Rakesh Joshi is quite right in criticising the Indian tendency to wrap any India-born person’s achievements in the Tricolour — that too without making the slightest effort to understand the actual significance of these various achievements (‘Chasing after Indian idols’, IE, 18 July).

However, he is rather off the mark when he suggests that this tendency is because ‘in recent decades, there has been a paucity of idols’. Quite the contrary! If the word ‘idol’ means a person worthy of widespread praise and emulation, then India has had, over the past few decades, plenty of ‘idols’ in every sphere of activity. Like Rajendra Singh of the Tarun Bharat Sangh — a trail-blazer in community water harvesting. Or Sabeer Bhatia, who revolutionised the way the world communicates by co-founding Hotmail. Viswanathan Anand, ranked World Number One in chess in 2007. Professor Jayant Narlikar of the Inter-University Centre of Astronomy, Pune, who along with other scientists in 2002 found clinching evidence that the earth is being bombarded by microscopic life forms from outer space (thus vindicating earlier work by giants such as Fred Hoyle and Svante Arrhenius). Musicians, doctors, writers, artists — the list of Indian ‘idols’ is endless. You only have to look for them to see them.

The real issue is not a lack of Indian idols. It is India’s collective inability to discern the real achiever from the mere superstar; an inability that is born of ignorance, lack of confidence, as well as sheer intellectual laziness. Yet we must have our ‘heroes’ — so instead, we choose an easy way out. We seek them in the screen-world. Or we make recognition by the West — in particular, by the US and Britain — a prerequisite to determining the greatness of an Indian or even of things Indian.

... contd.