Actor Rajni’s new movie Kaala released on 6-Jun-2018. His fans created their usual furore by blocking traffic, having giant banners erected on the streets and worshipping him by pouring milk on the banners. This frenzy of their primitive urges consumes his fans for a few days before they think of anything else. I do sometimes understand that government should not intervene in people’s lives but such behaviours are borderline sociopathic. Pouring huge quantity of milk on banners to mark celebration when you have babies dying of hunger and malnutrition is a venomous habit. While I do realise the actors might not condone it but they do not oppose it either. In one way, they depend on the fanatic following to keep them in business. This behaviour once again brings the entire topic of hero worship to the forefront of public debate.

Oxford Dictionary defines hero worship as an excessive admiration for someone. There are two key words here which make the trait extremely uncomfortable, first one is the adjective ‘excessive’ and the second one is the object ‘someone’. Any form of excessive admiration is going to be dangerous and if people start to admire individuals rather than behaviours, then you are surrendering your critical faculties to the whim of the admired.

Collage of different hero worships in India

There is definitely a psychological and as an extension of the evolutionary reason for hero worship. I am definitely not an expert in the field but there are some good articles written in this area. The need for a hero figure who can solve all the worldly issues has resulted in allegories, the creation of Gods and prophets. As much as the archetype of longing for such heroic figures can have a primitive and evolutionary background, it doesn’t make the acting on this belief intellectually credible. We have a primitive urge to procreate as much as we can but most of us don’t do it as it is not needed and mostly counterproductive. The development of our large brain and its ability to process provides homo sapiens with the advantage of thinking beyond these legacies. I do see the point where some philosophers believe in a pragmatic nature of truth, whereby making actions like hero worship credible as a result of the net comfort it brings to the individuals who believe in it. However, I do not buy into that theory. It diminishes the expectation in people to think and act responsibly. Further, it also disregards the entire collective human knowledge we have gained from our history. Hero worship had no positive impact on the society and it is of no use in the present era.

On a more practical level, I find the behaviour of worshipping individuals as an enslavement of the human mind. It is a very submissive trait where one surrenders their critical faculties to the whim of individual being worshipped as the hero. This leads them to exhibit eccentric behaviours in favour of the hero. It also prevents people from seeing the flaws of the hero. I am fine with people looking at a trait and admiring a trait in other individuals but worshipping individuals come will be a slippery slope considering people exhibit complex and often contradictory behaviours. The idea of enlightenment in the modern philosophical context is one of reason, progress, liberty, emancipation and fraternity. I do not think hero workship, however defensible it may be from an evolutionary perspective can be squared into that category.