For almost a century, India has been witnessing recurring periods of ‘hero worship’. Gandhi, Nehru, Indira, Ambedkar, and now our current PM Mr. Modi, our masses elevate leaders to a status where they can do no wrong and are worthy of adulation bordering on devotion.

The obvious question in the mind of a neutral observer would be – why this sort of hero worship? Do the objects of such hero worship actually qualify to be labelled so?

To get a clear answer, we need to understand the concept of a ‘Hero’. Let us dive deep into this subject, using some ideas found in Western and Indian philosophy and texts.

The concept of a hero

Human beings are essentially a race of worshippers. Worship of the divine preceedes the time when the human race became civilised. Believers worship gods both manifest or formless; along with nature, the cosmos, the sun, moon, and planets.
Besides the one all powerful God of Abrahamics or multiple gods handling different aspects of the pagans, humans also worship their heroes, which in a simple way can be defined as a mortal human who rose to such heights that others started revering him. He led by example, he showed the way, he changed the course of history. He became a cult figure; his words of wisdom and his commands began to be considered similar to those of God. Though rationalists and atheists do not believe in or worship God, they too have a known history of hero worship.

In Hinduism, there exists the concept of Avataras, where God takes a human form from time to time; corrects the wrongs in society, establishes Dharma, and lays the path forward. West Asia has a concept of prophets such as Jesus, Moses, and Mohammad.
However, hero worship is not restricted to the Divine Hero. Divine ones comprise a small subset of all heroes.

Hero worship has always been there – from the time humans began to record history, right to the present era.
In India, we tend to write the word ‘Great’ before any historical figure without realising that the epithet has to be used sparingly and judiciously. The occurrence of Great Men or Heroes is not a frequent phenomenon. Bertrand Russell pointed out that no genius appeared between the period of Archimedes and Leonardo da Vinci in the field of experimental science. As per Kroeber, England did not produce a single genius between 1450 and 1550.

Who, then, is a hero?

First we have to understand who is a hero, and why he is important for the society, class, country and humanity.

The translation of the verse from The Bhagwat Gita written below is perhaps the most profound definition of a hero:

“Whatever action a great man performs, the common man follows; and whatever standards he sets by exemplary acts, all the world pursues.” (Bhagwat Gita 3.21)

Hence the ‘Hero’ or the ‘Great Man’ leads from the front, creates benchmarks for others including the coming generations; and the others follow what he does. When the society as a whole walks on the footsteps of the hero, it paves the way for the making of a new epoch.

The greatest Hindu Epic ‘Ramayana’ was written by Maharishi Valmiki after he met Rishi Narada and enquired about a man with godly qualities. The answer was Shree Rama, a hero who embodied divinity. Gods of the Hindu patheon take avatara, meaning they descend to the realm of the mortals, and lay the path for humanity to follow in the form of a hero.
Heroes were men of action. As Shree Krishna Himself explains in the Srimad Bhagvata MahaPurana:

“Real heroes do not talk much, rather show their prowess in action.”

Western scholars have also put a lot of effort into understanding the features, characteristics and qualities of the hero and the concept of hero worship. Thomas Carlyle in his ‘Heroes and Hero Worship’ defines the hero thus:

“They were the leaders of men, the great ones, the modellers of patterns, and in the wider sense creators of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do to others.”

In fact, Carlyle was of the opinion that world history is nothing but the biography of great men. Every social epoch is known by the heroes and great men it has produced and the revolutions brought about by them. Chandragupta Maurya under the guidance of Kautilya demolished and uprooted the Nandas and sowed the seed of the great Mauryan dynasty. Great men when in power have crushed revolts, such as the boy king Richard II who put an end to the great peasant uprising in England.

Carlyle categorised the hero in six different types:

1. The hero as Divinity
2. The hero as Prophet
3. The hero as Priest
4. The hero as a Poet
5. The hero as a Man of Letters; and
6. The hero as a King

He described the hero as a king and called it the most important of all the types, practically a summary of all the various figures of heroism.

Sydney Hook in his ‘Hero in History’ states:

“The history of a nation is represented to youth in terms of the exploits of the great individuals – mythical or real. In some ancient cultures, the hero was glorified as the father of the nation, like Abraham by the Israelites, or as the founder of the state, like Romulus by the Romans.”

He further goes on to write that:

“The heroes of an epoch must therefore be recognised as its clear-sighted ones – their deeds, and their words are the best of that time.”

The Emergence of the hero

Various scholars have presented their views on what makes the hero appear. Is there any historical, sociological, anthropological, biological reason; or is the appearance of a hero a mere accident?

The Hegelian thought about the hero is that the great man is not the product of material conditions, social or biological, but primarily an expression of “the spirit” of his times or “the soul” of his culture. Every age has its own spirit, which is represented by the prominent individuals of the age. These individuals fulfill the will of the world spirit by unfolding the spirit of their age. Thus, as per Hegel, the hero is nothing but the collective conscience of his society. As per this view, the greatness of any individual is apparent only after the event, when the consequences of what he has done become clear.
Another aspect of the Hegelian interpretation of the hero is that great men do not make history, rather, are evoked by “great times”. Great times are those transitional periods when mankind rises from one level of freedom to another.

Bukharin also held a similar view as that of Hegel. He was of the view that the hero is generated by the common consciousness awakened in the heart of the majority of the members of the society.
Bukharin describes the individual as ‘a collection of social influences held together in small units’.

Herbert Spencer’s position on the great man is that he is the outcome of his antecedents:

‘No Cause No Effect‘

In other words, he arrives at his conviction about the historical importance of the great men not by an empirical canvas of world history, but by a simple deduction from his theory of social evolution.

Trotesky also seems to have a similar opinion over the ‘rise of the hero’.
He writes,

‘Great Historical forces are refracted through a personality’.

The conclusion that can be drawn from the writings of the above scholars is that it is the forces prevalent during those times; whether historical, societal, religious, economic, or scientific, that are responsible for the rise of the ‘hero’. Thus, the hero is the creation or the result of the above mentioned forces.

Superimposing the aforementioned Hegelian and Marxist perspective of a hero upon Mr. Modi as a case in point:

The people of India made a hero out of Mr. Modi because the collective Hindu soul wanted a hero. The spirit of the Hindus was at an all-time low, the Constitution had already made the Hindus a second-class citizen. The constant appeasement policies of not only the Congress but also the caste-based regional parties that depended on the minority votes made things worse for the Hindus. The Hindus wanted to assert their position, and proudly proclaim their Hindu-ness. They wanted to go back to their roots yet achieve all the heights to which any man/woman in the modern world aspires. The media had already made Mr. Modi the foremost Hindu representative. He symbolised the collective Hindu conscience in the mind of the Hindus. The Hindus put all their faith and trust in him. People who had nothing to do with politics or political parties took time out of their busy professional commitments and indirectly campaigned for him. More than his own political workers and the huge election machinery of the BJP, it was the common, ordinary and anonymous Hindus who became his sharpest weapon. It was that anonymous Hindus who worked the hardest for him, without any expectation of a return.

Such fervour is also seen in the case of Ambedkar, Indira, Nehru and Gandhi; all of whom continue to hold infallible positions in the hearts of some sections of the Indian society till date, long past their time.

The hero can be invented

Is there a need for great men or heroes?

The answer to this is given by Karl Marx, who opines:

“Every Social Epoch needs its great men and when it does not find them it invents them, as Heleviteus says.”

This means that every social epoch needs its own hero and as we have already seen, societal forces are such that the hero emerges naturally. But what happens when all the social, anthropological, and biological factors exist but still the hero doesn’t emerge on his own? In such a case, the society invents its own hero. A hero can not only be invented during his life time but also after his death, mainly by a class that cannot find a hero. Either they appropriate the heroes of other classes or invent their own by magnifying their status.

Case in point, Ambedkar:

Before the 1990s, Ambedkar was limited to a certain section of the educated Indian Dalits. According to Dalit-Backward thinker Kancha Ilaiah, it was only after the former Prime Minister Mr. V. P. Singh conferred the Bharat Ratna upon Ambedkar that the latter got elevated to the mainstream. Thus, it was a form of signalling to the Dalits that here was the hero they had been looking for. He became a class hero, invented by members of his class who desperately needed a hero.

Circling back to Mr. Modi, is he too a hero invented by the BJP/RSS and members of the ecosystem for the hero-starved Hindu?
Here, however, the hero is still alive and able to contribute to his own position as a hero in the eyes of the masses. In the General Elections of 2014, for the first time, we saw the huge impact of social media. It would not be an overstatement to say that social media heavily impacted the results of the 2014 elections. Modi was projected as the all-powerful superhuman who did not need rest or holidays and would go on to solve all the problems of India and the Hindus. His excellent oratory skills had a mesmerising effect on those who listened to his speeches.

Long before Mr. Modi, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini applied the same tactics to propagate an image of himself as a great man. He had a high sense of self-importance and projected himself as great in his own speeches. His totalitarian regime with strict controls was made palatable by using propaganda to cultivate his image as that of a charismatic leader instead of a dictator. He orchestrated public spectacles to promote his cult personality.
All that was done by Mussolini is also being followed by Mr. Modi to create a cult personalty of his own. He uses the high-end technology most effectively, and keeps his speeches filled with information.

This is how a hero was invented. He became a cult figure; one who can do no wrong.

Similar methods of erecting a hero were seen in the case of Indira. Despite her despotic tendencies, she was propped up by the media as an iron-willed lady who kept the nation’s best interests at heart; and her oratory skills along with her superb control over language were used to influence the masses into believing her to be the heir to a legacy as the daughter of the country’s first Prime Minister. Her own charisma and her father’s before her; were used to cement the position of their descendants too as heroes; the effects of which can still be seen lingering in the devotion that certain sections of the political and social classes show towards the family.

Limitations of the hero

The obvious question now is that if the hero is nothing but the outcome of the societal consciousness and represents the soul of the society in a particular era and geography; then what would have happened if say, Newton, or Napolean, were to be born in a primitive aboriginal tribe of Australia?
Sydney Hook says:

“There is no good reason to believe that if a man with the biological endowment of Newton or Raphael or Napolean had been born in early prehistory, he would have rediscovered fire or created magnificent ornaments and paintings or achieved renown as a warrior.”

Another question that arises is whether the hero can change or alter the pattern of historical evolution. Does he have the capacity to make feudalism follow capitalism, or is he powerless to stand against mighty socio-economic forces?
Plekhanov makes an important observation in this regard:

“The character of an individual is a factor in social development only where, when, and to what extent the social relations permit it to be such.”

The hero Is Replaceable

Engels in his letter to Strutenberg described the rise of the hero as:

“That such and such man and precisely that man arises at a particular time, in a particular country is of course pure chance. But cut him out and there will be a demand for a substitute, and the substitute will be found. If Napolean had been lacking, another would have filled his place; is proven by the fact that the man was always found as soon as he became necessary.”

JG.V Plekhnov, a follower of Marx, was of the view that as soon as the hero dies, another takes his place. In the words of Plekhnov:

“If “A” had died before he had solved the problem “X”? We imagine that the thread of human intellectual development would have been broken. We forget that had A died; B, C, or D might have tackled the problem…”

As per the statements of scholars such as Engels and Plekhnov, if the hero has fallen short he has to be substituted and the substitute is always ready – we as a society only need to find him. We all can play the role of Jambavant who identified the Hero of Divinity in Hanuman, who Himself was unaware of His divine abilities.

Conclusion

As per yours truly, the capacity to make history varies from individual to individual. There are those who can influence only a most insignificant part of history while there are others who can make an epoch and thus can recreate the destiny of an entire civilisation. In the words of Sydney Hook:

“There is the eventful man and then there is the event-making man. It is the event-making man who is the great man, or the hero.”

In this regard, MacIver gives a rationale that it is not about the possibility of making history but of the degrees to which history is capable of being made at the various levels of generality.

At present our country is going through a phase of immense devotion towards a political individual. It is true that behind the rise of the particular individual were many social, religious, and economic forces. However, almost a decade has passed and many layers of illusion are falling apart. Maintaining herohood is an uphill task and if the individual is not upto the mark, he needs a lot of media hype and image management.

Most of the scholars mentioned above are of the view that whenever the hero fails, the substitute is ready and will complete the task.

Look around you and find your hero, or look inside you, for you could be the one.

Bibliography:

1. On Heroes , Hero-worship and the Heroic in History ,  by Thomas Carlyle

2. The Hero in History : A Study in Limitation and Possibility,  by Sidney Hook

3. The Study of Sociology by Herbert Spencer.

4. The Role of Individual in History by G V Plekhanov

5.Historical Materialism by Nikolai Bukharin

6. History of The Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky

7. Class Struggle in France by Karl Marx

8. The Holy Family by Karl Marx

9. The German Ideology by Karl Marx

10. Selected  Works of Marx and Engels.

11. R M MacIver