Icons

Madhubala

Icons


Technology, 24x 7 TV, the Internet and the access of the Information Age may have put paid to the age of icons. Most that still exist belong to an earlier time when beauty and pulchritude, magnetism and charisma, could evanescence slowly into public consciousness, like candlelight. But those days are long gone, cut down to size by the magnificence of demystifying push-button access.

Richard Linklater, American filmmaker, recently wrote in Blackbook Magazine of New York that, “An icon is someone who floats above the culture,” that spawns him or her. Linklater, who is completing a film on Orson Welles, wisely does not try to define the term. He describes it though, writing: “When you’re an icon, you’re not just a person—you’re a myth,” and, “The supremely talented have a way of upending expectations”.

India, in something of an existential crisis after just over six decades, clearly could do with new icons on its political firmament. The old ones, from legend, mythology, more recent history and the freedom movement, now seem anachronistic. And inducing their spark to fire our imaginations is not what it must have once been.

But since the age of iconography has irrevocably passed, it is hard to fill the perception of a leadership vacuum in the midst of a tumultuous democracy straining more than a little dangerously on a long leash of slack governance. The polity is behaving badly, frustrated perhaps for being a little lost.

No new icons of equivalent stature to the freedom fighters have sprung up since. Not even the children of midnight or thereabouts like Indira Gandhi who carried the political narrative forward to the relatively recent eighties. And though, she unarguably was, despite her despotic side, a staunch Indian patriot. But Indira Gandhi was also from the same drawer. She too was witness to the freedom movement led by the Mahatma, like many of her colleagues, her legendary father, and all the other stalwarts from her father’s and grandfather’s time.

And during, as well as after her time, we have had several able leaders and functionaries, all contributors to the crucial business of nation building. But any among them that were indeed iconic, men such as Jayaprakash Narayan and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, also came from that earlier era. There was, at the expense of sounding revisionist, a sense of mission and greater purpose that animated all these leaders which created an image that enabled them to rise and float above the culture they led.

Rajiv Gandhi, our youngest prime minister to date, had a worthwhile vision too, but, as it turned out, was persuaded too often against his better judgement by cynical vested interests. The disinterested stance of independence era leaders, conscious of the necessity for sacrifice, was also given short shrift by the Gucci wearing, Mercedes driving, young prime minister.

But he might have still achieved iconic status had he lived longer because the late eighties were still not swamped by technology. Perhaps the uncharismatic but erudite Narasimha Rao, his successor, was able to see through, what might have been at least partially Rajiv Gandhi’s vision. And perhaps his success owed itself to over three decades of experience in the governmental labyrinth and much greater maturity of years.

But the transactional style, antithetical to iconic governance, had well and truly entrenched itself by Rao’s tenure, symbolised by pictures and lengthy commentary on entire suitcase-fulls of cash being delivered hither and thither to shore up his government.

But were the old icons benefited because of the stimulus of struggling against a mighty foreign colonial power? And those from the era of kings and emperors and epics of yore presumably lived with entirely loftier terms of reference. But who knows? Icons are a little “unknowable” says Linklater. He calls them perpetual “works in progress” .

But is this all dead aspiration now? Our current leaders seem to have little time for the enunciation of a beneficial vision several sizes larger than themselves. Instead politics has become a sum total of manoeuvres in the name of strategy and wily tactics in the pursuit of pelf, power, perpetuation.

What has come in place of stature acquired through good work and slow release exposure is noisome promotion, publicity and manufactured hype, pumped up considerably as budgets and technology and communication vehicles have improved from the early radio days of the republic.

Perhaps Indian politics itself has diminished in stature as a consequence of relentless exposure warts and all. Besides, those capable of assuming legendary proportions are no longer in it. They are found now on the cricket field, in the movies, in literature, amongst the more reclusive of businessmen, where the unknowable aspects of iconography can still operate. So we do have living legends like Ratan Tata, Amitabh Bachchan, Sachin Tendulkar and Salman Rushdie.

This shrinkage of political stature has been affecting us in a particularly adverse manner for quite some time. Largely unchecked, the corruption is much grown, the dereliction of duty more shocking, and the flouting of constitutional norms more routine. There is a dangerous emphasis on regional issues over the national interest that is beginning, in a serious way, to challenge the very idea of India. And this, at a time when there are grave external and internal security threats as well.

But to be fair, it is certain our current leaders are definitely grappling with a level of complexity and aspiration unknown in the early decades after independence. The information flow is intense, with over 90 day and night news channels on TV and hundreds of newspapers, magazines and online sites. It is difficult to be a hero in the glare of such unrelenting and familiar scrutiny.

The same shortness of shelf-life applies today to celebrity and stardom too. So quelle chance netagiri?

Let us realise there will be no more new Mahatmas and Subhas Chandra Boses. No new Madhubalas, no more Nargises, no triumvirate of Dharam, Vinod and Dilip. No new Raj Kapoor or Dev Anand. Ram Rajya itself would have to be reevaluated for relevance.

It is not easy to float above a culture morphing into the benefits of Space Age technology at ever increasing speeds. But the minimum requirement of netagiri, that of disinterested service to the nation, is still impervious to the ravages of technology.

(1,048 words)

12th November 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Published as Op-Ed Page Leader in The Pioneer under the title "Looking for new icons" on November 19th, 2009. Also published online at www.dailypioneer.com and archived there under Columnists.