In Christian belief, mankind’s fall from grace first happened when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, precipitating a descent from divine favour to a state of sin and loss of power. In the world we know, the story of humankind has been one about heroes vanquishing villains and the villains periodically turning the tables, in recent times much more frequently.
This disquisition, however, is specifically about famous people who have fallen from grace either because of the skullduggery of associates or their own bungling or due to their own lack of integrity that is found out. The last-named flaw is the most egregious and the most fatal. And the thing about the heroes among the well-known is that they can fall from favour in the blink of an eye. The ignominy can also strike long after they have gone. “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.” That’s the story we tell!
There was a time when the dark secrets of historical figures were hidden from the world. But historical revisionism, which essentially questions received wisdom and the orthodox views on history, has yanked the halo off some of the consecrated icons and shown them up to be humans with feet of clay. Many world-acclaimed heroes have been damaged by the probing lens of the revisionist historian.
No modern hero has suffered a greater fall from grace than John F. Kennedy. He was once the darling of an adoring world. When he fell to an assassin’s bullet in November 1963, the entire world, cutting across ideological barriers, mourned, such was his youthful magnetism and appeal. One vividly remembers a holiday and national mourning being declared and Nehru, our prime minister addressing the nation and expressing the anguish the world felt. The universal adulation was because Kennedy was everyone’s idea of the quintessential hero. His presidency was likened to Camelot, the milieu of idyllic happiness.
As it turned out, the Kennedy cult was a meretricious hoax, squalid to the extreme. Kennedy’s marriage was an unmitigated disaster. His private life was a cauldron of marital infidelity, debauchery and incurable ailments. In the words of the consummate wordsmith, Clive James, “JFK had the sexual energy of a male fiddler crab on a spring night.” He led a most promiscuous life, even suborning his staffers as procurers. Most shocking was the revelation that his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage was ghost-written but appropriated to soup up his image when he entered politics.
Then take the case of World War II’s man of the hour, Winston Churchill, who “mobilised the English language and sent it into battle”. Revisionist digging has brought to light the fact that Churchill’s most renowned broadcasts during the war were not delivered by him. Instead, an actor, Norman Shelley was hired to impersonate him, the subterfuge necessitated because Churchill was much too drunk to deliver the speeches himself.
But that’s not all. Over time, his racism, his antipathy to India’s independence and his cruelty have shown him up to be a brutal elitist creature at heart. This is what the renowned actor, Richard Burton had to say about Winston Churchill after his experience of playing the role of the British hero: “I hate Churchill and his kind virulently…What man of sanity would say against the Japanese; ‘We shall wipe them out…men, women and children’. Such cravings for revenge leave me with a horrified awe for such single-minded and merciless ferocity.”
One can trust the Bard to diagnose in a nutshell the essence of fame: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em.” The Sangh Parivar has added another dimension to this truth by manipulating history, resuscitating their chosen dead and thrusting fame on them.
Dangerous characters from the past are being lionised as national heroes by the BJP and Sangh Parivar. In 2003, the portrait of Veer Savarkar – Hindutva ideologue, Muslim-baiter and alleged co-conspirator in the Mahatma’s assassination – was unveiled in Parliament, a recognition bestowed only on national heroes. In recent times though, Savarkar’s many infirmities have been laid bare before the unforgiving public gaze. His grovelling mercy petitions have exposed him for the quisling he was, and Rajnath Singh’s promotion of the fiction that it was at the Mahatma’s prodding that he wrote those cringing, ingratiating petitions, has no takers. Also dredged up is Savarkar’s subterfuge of arranging for the publication of books eulogising himself – the ultimate in chicanery.
In a tit-for-tat response to the defiling of Savarkar, the BJP’s IT head, who specialises in hitting below the belt, put out on social media a collage of pictures of Nehru in the company of various women with the intent of portraying him as a debauch. Among the photographs is one of Nehru hugging his sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit, a dead giveaway that truly reflected the sordid mind of the muckraker but in today’s fractious environment, his obnoxious smear has takers.
Mercifully for them, these deeply flawed heroes got exposed for the humbugs they were only posthumously and hence, escaped public ignominy in their lifetime. But what of those flawed champions of the world who have literally been ‘caught in the act’ at the height of their stardom?
As a once fanatical cricket enthusiast, we were heart-broken when our two sporting heroes – the supremely gifted and charismatic Mohammad Azharuddin and Hanse Cronje – at the height of their careers, came crashing down in 2000, implicated in a match-fixing racket that abruptly turned them from sporting icons to international pariahs. We closely followed every scrap of news on the scandal, including the King Commission proceedings, grieving all along with my fallen heroes and praying for some form of redemption, which never came. We were shattered when Cronje died in an air crash in 2002.
Yes, the fall from grace of a hero can seriously impact the devotees. But not all well-known people evoke such an empathetic, non-judgemental response when they ‘bite the dust’ as it were. To give a recent example, the moralising, self-righteous Chief Justice of India has earned eternal infamy for his prayer rendezvous with the PM and his proclaimed interactive session with the Almighty that influenced arguably the most iniquitous verdict in our history of jurisprudence. In his watch, the Supreme Court has, for the most part, become a covert, iniquitous adjunct of the political executive. In his last days in office, he is being stoned and no tears are shed.
Even nations can fall from grace. Ours certainly has! The land of the Mahatma, who deeply influenced the thinking of Martin Luther King and Mandela with his message of non-violence and truth, is today a dubious, untrustworthy entity where there is neither democracy nor equality or justice. And we are now international pariahs, bracketed with rogue states like Russia and North Korea, for breaching the sovereignty of nations and being complicit in murder-for-hire, extortion and intimidation. The Canadian authorities have named our home minister as the kingpin in this revolting underworld enterprise.
The Bard – yes, him again of the timeless wisdom – has observed that “some rise by sin and some by virtue fall.” Which reminds one of the dizzying rise to fame of our Supreme Leader who, for an interminable decade, has controlled every aspect of our lives by weaponising the state apparatus, the judiciary and his mob of adoring bhakts. And he has, inter alia, used that power to ensure that the myriad skeletons in his cupboard remain hidden from sight.
When will the world get to know the complete story behind the Haren Pandya murder, the Sohrabuddin encounter, Snoopgate, Judge Loya’s mysterious death, the prime minister’s dodgy academic credentials, the China blackmail that Subramanian Swamy keeps harping on, the Pulwama tragedy, the Pegasus, Rafale and electoral bond scandals et al.? His reputation hangs by the proverbial thread.
It’s sad that investigative journalism is dead but be sure that at some point in the future, the excavators of history will prise open the truth behind the Modi myth. And when that happens, it will be a mighty fall indeed.
Mathew John is a former civil servant. Annie Mathew teaches history.