Indian Idol

Thursday, 12 June 2008 21:21

Written by Anshul

A treacherous newspaper editor, whose commitment to his home state of Maharashtra was always in doubt, was attacked last week at his home by fellow Maharashtrians. "His windows were broken, his doorway was tarred and stones were hurled into his rooms." Reading about it gave one a warm feeling.

That was how the Mainstream Media described the attack on Kumar K, the editor of Loksatta.The fact is that these MSM don't know what importance a statue holds for us Indians. We Indians are Statue and Idol worshipers, be they be the Hindu's , the Indian Muslim or an Indian Christian, in some way or the other every one of us believes in Idols and we worship them. It doesnt matter to us if they are living or dead. So long the statues are there for pigeons, crows and other assorted birds to shit on, we are happy.

Kumar K foolishly wrote that the glory of Maharashtra cannot be achieved by the proposed plan to build an expensive 309-foot tall statue of Shivaji in the Arabian Sea. Instead, the rather insane editor wrote, the government should provide jobs and alleviate farmers' misery. How silly of him to even think about it. He deserved what he got and deserves more in fact. He apparently forgot that Shivaji stood for "Marathi Asmita" and anything associated with Shivaji should be supported. The 309 feet tall statue would do wonder's to a Maharashtra which is facing grave identity crisis. Today a "Marathi Manoos" is in danger of loosing his identity to "Bimari's from Bihar" and that this statue would do more to Marathi pride than a thousand schools in the name of Shivaji to provide Goebbelsian education or renovation of decaying forts around the western ghats. Who cares if the forts fall down? The builder mafia could then sell the area available to rich playboys who have cricket teams and F1 teams at a fancy price. There is no dearth of such rich idiots who dont know what to do with their money fleeced from the sheeple.

The poor uninformed, western educated Kumar K did not know that for us Indians statues are holy cows to be worshiped. We show respect to our loving leaders by the height and number of statues created in their memories. He forgot how two years ago a drunkard committed the cardinal sin of 'defacing' a statue of B.R. Ambedkar in Kanpur.Within hours, in faraway Maharashtra enraged Dalit groups killed three, torched two trains and created such mayhem across the state that about 100 were injured in police firing. Their only regret was that the police, quite unusually came too soon and spoilt their plans of butchering at least 100. A century is a century be it on the cricket field or anywhere else.

Statues for us are a remembrance of our leaders, a way to keep their ideology alive irrespective of what the ideology may be.. A statue is a simple measure of how much that ideology has spread. Today across UP when Ambedkar's statues are accompanied by Kanshiram's statues, it shows the influence of the Dalit boy from Punjab in Dalit politics and now when Mayawati inaugurates her own statues in Lucknow and other parts of UP, she is laying the foundations of the idea of erecting temples hitherto done only by "smart'" Tamils for actors and actresses .For what greater honour could be accorded than a temple to be worshiped by God himself, similarly what more greater honour for a statue can be accorded than to be inaugurated by its living counterpart's activists?? If caste Hindus can create gigantic temples then why should the BSP too not build its own rival pantheon by building statues and placing their Gods there? After all its a free country and the construction of statues and gigantic temples provides work to many idle masons, architects and suppliers of illegal river sand and stones from illegal quarries located in Govt land. Nobody is getting killed. Its only natural resources, resorcefully utilised!!

In competitive politics, to weld and unite a party together, to create motivation, you need a statue as a unifying symbol. This culture started from Dravidian politics where the famous cut-outs of Annadurai, Karunanidhi, M.G.Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu were examples of Tamil political hero-worship. Today in Delhi giant advertisements proclaim the 'greatness' of a leader. 'Greatness' measured not by any oratory or achievement but simply by the size of the cut-out and the size of the statue and of course the locations in traffic-choked roads and beach beautifying samadhis. You can even hear MGR's wrist watch ticking away at his samadhi. When Amma comes to power she wants to X-Ray the samadhi to get the secret Swiss bank a/c number engraved on the back of the wrist watch!!

The statue transforms an ordinary mortal into an extraordinary God, that is to convert Shivaji or Gandhi or Ambedkar into an unquestionable divinity , it friezes them in our mind, just like how we don't debate about God we also cannot debate and talk about our "leaders". For them they represent immorality and other such qualities and if you debate about them you commit blasphemy, ad will reap what that idiot Kumar K received.

We may live in a free country, proudly proclaim our caste or regional identity reap the benefit of democracy so what are a mere 100 crores for statues, in memory of men and women who motivated us to perform this impossible task. Our fellow brethrens who wait for that chappati, blanket or the medicines can visit these statues and temples and get prasadam which could cure them of their various ailments such as poverty, hunger and other ills that plague them. For us Indians the dead are more important than the living.