The travails of the modern icon (Debate around the Indian quartet - Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Bose)

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The travails of the modern icon (Debate around the Indian quartet - Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Bose)

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• Four great Indian icons: Each of the four leading figures of freedom struggle - Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru, Netaji Bose and Sardar Patel - followed a different narrative. Each was an icon in his own mould, and history's evolution is treating each in its own way. This great quartet (group of four) was such a giant, that any other party can never hope to equal it ever.
• Importance of icons: Icons are crucial to human society, as they capture memory and heritage. Each locality builds its own heroes, and stories. Hero for one can be villain for another. The great Shivaji was a liberator for Maharashtrians, but south Indians weren't too happy ("sleep child, else Shivaji will come"). This is plurality giving each location its own iconography. Folklore is created.
• Mass culture and state propaganda: While folklore has joy, mass culture has frenzy and hysteria. History can be rewritten. An example - Maharana Pratap and the Battle of Haldighati. Populist modern memory may simply change history through its hyperbole.
• The style of Stalin: He simply converted heroes of Bolshevism (his direct competitors) into non-entities! He erased them.
• Talking of the Indian quartet: Each of these has experienced the travails of the modern icon.

1. Mahatma Gandhi - He was the hero of everyone! Indian officialdom built a saint, a one-sided hero, and no experimental politician at all. He was restricted to textbooks, and all his uncomfortable questions forgotten! His quotations became cliches. He is being  awakened as the 150th anniversary arrives in 2019, for political gains. Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan (SBA) is a mere governance model, without any of the ethical aspects of Gandhiji. Proof? Manual scavenging continues till date.
2. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose - He was erased initially, and then was revived. His mystique was built from 
1. the Azad Hind Fauj (INA), a counter to Bapu's satyagraha style, and 
2. his mysterious disappearance that was exploited by every opportunistic politician. So the myth around "what if Bose had lived" grew stronger. PM Modi is using that to the fullest, through several moves, primarily to erase the Nehruvian legacy.
3. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru - After the 1962 war, everyone hit out at him! He was turned into a "pandora's box of errors". Every attempt is made to belittle and insult him, but he does not die. He was a moderniser with a still-relevant appeal, and built institutions that have lasted. AB Vajpayee tried giving a Nehruvian touch to his own style! His sheer survival till date is the biggest proof that instead of  violent attacks, silent analysis would have been better.

• Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel: The BJP has tried appropriating him saying that he was ignored, but in reality he was larger-than-live in folklore. He is now projected as the real paradigm of India's future. The gigantic statue is an effort to not rewrite history, but use statistical numbers to enter public memory. But Shivaji's statue will replace its stature as the tallest, soon.
• The problem with it: Exaggerated spectacles do not correct historical injustices. Ideological frenzy created by such acts ends up "celebrating the regime and not the icon himself". It is diversionary and is a disguise for narcissism.
• The quartet: All four great icons knew the limits of power and history. Their professionalism and academic scholarship was huge, and it's all gone now!
• Summary : The great Indian quartet of Gandhi, Nehru, Bose and Patel are being re-engineered to suit the needs of the time, but that experiment is leading to undesirable and comical consequences.

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