This is an era of abject reverence. Just three random instances out of India and people’s reaction to them come to mind this morning.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood in a line to cast his vote in my hometown of Ahmedabad. Movie star Aamir Khan flew economy. Congress Party grandee Priyanka Gandhi picked up a bowl of food entirely on her own. Three perfectly banal examples of living life normally, which have been exalted simply because of who lived them.
All three instances have about them an implicit air of reverence that three people of such means and consequence have displayed the sense to behave the way the hoi polloi—I wanted to use swinish multitude but did not—does. Depending on what your level of admiration is for any or all three of them and others like them, these utterly routine behaviors are puffed up into even greater virtues than they are already seen to have.
I do not mean to single these three out but it so happens that they are fresh in the news. This kind of worshipful and laudatory response to consequential people doing things without throwing their weight about is universal. I have never understood it. I do occasionally get annoyed at that like I am this morning.
Photographs and/or videos of Modi in a line, Khan in an economy seat and Gandhi in a middle class family’s home picking up the bowl of food can be seen widely. I am willing to grant that none of the three may have deliberately chosen to project simplicity in doing what they did. On the other hand, in the case of the two politicians at least, remember that this is the peak voting time in India. Expediencies are rampant. Politicians would do whatever it takes to get a vote or ten extra, even pretend to be part of the multitude.
On such occasions, I am always reminded of a line from Oliver Goldsmith’s ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’ where he writes, “Jests of the rich are ever successful.” It can be paraphrased to say “Banal acts of the powerful and famous are always successful.”