Are Heroes Dead?

A question that has been haunting me for quite some time is whether heroism is as dead as the dodo especially in India. Heroes died quite a while ago in literature. Writers replaced them with ‘protagonists’. Protagonists are entitled to their peccadillos while heroes are not expected to have even a toe of clay. Not only Caesar but even his wife should be above suspicion.

 

Gauri Lankesh

Heroes must possess certain qualities. They must be brave, first of all. Gauri Lankesh was brave enough to question the atrocities of the mighty and the powerful. She paid for her bravery with her life. She couldn’t have been braver than that, of course. There have been others too like her: M M Kalburgi, for example; killed again for the same crime. A few like Sanjiv Bhatt IPS will spend their lifetime in prison.

 

Sanjiv Bhatt

Bravery is not enough to make heroes, however. Villains are brave too. Heroes are guided by an exemplary moral code in their personal life. They have very clear ideas about what is right and what is wrong, and they do what they believe is right irrespective of the consequences. Arundhati Roy is a hero by this criterion as well as the above one. She has displayed a tremendous lot of courage too.

Readiness to sacrifice their own personal interests for the sake of the greater good is another vital quality of heroes. Self-sacrifice has become outdated, it looks like.

I was gladdened by the news report that 49 eminent personalities of India have written an open letter to PM Modi expressing their anguish about the various evils that are swallowing the country these days. Even though heroes have vanished apparently, we have some intellectuals still left with us. Thank heavens for that.

Our leaders know, however, that intellectuals are as innocuous as the lily of a day that is fairer far in May. They may be brave enough to write an open letter sitting in the security of their posh homes or offices.  They may even possess a fairly remarkable morality. But self-sacrifice? As long as that is missing, bravery and morality will only limp and lisp.

When the British Empire decided to give independence to India, Winston Churchill made a very uncomfortable prediction that the enormous landmass called India with its infinite diversity would ‘fall back into the barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages.’ The monster of communalism which ravaged most parts of North India for months that preceded and followed 15 August 1947 proved Churchill right. More than seven decades after that prediction and what ensued it, the monster continues to rule India. The country does not even have protagonists to resist that monster, let alone heroes.