The Great Indian Icons

Napolean Bonaparte

It is said a nation without heroes is a sad place to live in. Every nation needs its heroes to move on. It is also said no man is a hero to his wife. Certainly Napoleon Bonaparte was no hero to his wife Josephine. We also have this famous saying behind every successful man there is a woman.

In the contemporary India we have our own celebrity heroes worshiped by the masses for reasons unknown and difficult to analyze. We forget all great heroes have feet of clay. Our adulation for them is unadulterated. We are blind to their faults. It reminds me of wholesale admiration of Adolf Hitler by the German People for nearly two decades. He was hero-worshiped not only by the ordinary people, but even by the intelligentsia.

I wish to closely examine some of our contemporary heroes. The first mega hero in present day India is Amitabh Bachchan pushing at 64. After a decade if Film critics try to evaluate his corpus for extraordinary movies, they will be disappointed. Today, we remember Gurudutt for Pyaasa and Sahib bibi aur Ghulam"

Guru Dutt

and he was a talented actor-director, who died at 39. Such thespians as Dilip Kumar, Rajesh Khanna, Sanjeev Kumar and Raj Kumar have many good films to their credit. Amitabh Bhachchan has acted in few good films directed by well known directors like Hrishikesh Mukherjee, where the lime light has been stolen by his adversaries like Rajesh Khanna. In "Anand" and "Namak Haram" it is Rajesh Khanna who outshines Bachchan. In "Abhiman" Bachchan's wife Jaya outsmarts him. Rajesh Khanna a rival of Bachchan gave a exemplary performance in "Aradhana", "Amar Prem" and "Bawarchi". Amitabh went on to act in action-packed films playing the role of an angry young man in such films as "ZanZeer", "Deewar", "Don" and "Shenshah", all eminently forgettable films.

Amitabh Bhachchan was always obsessed with charging very high amounts of money from the producers and was always satisfied with the fame earned by having box office hits. The urge to act in good films directed by good directors was totally absent during the whole of his career. Many decades ago, Conard Rooks came to India with the intention of casting Amitabh Bhachchan in the lead role of "Siddhartha". He could not meet the great actor even for 10 minutes as he was busy. We are told he left Amitabh's office completely frustrated and commented to the press, 'Amitabh is not an actor, he is an industry'. Of course, the role went to Shashi Kapoor and the rest is history. Amitabh Bachchan is son of a well known Hindi Poet, Harvanshrai Bachchan and belongs to an elite and sophisticated Delhi family, who went to a prestigious school called Sherwood at Nainital. Such an educated person lacks artistic discrimination and he could have produced some great movies of lasting values. He is allegedly obsessed with more with his personal fortunes than with achieving artistic immortality. There is no doubt he is talented, but it has been frittered away in third rate bollywood creations. But the millions of Indians adore him oblivious to the fact he is just an underachiever and a mediocrity.

In the late 70's and early 80's a star was born in the literary fermament of India called Vikram Seth. He became focus of the media attention when he recieved 2.2 crores as royalty for his novel "Suitable Boy". His earlier collection of poems called "Golden Gate" written in blank verse and which had won a prestigious prize was not remembered in India, where only money counts. Vikram Seth in the tradition of western writers shuns publicity. But, our own the great literary star Arundhati Roy literally lives on publicity. She came much later on the literary scene with her novel "God of Small Things", which won Booker Prize and catapulted her to international fame. The very fact even after a decade she has not come out with another novel to match the earlier one, it shows she is a one-novel novelist. Perhaps
a flash in the pan. This novel does not have a round characters and they are flat. The novel appealed to the western imagination, because of its exaggerated Indianisms. It looks as if this autobiographical novel has exhausted all her talent. Now, she was a hero without a cause. So she went looking for a cause, but unfortunately all of them had been taken up by others. Anyway, she joined the band wagon of Medha Patkar, who was sincerely fighting for the tribals and was opposing the Narmada Dam. The opposition to a huge dam is a popular issue amongst the international intellegentsia. Arundhati Roy initially stole the lime light from Medha Patkar and wrote articles and gave lectures in western countries accomploshing a great deal of personal publicity. Her brush with Indian Judiciary also gave her a lot of publicity and her refusal to court arrest removed the wind out of her sail. Her latest book defending the terrorist attack on the parliament is nothing but a demonstration of perverse logic. One must remain anti-establishment but should we go to the extent of defending these extremists who wanted to blow up the very seat of democracy. They also killed a dozen Indian citizens. They had been sent by Pakistan, where democracy does not exist even in their dictionaries. While championing unpopular causes should we also our reason and logic. No self respecting American intellectual would praise the destruction of World Trade Centre or a portion of Pentagon by the terrorists on 11, september 2000. Even Chomsky, who criticises America's Foreign policy will not be defending Osama-bin-laden's terrorists. But, alas our Arundhati Roy wants to prove she is a greater intellectual than Noam Chomsky.


The third most popular Indian icon happens to be Sachin Tendulkar. He was son of a well known Marathi critic, who at one time presented a paper on Marathi Literature at Cambridge. Though Sachin hails from a family of intellectuals, he has remained only a school graduate. At a very young age, he made his mark as an extraordinary batsmen on par with Don Bradman. Every one knows Bradman's rich career was interrupted by the second world war. Otherwise, Bradman's record would have been phenomenal. Sachin Tendulkar lives in an age of one-day cricket matches and day and night cricket test matches taking place throughout the year and telecast globally. The Cricket matches are staged in different countries, which gives our sachin plenty of opportunities to improve his personal record. It is alleged that he doesn't play for the country, but plays for himself. The personal earnings of cricketers today is in the realm of crores of rupees per year. They are extremely well paid by the cricket board of India. During the recent visit to South Africa, the Indian cricketers were not wearing formal dress, in other words a blazer with National Colours. They were all shabbily dressed and when asked about it they informed the press that the Tailor had not delivered their blazers before their departure. At least 80% of the cricket team is filled with veterans, who must be having a dozen blazers at home. It is sad to see how nation's honour is less important to them than personal aggrendizement. Sachin Tendulkar earns crores of rupees from sponsoring and advertising all kinds of products. We are yet to see him taking up any charitable activity to help the poor in India. But the massess adore him unabashedly.

The fourth Indian icon is inimitable Aishwarya Rai, the former beauty queen. She won this title some 12 years ago and she wanted to prove to the world that she was not a mere dumb blonde. So she decided to become an actress in Bollywood, where no one makes much demand on acting talent, that is if you are good looking. she has moved from one film to another film, where she only smiles and smiles and smiles... With this remarkable acting talent she has impressed millions of viewers. Her engagement to Amitabh Bachchan's son Abhishek Bachchan has stolen the lime light. Abhishek Bachchan has not been a very succesful actor. Any way the astrologers have forewarned the Bachchans about the mangala dosha in Aishwarya Rai's horrorscope alias horoscope. Hence the beautiful bimbo, it is believed was recently married off to a banana plant, of course to avoid any unpleasant mishaps after the marriage. This actress, who hails from Karnataka and has failed to identify herself with the state or language is going to be invited as one of the Chief Guests for the world kannada literary conference at Belgaum. We are told that the local big wigs are vying with each other to play host to her. Her's is a remarkable career, which goes to prove the point in India you can become rich and famous, even if you are not very talented. In other countries beautiful men and women without talent pass off for famous models nothing more and nothing less. Some of the great models of America could not make it to hollywood as they were short on talent. But in Bollywood anything goes.

The heroes in the West, like Richard Gere demonstrate their passion for noble causes like free tibet and fighting HIV. Sophia Lauren and Audrey Hepburn were UNESCO ambassadors for deprived children. The famous personalities in the west feel that they must do something for the less privileged. But unfortunately the great Indian icons seem to lack a conscience. They live in great luxury and they are obsessed with themselves. The greater society out side their narrow lives does not exist for them. They are not preapared to make any sacrifices for their millions of fans. They will not spare their time nor their money. The lone exception seems to be the former Indian cricket captain Kapil Dev. All their education and family background and their cultural moorings do not seem to take them in the right direction. A nation needs heroes, but one should be lucky to get a genuinely humane hero.