Hero worship..our inherent nature

Great to see Abhinav Bindra win solo gold for India in Olympics...was heartening to see an Indian compete witht the very best and achieve laurels. 

But considering the hero worship being showered on him....it seems quite ironical of govt, with al the babus following the pecking order diligently right from our rev. Pratibha Patil in order to get clicked witht he national hero at the moment. I rem some 8 yrs earlier reading about abhinav bindra and his struggle to get good training facilities at home. Now that he could have afforded the foreign training and coach is another matter. What particularly bugs me is the sycophant bureaucrats and ministers heaping praise on Abhinav. And media going gaga over his achivement. I imagine what happens to countries like USA , Australia etc...where gold medals are churned by the dozens..

This brings me back to point...the inherent hero worhsip tendency inside us. We Indians need to be more mature at digesting greatness. We want not sportsmen....we want heroes..from Sachin to Sania ....we cant react maturely enough to a talented person.

What brings us to raise a talented sports[person/movie star/young poplitician to a god like level. Media plays very active role in bombarding and reinforcing the already religious devotion to that person. And we are also very fast in making a temporarily fallen person remain there....we are like that only....We can burn effigies of the cricketers who sold us everything...from sugared cola to cars....

And advertising machinery understands and plays the God card to the hilt...knowing fully what status these demi gods have in the minds of Indians...

But if step back and try to analyse this behaviour of ours..we can find a pattern going back to the centuries...a pattern very well reflected in the praja following its raja like blind fools...to a massive class of people who wanted the britishers to stay in India and rule them. If Fruid were to analyse we as a nation, I wonder waht kind of sub liminal associations would have emerged for us, neither so i care to find out!

I think we need Heroes, more than Idols...and this shows in the cyclical celebration of popularism over meritocracy in awards ranging from Bharat Ratna to National Film awards. There is a display of almost universal worship in incidents ranging from people accepting VIPs' special status to enter a religious shrine to media placing importance on the Bacchan family's trivialities more than our national borders being violated!!

I am very elated at Abhinav Bindra winning gold medal. But I feel frustrated at the apathy shown by the government towards the sports infrastructure. How many can afford like Bindra to get the level of coaching and exposure. And to top it all, this "Hero worship" is dangerous in the sense that it makes us complacent...too comfortable in our monotonous existences..never daring to dream..just becoming very happy to see a handful of privileged ,whether having born with a silver spoon, just plain dumb lucky, or struggled their way to top(and now dnt want others to come there)...

Sports competitions are the modern day equivalent of wars between two countries...a far less damaging way to prove their strength, supremacy and superiority over other nations.

Do we ought not to do the same. Are we less proud in our abilities..both athletic and psychological? Or are we happy to settle to less demanding game of cricket and enjoy those 11 plus making billions and rest of "demanding" and more challenging team sports facing a step motherly treatment from the government.

Ms. Bijapurkar....We are indeed like that only...!!!