The dangers of idolatrous thinking

Two events in recent times brought to my mind a  characteristic of human thinking that needs examination. The media hype and mass hysteria surrounding the death of Michael Jackson was, to put it mildly, a case of overdose. It was said  that MJ was an ‘icon’, a world class performer and had a magnetic stage presence. Yet I felt the reaction to his death was overdone — to such an extent that one woman went on television to ask if Americans had even obliquely noted that her  soldier  son had been killed in Iraq  on the day MJ died.  A senator asked if  the country had forgotten MJ’s alleged  unsavory deeds.

The other instance is that of Mayawati who brazenly announced that several hundreds of crores of rupees that could help alleviate the many crises  that her state faces will go to install hundreds of statues of  the Dr. Ambedkar, Sri Kanshi Ram and Mayawati herself!

Let me begin by examining Mayawati’s action. In a larger sense what she is practicing  what sociologist MN Srinivas termed ‘sanskritisation’  in which  people of the ‘lower castes’ attempt to imitate the ‘upper castes’ whenever they move up the socio-economic-political  ladder. Thus Mayawati is doing what is essentially  Brahminical — idolization, in this case  herself.

After all a unique feature of Hinduism is the idolization of God or anyone perceived to have  ‘attained’ God or exhibited exemplary qualities associated with divinity. Thus there are any number of idols to what are essentially human beings in almost any Hindu temple.

My observation about idolatrous thinking is as follows: This line of thinking can and almost always does lead to cult formation, hero worship, personality cult,  to people surrendering their own ability and right to think for themselves. Just look at India’s political parties. In most parties the leader is idolized to such an extent that there is no second line of leadership outside  the ruling family, there is no inner party democracy, no fresh ideas emerge over decades.  The difference between most of these leaders and the ‘Dear Leader’ of North Korea is marginal.

This goes to extreme  lengths when roads, bridges, stations, airports, are named after these cult leaders. I find it difficult to name a single city where there are ONLY three structures named after say Rajeev Gandhi.

In a recent  discussion in a US paper about the prospects of India emerging as a superpower, an analyst pointed out that the hierarchical nature of Indian society and institutions  prevents creativity and no country that merely copies what others have discovered or invented can ever  become a superpower. Our idolatrous thinking in relation to those perceived as ‘higher’ than us  prevents free thinking and therefore stifles creativity.

Those ‘higher’ than us includes parents, teachers, ministers; those ‘higher’ than us in the office hierarchy; those  ‘higher’ in the caste system; those richer than us; those who dress better than us; those who are better looking than us and those whose skin is ‘fairer’ than ours.

In one survey conducted by a Mumbai tabloid it was revealed that people living in the tony localities of south Mumbai  considered people living in modest suburbs to be ‘genetically inferior’! The list of ‘ higher’ people who need to be therefore idolized ensures that most of us end up with an inferiority complex.

I may add that the US also exhibits some form of idolatrous thinking in the tendency to make larger than life heroes of its achievers.  Many readers may know that Thomas Alva Edison is rated the greatest inventor of all time — he has the largest number of patents to  his  credit. But few may know that Edison was more a leader, a motivator than an inventor.  The credit for his inventions ought to go to the many scientists who toiled in his laboratory at New Jersey. That has not happened and in typical Hollywood fashion, it is Edison who emerges as a ‘sole’ hero.

This is also the case with the many corporate heroes one reads about in business books. The CEO gets almost all the credit though it is always  team work that lifts a company to great heights — this is something that American business books will admit in their more sober moments.

The excessive television coverage of US presidents can be disconcerting. Television stations will tell  you which restaurant Obama went to, which dress Michelle Obama  wore, and  even what the White House dog had for breakfast! Not unlike the bad old days in India when Doordarshan, the only TV channel at that time, seemed to have its cameras attached to ministers’ behinds  trailing them everywhere bar the bar and the washroom.

A paradox in all this is that in India  atheists indulge in more of idolization than the devout Hindu. Thus the DMK that officially is a party which upholds atheism and ‘rational’ thinking is among the most idolatrous and irrational of political parties in India. They have set up more statues in Tamilnadu than even the RSS or VHP  would have done if they had come into power! The manner in which their top leadership, the ruling family, is treated with obeisance with people falling at their feet, is more reminiscent of the much reviled (by the DMK)  Brahmin touching the feet of ‘saints’. Jayalalitha carries this idolization to great horizontal lengths  when even her cabinet colleagues (when she was the Chief Minister) were mandated to prostrate at her feet at the start of every cabinet meeting.

It  is no surprise that  in the Tamil film world, we see the worst kind of idolization — after all politics and films are closely intertwined in that state. Bollywood has its own watered down version of idolization. Just Ask Amitabh !

Outside of politics one can see idolatrous  thinking and behaviour in religion and business. I have seen at a Mumbai meeting many people idolizing and literally worshipping Dhirubhai Ambani. The  man would ‘bless’  prostrate people sometimes without  even looking at them. He would talk to someone else perhaps striking a  lucrative deal,  even as he waved his ‘divine’ hands  over the supplicant! I imagined the possibility that that deal may have been at the expense of the man pitifully lying at Dhirubhai’s ‘lotus feet’.

In religion, essentially  in Hinduism, one sees the power wielded by gurujis and matajis. I have seen respected scientists suspending their scientific thinking  when talking about their favourite guruji. One  ‘scientist’ told me that she had seen one of India’s most popular babas make the sun rise in the west! The many miracles attributed to these gurujis and  blindly believed by masses of idolatrous people attest to the dangers that befall us when we allow idolatrous thinking to jettison even common sense. What does Indian society need urgently?
ICONOCLASTS!