Insecure Leaders

Yakshi in Pinterest

In his book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins argues that nationalism, religious bigotry, and other forms of zealotry are often the result of insecurity, a lack of self-confidence, or a deep-seated fear of insignificance. Quite many of today’s world leaders, who are all extremely and unwarrantedly belligerent, reminded me of Dawkins though I’m no fan of the man’s scientific extremism.

Dawkins is only one among many thinkers who expressed similar ideas, however. Eric Hoffer says in The True Believer that mass movements, including religious and nationalist ones, attract individuals who seek to escape their own personal failures or anxieties by identifying with a larger cause.

There are too many people suffering from personal insecurities in today’s world, it appears. There’s so much nationalism and even more unhealthy religious fervour. In India, both nationalism and religion have got mixed into a lethal concoction.

Many Indian newspapers of today have given prominent coverage to the “self-deportation” of Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian student at Columbia University. She had shown her support to Palestine in a demonstration. Hence the Trump administration told her that it was a “privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the USA. When you advocate for violence and terrorism, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country.”

Another Columbia University student, Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian from West Bank, was arrested by US immigration officials for his role in leading campus protests against Israel.

Why do people like Trump fear protestors so much? Why do they feel so insecure?

Let me digress a little from the topic of psychological insecurities to ask a question: Why should anyone defend Israel anymore? Israel, founded by a people who were victimised by Nazism, has now become an inhuman victimiser. It has been perpetrating genocide in Palestine for quite some time now. Why is the liberal “gentile” West of Trump & Co defending a heartless settler-colonialist supremacist regime?

I’m reminded of an old Malayalam novel by Malayattoor Ramakrishnan [1927-1997]. Yakshi, the novel, was published in 1967 and was made into a movie by the same title the next year, and another movie in 2011 (Akam). In Kerala’s tradition, Yakshi is a female vampire who is driven by vindictiveness against men. What a Yakshi does usually is to seduce men in the middle of the night and then kill them brutally. Some Yakshis have passionate sex with the men before sucking their blood altogether.

In Malayattoor’s novel, however, the protagonist is transmuting an innocent, beautiful, young woman into a Yakshi because of his own insecurities. Srinivasan, the protagonist, is scarred badly on his face by an accident in the chemistry lab of the college where he is a lecturer. The scar gifts him too many insecurities. When his fiancée leaves him because of the scar, his psychological problems become more complex. Then, unexpectedly, a beautiful, young Ragini enters his life. She loves him. The scar is immaterial to her.

Srinivasan now realises that he has been rendered sexually impotent by his feelings of insecurity. In order to conceal his own acute insecurities, he projects Ragini as a Yakshi. Ragini has been cursed to live on earth by the Queen of Yakshidom, according to Srinivasan’s new narrative. She can acquire release from the curse only by draining Srinivasan’s blood. But she falls so deeply in love with Srinivasan that she is incapable of killing him. That is the narrative constructed by Srinivasan. In the end, Ragini becomes a tragic victim of Srinivasan’s falsehood and delusions.

Is the world today becoming a victim of the falsehood and delusions of a few individuals who claim to be world’s leaders but are actually men with fragile male egos? Aren’t many of the leaders driven by personal vulnerabilities rather than by any leadership qualities? Don’t their responses and reactions reveal basic internal fear, self-doubt, and paranoia?

Would a genuine leader resort to authoritarianism instead of standing up to genuine criticism? Why would a genuine leader resort to exaggerated displays of strength or hyper-nationalism? No good leader would ever require the constant support of sycophants. Manipulation of narratives, engaging in aggressive policies, and cracking down on dissent, all reveal too many chinks in the armour.

We, the ordinary people, deserve much better leaders than the ones we have, ones who transmute innocent and loving Raginis into their Yakshis. 

Yakshi as imagined by ChatGPT

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