Of “instant” heroes like Abhijeet Dipke and Vidyanand Bapat

Raju Korti
India appears to have discovered a new species of public figure: the instant hero. He arrives suddenly, usually through social media, carrying a lofty cause, a vocabulary of indignation and, more often than not, an army of followers who have decided within 48 hours that they have found the messiah they had been waiting for. The same public, with equal efficiency, reverses the verdict a week later and converts the messiah into a fraud, an agent, a political plant or, in particularly imaginative circumstances, all three.

We are living in the age of instant everything. Instant coffee, instant noodles, instant opinions, instant outrage and now instant reputations. There is little appetite left for the tiresome business of investigation, comprehension, context and rationalisation. Why examine a person when a three-minute video will do? Why read a manifesto when a viral clip can provide a conclusion? Why wait for facts when an algorithm has already supplied an opinion?

Abhijeet Dipke

The phenomenon is worth examining because two young men, Abhijeet Dipke of the Cockroach Janta Party and Pune's Vidyanand Bapat, have recently found themselves propelled into public consciousness with remarkable speed, albeit through very different causes. Their individual motives, political affiliations and future ambitions deserve to be judged on evidence, not rumour. But the larger phenomenon surrounding them is unmistakable. A cause acquires a face, the face acquires followers, the followers create a hero, and before anybody has had the time to ask inconvenient questions, the hero has acquired a political biography.

Dipke's rise is particularly instructive. The Cockroach Janta Party began as an irreverent response to the controversial "cockroach" remark and subsequently became associated with the student movement around education and examination-related issues. It acquired extraordinary visibility among young people and Dipke emerged as its most recognisable face. The organisation has since developed an identifiable structure, with Dipke being named national convenor.

There was, on the face of it, nothing wrong with the cause. In fact, causes concerning students, competitive examinations and the credibility of India's education system deserve serious public attention. The problem begins when a movement's moral capital becomes indistinguishable from the political capital of its organisers.

That is precisely where Sonam Wangchuk's recent observation becomes significant. Wangchuk, who had supported the student movement, has now said that he believes Dipke and his fellow organisers do have political ambitions. Importantly, he did not suggest that having such ambitions was inherently wrong. His point was that political ambition is perfectly legitimate, provided a supposedly non-political movement is not covertly converted into a vehicle for somebody's political agenda.

That distinction is crucial. There is nothing dishonourable about wanting to enter politics. Politics is not a contagious disease from which public activists must maintain quarantine. If a young man wants to become an MLA, MP, minister or even Prime Minister, he should say so. What is questionable is the theatrical pretence that politics has nothing to do with the enterprise when politics may eventually be its destination.

Vidyanand Bapat

Pune has produced another fascinating example of how quickly a cause can manufacture celebrity. Vidyanand Bapat's campaign against excessive DJ noise during public festivities, particularly during Ganeshotsav, struck a chord with many citizens tired of having their ears subjected to what can sometimes sound less like devotional music and more like an assault on the decibel meter. His invocation of Sanskrit texts, constitutional principles and social reform gave the campaign an intellectual wrapping. There is nothing inherently objectionable in the argument itself. Indeed, the larger issue of noise pollution deserves a rational and uniform policy, irrespective of which religion, festival or political gathering produces the noise. Recent protests in Pune have shown that the concern extends well beyond one festival or one community.

But here too the public conversation soon moved away from the issue and towards the man. Questions about his background, employment, ideology and political associations began to dominate the discussion. That is the moment when the cause starts losing its innocence. It is also the moment when the public ought to become more discerning, not more hysterical.

There is, after all, absolutely nothing wrong with being a BPO employee. There is nothing wrong with being an atheist. There is nothing wrong with being on the Left, the Right or somewhere in the political middle. Nor is there anything wrong with having political ambitions. What is objectionable is concealment when transparency would have been simpler. A citizen has every right to know whether he is listening to an activist speaking for a cause or a future politician speaking through a cause.

This is where instant deification becomes dangerous. Deification is merely condemnation's more flattering cousin. Both suffer from the same intellectual disease: premature conclusion. We do not really examine people anymore. We either worship them or demolish them. The middle ground, where judgement resides, has become distinctly unfashionable.

The internet has made this worse. Social media does not reward nuance. It rewards certainty. The person who says, "Let us examine the evidence" rarely goes viral. The person who says, "I have exposed the truth" does. A complicated argument requires attention; outrage requires only a thumb. And so an individual can become a national phenomenon before the country has had the opportunity to discover whether he is a serious public figure, an energetic activist, a political aspirant or merely a particularly gifted user of social media.

The danger for the supposed hero is equally considerable. Instant fame creates an expectation of instant perfection. The public that crowns you today can crucify you tomorrow for discovering that you are human. We have created a culture in which public figures are expected to be saints until proven political, and villains until proven innocent. Both expectations are absurd.

The mythology surrounding new political formations is especially revealing. Every generation believes it has invented political purity. Young faces, fresh slogans, new acronyms and impressive mission statements are presented as evidence of a new politics. But politics has an irritating habit of remaining politics. Change the bottle, redesign the label, introduce Gen Z and add a fashionable logo, but the contents can remain remarkably familiar. Old political wine has survived many modern plastic bottles.

This is not an argument against young political leaders. Quite the contrary. India desperately needs young people to enter public life. It needs activists who can challenge established political parties, bureaucracies and institutions. It needs citizens who are prepared to question authority. But it needs them to enter the arena honestly. A political ambition declared openly is far more respectable than a political ambition concealed behind a halo.

The same principle applies to established political parties. The temptation to manufacture or appropriate spontaneous movements is hardly confined to one ideological camp. The BJP, Congress, AAP, Shiv Sena, MNS and virtually every other political formation have understood the enormous value of associating themselves with movements that already possess emotional energy. Why build a constituency from scratch when somebody else has already built one for you?

But the public is not quite as naive as political strategists imagine. It may be slow, but it is not permanently stupid. Sooner or later the question emerges: who benefits? Who funds? Who organises? Who stands behind the curtain? And most importantly, where does the movement go when the original cause has exhausted its news value?

That is the real test of instant movements. If the cause survives after the celebrity disappears, it was probably a genuine cause. If the cause begins disappearing the moment the individual starts acquiring political prominence, the public is entitled to ask whether the cause was ever the destination or merely the vehicle.

There is also a lesson here for the media. We have become enthusiastic manufacturers of heroes. Television studios need faces, digital platforms need clicks and newspapers need headlines. The young activist with a memorable line is infinitely more marketable than the anonymous citizen who has spent ten years working quietly on the same issue. Serious causes are therefore increasingly personalised. The issue becomes secondary; the influencer becomes primary.

And therein lies the irony. We complain about personality cults in politics while creating miniature personality cults every day on social media.

Perhaps the wiser response is neither adulation nor condemnation. It is patience. Let the cause be tested. Let the individual be questioned. Let political affiliations be declared. Let the record accumulate. Let time do what virality cannot do: reveal character.

Dipke may eventually become a politician. Bapat may or may not. Either would be perfectly legitimate. What matters is that neither should need to pretend otherwise if that is indeed where the road leads. Politics is not a crime. Ambition is not a crime. Ideology is not a crime. But disguising politics as pure activism, if that is what happens, is precisely what invites suspicion.

India's political landscape is changing, and the young will inevitably occupy more of it. That is welcome. But the country does not need instant heroes. It needs durable leaders. The distinction is enormous. An instant hero is produced by a moment. A leader is tested by time.

The age of instant fame has taught us to press the accelerator before starting the engine. We discover somebody on Monday, adore him on Tuesday, defend him on Wednesday, suspect him on Thursday and denounce him by Friday. By the weekend, another hero has arrived.

Perhaps the only sensible response is to slow down. Before putting anybody on a pedestal, ask who built the pedestal. Before tearing it down, ask why. And before assuming that a lofty cause has no political destination, remember the oldest rule of politics: the most important part of the journey is often the destination nobody wants to talk about.