deprived” country of ours. We look up to heroes in other societies like they are super humans. We quote world personalities/leaders unabashedly in our talks (be it Churchill, Kennedy, Mohammad Ali, Martin Luther King, Foreign Philanthropists/ writers etc). However, when it comes to talking about our own heroes or quoting them – we have tails between our legs. We genuinely struggle. It’s the kind of bias that is borne primarily out of the fact that we, ourselves, don’t consider our own race/nationals as worthy of being taken seriously. There cannot be any other reason. Also, we are so self-obsessed as human beings that when we see anyone with greater success than us – we genuinely believe he/she must have done something wrong to be up there. Our conscious nature refuses to accept anyone as a champion/Hero. The result is, we end up maligning them and start believing anything and everything that is said against such individuals. We just don’t respect our own selves and our own country enough.
“Why are we so NEGATIVE? Another question: Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? We want foreign TVs. We want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported. Do we not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance? …You must proclaim. India
Only a sense of pride in our own selves will allow us to respect our own brethren. Is that so hard to do? The British ruled us because we never trusted our own countrymen and were too self obsessed in the pre-conceived notion that “I” am better than others. I don’t think we have changed much since then. Shivaji, Rani Laxmi Bai, Tagore, Bose, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Tilak, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Milkha Singh, PT Usha, Dhyanchand, Amitabh Bachchan, Jai Prakash Narayan, Atal Bihari, Manmohan Singh, Abdul Kalam etc have had exemplary life full of courage and integrity. However, in spite of them being Heroes in their own right and also in the eyes of scores (billions) of Indians – we leave no stone unturned to malign them at the first given opportunity. In fact thanks to our arrogance – we have not even bothered to know more about genuine champions of our own country. For example, how many of you know anything about Jai Prakash Narayan (JP) or Kamaraj for that matter? They are bloody heroes of our country. Did you know that? Read history. Read their profiles and you will know how huge an influence they have had on the history of this nation and how positively have they impacted the thought process and policy making in this country. You will find that (Irrespective of their political affiliations) they have managed to inspire billions of youngsters in the country to follow their path of social justice, “Lokniti”, education policy etc. They were inspirational and devoted their lives to the cause of betterment of the country. Tell me, how many of you know that K Kamaraj is still hailed for facilitating the spread of education to millions of the rural poor by introducing free education and free mid-day meals scheme in schools (during his tenure as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in 1957). He was the first one in the whole world to start this. Today it has been adapted even by UN. He was a Bharat Ratna. So was JP. But do we (amongst ourselves) talk about them as Heroes of this country? If these heroes are not talked about today – it is our fault really. Ignorance…pure ignorance
Alright, how many of us know about the greats who have been awarded Bharat Ratna. Bharat Ratna is the highest Civilian Award in our country (I am sure everyone knows that). How many know about Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna recipients? No one bothers about them and no one seems to be interested really. But for these great personalities to get Bharat Ratna or Khel Ratna is no mean achievement. You and I have not got it and given our attitude – we will never ever get it. Isn’t it then important that we respect these achievers and hail them as our heroes? Isn’t it time we found more about such Heroes (starting from list of distinguished Bharat Ratna and Khet Ratna recipients) and tell their stories to our kids to start with? Without any bias – if I may add? That would be a good beginning. Wouldn’t it?
A society without Heroes is a group walking in dark, without a light. You need such heroes in every society and in every generation. We do not need Ram, Krishna , and Buddha as our heroes. They are perhaps beyond that level. We need Heroes who are relevant to the current times. It is important to remember that every person will have their follies. These champions are hailed as heroes not necessarily because of who they are. They are our Heroes for what they have done in their lives to achieve immortality/greatness. Even Ram, Krishna and all the deities of world have had their follies (and I won’t get into that here). But we still consider them as Gods. Don’t we? So, it should not be so difficult for us to accept the current heroes with their own set of weaknesses. In fact such weakness or flaws in the Heroes make us believe even we can be like them if we tried. That should serve as inspiration really. Let us hence propagate all the good virtues that these champions of life embody. These genuine heroes have achieved such greatness after a lot of sacrifice. It is our responsibility to not to belittle those sacrifices with our horrendous attitude and undesirable assessments.
And to all those self-appointed, undesirable critics of society I say – leave my heroes alone and Shut the hell up.
Its Montoo..
(28th Sep 2009’ – 12th Oct 2009’)
