We, in India, have this unwritten code; don’t talk or write ill of the dead. As per this code, you are expected to sweep everything vile, unsavoury or dubious about the dead person under the carpet and highlight his/her good qualities instead. So much so that even if the dead person happens to be an absolute lout with very little to commend himself, people somehow manage to find a rare and hitherto unseen quality in the deceased to avoid saying something bad about him or her!
In keeping with this great Indian tradition, the media hailed Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader of Cuba as a ‘hero’ and dubbed his recent demise - rather predictably one must say – as the End of an Era, a term used so frequently and for so many people that it has become a bit of a joke. There is nothing inherently wrong in this, of course, because Castro was indeed a ‘hero’, not just for Communists around the world, but also many ordinary people who saluted him for taking on the might of the USA all his life. But you would be lynched by the traditionalists if you so much as make a passing reference to the brutalities he committed on his people and the thousands his firing squads killed as part of the ‘revolution’ that he ushered in.
Closer home, glowing tributes were paid to Dileep Padgaonkar, the former Editor of The Times of India who once bragged that he held ‘the second most important job in the country’, after he died on Friday. Fawning obituaries were written by top journalists talking about his erudition, his love for the ‘finer things in life’ and his eclectic taste in matters of food, wine and art. It is not as if any of this was not true or was a case of posthumous attribution of qualities that he never possessed. But there was no mention of his monumental error of judgment in attending, year after year, ISI-funded events organized by Ghulam Nabi Fai, a US based Kashmiri, where India bashing over the Kashmir issue was the staple. [Curiously, when asked by a television channel how a top journalist like him fell into an ISI trap, Dileep had countered, rather tamely and unconvincngly, that “there was no Google in those days!”]
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These are two of the most recent instances of a time-honoured tradition the origins of which are not quite clear. Adherence to this centuries-old tradition has ensured that every great personality, from Buddha to Gandhi, has been deified and put on a pedestal, their follies and mistakes, if any, glossed over.
The national consensus on not speaking ill of the dead has lasted centuries, may be even millennia. But the advent of the social media, with the streak of irreverence that is its hallmark, is threatening to tear this consensus apart. In the ‘Age of Reason’ that we live in, people – especially the younger generation, are not ready to hail the dead uncritically and bury anything uncomplimentary about them. They would rather have a more rounded and rational assessment of the dead – warts and all.
This is at it should be. Reason demands that we should not close our eyes to the failings of someone just because s/he is dead. Fawning does no justice to the dead either because people have their own perception about the person no matter what is written or not written about him/her. Every death, of course, calls for mourning, but no amount of tears shed over the dead can wash away their sins or follies, if any. A reasoned, rational and dispassionate assessment of the dead means acceptance of the universal truth that no one is perfect. It is about time eulogies were replaced by dispassionate assessment of the dead.