Gopalkrishna gandhi

The Iconoclast

DEMOCRACY beyond dissent

G o pa l k r i s h n a G a n d h i

GOPALAKRISHNA GANDHI EXPLORES THE PHENOMENON OF ICONS AND ICONOCLASTS. HE ARGUES ON GIVING ICONOCLASTS THEIR DUE - THAT IS,WITHOUT TURNING THEM INTO ICONS. Dr B R Ambedkar was right in saying as long as there are castes, there will be outcastes.

One could say, in the same manner and spirit, that as long as there are icons there will be iconoclasts.

The word ‘icon’, as readers of Audi Alteram Partem and of this column know, is of Greek derivation. It is taken in lexical terms to mean an image, a representation on wood with a fair amount of gold in it, of a religious figure meant for and inspiring, worship. In metaphoric terms ‘icon’ is taken, rightly, to mean a figure, a person, sometimes dead but often living, who is made of such outstanding elements of mind and temper, appearance and attitude, as to be an exemplar, a star.

One is in awe of such a figure, sometimes affectionately, sometimes deferentially, at all times unconditionally. Children are in awe of the ‘big’ – the big boy, the big girl. Their sense of the big is of course also mixed up with the sense of their parents and teachers being big. They want to become that ‘big’, quickly, now, because they know that they themselves are yet not big but can and will, one day, be. The awesome ‘big’ is a goal to be reached.

As one grows older, awe remains awe, the awesome remain awesome but then – unless one

is a megalomaniac – one also realises that awesomeness is not co-extensive with growing, that awesomeness is not necessarily reachable.

And, curiously, as a compensation to being unawesome oneself, one begins to feel good to be smaller, littler, than the figure one is in awe of.

One is almost grateful for the difference in scale between the awesome and the awed. And a sense of being in awe becomes a substitute to being awesome. ‘Tum moti mein dhaga, tum chandan mein pani…’ is strangely soothing.

Worship follows awe. And worship, in turn, can become a following, a discipleship, and a bond. If the awe if a writer, a painter or a musician, it can remain a private matter. But very often, one might even say, most often, awe like company, likes the awed to be together, to bond, to become in fact, a band.

The awesome become then, willy-nilly, but mostly not ‘un-willy’, leaders of the awed. They become iconic. They are called and human nature being what it is, mostly do not mind being called ‘living legends’.

And this is where icons also establish or found, often unbeknownst to themselves and also, very often, pretty ‘knownst’ to themselves, awe-clubs which can become, in sport and the arts like cinema and music, fan-clubs. In social and political movements and in party politics, the 17

The Iconoclast awesome and the iconic take clubbism further to cultism. They in themselves become cults.

The icon as a cult threatens other icons and cults.

This is far from the baby-time when one was in plain and innocent of the big and that big was nowhere guilty of creating that awe!

This progression or degeneration of the awesome becoming an icon and an icon becoming a cult is invariably unhealthy. It triggers rivalries, generates violence. It is the starting point of all that is wrong in and about competition. From football fans who hit each other on the way back home from a match and political supporters going at each other at rallies and election campaigns, to dictators and tyrants silencing opponents by jailing or killing them, we have the works.

But this creation of the icon also generates one very different, very healthy reaction. Rather rare, but quite real, quite recognisable.

It creates an individual, very different from the unhealthy rival icon, a very desirable counter-icon.

It creates the anti-clubbist, anti-iconist, anti-cultist individual. Now this person is willing, even keen, to appreciate, admire, applaud and even be awed by someone who is truly ‘big’, but is not willing, is in fact positively unwilling, to become a chela of that ‘big’ person. And not a chela of just the ‘big person’, but also of the ‘big idea’, of the new and compelling thought, the fresh and bold initiative. A ‘yes’ for ‘Wow!’, but a ‘no’ for anything beyond.

This person is the incipient dissenter.

He or she can be alone or part of a team. Either way, he or she is first and foremost a person, an independent person, a man or a woman who thinks and evaluates, decides and acts by his or her own, not anyone else’s, not even an icon’s, leave.

Let me stay with ‘She’ here, the ‘He’s’ should not feel left out.

If part of a team, a political party or an organisation, when she is heard, given a fair and genuine hearing, she will be glad to have had that attention. If what she has said is accepted, she May 2015 | aap@nludelhi.ac.in

But when today, religious assertiveness, bigotry and majoritarianism are the new icons, the liberal Indian will find these leaders – Gandhi, Ambedkar and Periyar – on the same, not opposite pages. will be one can assume, even happier. But if she is systematically side-lined, given not just no serious hearing, but no hearing at all, she will feel she does not matter. And invariably she will be right to conclude that the leader, who could be a ‘she’ or a ‘he’, does not need her views, does not care for her. And she will also invariably be right to conclude that others in the set-up do not heed her, need her.

She will, in other words, become a formal dissenter.

Her dissent is to start with a thought, silent, still.

Wanting it to be shared, she stirs her thought into sound, a rustle, first, then a murmur. Finding she is unheeded, she moves the thought from its silent seat to the elevation of a voice, soft at first and wholly associative with others. Realising other voices is drowning the vocalised thought, she then its tone. No luck, she then tries a higher pitch, a stronger timbre. Still unavailing, she shifts her v o i c e ’ s c h o rd s f ro m t h o s e o f t h o u g h t communication to those of an address.

Unsuccessful again, she finds and fixes a metaphorical megaphone to her mouth to be heard above the collective hum. Fruitless when this too becomes, she throws up her hands and screams.

Her dissent becomes, at once, dissidence.

When she was asked for attention, she received neglect, when finally she screamed she has the 18

Riot Act read to her.

And she is accused of indiscipline, betrayal.

She wanted colleagues, she discovers she has detractors.

And she finds among the many names that she is called, one that she is called by the more thinking kind of observers. She is called the iconoclast.

‘Iconoclast?, she asks, puzzled. Who is – was – the icon?

That, she is told (or realises without being told) is the problem. She did not consider that to be the icon – be it the leader, the book, the manifesto or the pantheon. She did not genuflect before that icon.

She did not subordinate her thought, in fact, not just her thought but her thinking power itself, before that icon.

We have had great icons in modern India; some of who – let us be fair to them – did not want to be icons or become iconic but did become that. And though they did not want to shut dissent out, their supporters, such are the ways of iconism, managed to shut it out so that their hurrays and hosannahas can be heard better.

And we have of course had many more icons that wanted to and loved to be just that.

And we have therefore had iconoclasts.

Some iconoclasts are more suited by aptitude than others to become iconoclasts, for they have enquiring minds, questioning minds, minds that need to be persuaded, not overwhelmed. But all iconoclasts are in the main created not by their own will or aptitude but by the force of circumstances, by the work of their contexts and ambience.

May 2015 | aap@nludelhi.ac.in

Mahatma Gandhi is not regarded as an iconoclast for the reason he was at the same time also turned into an icon, ‘sainted’ by his followers, into Mahatmahood. But before he became an icon, he was an iconoclast, campaigning against more icons of belief and custom than anyone since Rajah Rammohun Roy and Swami Vivekananda in his time. ‘There is no such thing as Gandhism and I do not want to leave a sect after me’, he said. But he was called an avatar. And avatars are worshipped, not heeded. Acharyas are sometimes heeded, not avatars.

And naturally, there arose iconoclasts even in the iconic world of Gandhi, the foremost among the being Babasaheb Ambedkar and Periyar E V Ramasami.

Their example is invaluable both because they show us what iconoclasm means and how valuable it is. But also because even iconoclasts can become in a society like ours, become icons.

There are as many statues if not more to Babasaheb and Periyar as there are to the Mahatma. I find this a felicity for there is no denying the deep and defining differences between the way Gandhi viewed the problem of India’s Depressed Classes, and the way Babasaheb and Periyar did. There is no understating the fundamental differences between them on the structure of Indian society.

But when today, religious assertiveness, bigotry and majoritarianism are the new icons, the liberal Indian will find these leaders – Gandhi, Ambedkar and Periyar – on the same, not opposite pages, within the same not opposed narratives, the same not contrary discourses for India’s civilisational evolution in an ambience where sectarianism endangers our pluralism, and bigotry , our secularism.

We must draw strength from our iconoclasts, not make new icons of them.

Let us give ‘her’, Dissent, the chance she needs to speak out and stand up against the dominant icons of our time so that she does not have to become an iconoclast who could, ironically, become a self-destroying icon again.

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