Hero-worship
Hero-worship is the worship of some great men, endowed with excellent qualities of the head as well as heart. The masses are generally hero-worshippers—they select a hero—and then bestow all their affection and favour on him. Hero-worshipping thrives in those communities which are still ignorant and backward. It has definitely received a setback in our times when we refuse to accept anybody in fallible or a semi-God and when even an ordinary man in the street is outspokenly critical of his leaders and teachers. Hero-worship demands unfaltering and passive faith in some great personality which by some fair or foul means has managed to amass some power; but in our scientific and progressive century, such faith is difficult to have. Hero-worship is still strong in India where the masses, even hitherto, are static and illiterate and cannot think for themselves. Since they cannot stand upon their own legs and look after themselves, they seek a great consolation and relief in choosing a hero of a few superhuman qualities and bestowing all their praises on him. They wishfully think that the far superior ego and valour of the hero they have chosen is in fact their own ego and valour. But let us not forget that everybody is not elevated to the plane of a hero by the public, howsoever ignorant and foolish it may be. Only a few men of individuality, dash, and grit can be heroes. Hero-worship, it is now obvious, is unscientific and superstitious. Lytton Strachey, the modern writer of biographies, had no faith in the legend of an infallible hero and so he debunked all his heroes. In England, hero-worship is perhaps the minimum. Even a superhuman hero of the sort of the Churchill can be deposed when the discerning and critical nation thinks that he won’t suit the times. The creed of hero-worship is most popular in totalitarian states like Russia and Red China where a dictator is supposed to be an infallible personality and is looked upon with reverent awe by one and all.
