Our Obsession to Individual Worship

" The chief architect of Indian freedom was Gandhi; the chief architect of Indian democracy, Jawaharlal Nehru. "

Quoted from a recent article by noted historian Mr. Ramachandra Guha that appeared in Hindustan Times.

Our Violent Streak

We might go places, get great education but our prejudices, our disease like habits are so deeply rooted in our souls that we cannot get rid of them ever. Every now and then we try to cover them up with some signals of pseudo secularity, outrages against those who do not respond to you and similar such behaviors.

After reading the article by noted historian Ramachandra Guha, I could obviously smell the same stink that we most Indians are having so much difficulty in getting rid of.

Gandhi got us freedom. Nehru built the democracy. This is nothing but another sign of idolization and tending to attribute achievements to individual and not collectives. This is being seen day in and day out in every phase of our lives including cricket, business and so on. This reflectes in our obsession to Tendulkar, our obsession to Abdul Kalam and our obsession to Narayana Murthy. I respect them from the bottom of my heart but what I dislike is our fixation on them and them only. This is exactly what I perceive in this article by Ramachandra Guha.

What an utter insult to the folks other than Gandhi in this article. They (Bose, Bhagat Singh) might have craved for blood. But today, their pictures are in every household not because they craved for blood but because they gave their lives up may be thinking that even this step will help achieve freedom. They might have been misled, violence oriented but I am anguished whenever I see an attempt to downplay the efforts of others in the freedom struggle whether violence oriented or non-violence oriented. Whether the paths were right or wrong may never have decisive conclusions but an attempt to show them as useless in comparison to Gandhi/Nehru smacks of idolism and individual worship.

And this is when people (atleast me) sense the pseudo knowledge of noted historians and realize that prejudices are deep rooted in them and their articles reflect so. And in their articles they start bringing in everything possible as disparate as Goddess Kali or spicy south indian food or fish in the Bengali food to support their argument.

To finish, this article as I felt is not an articulate or practical analysis but an outburst of a prejudiced thought process.