Last week, memory lane in India got snarled up by appraisals of the former Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, on the 25th anniversary of her assassination. A quarter century after this most virile female politician who moulded the nation?s destiny was gunned down, Indian opinion makers waxed nostalgic, emotional and sentimental about her mixed legacy.
For a moment, the flood of Indira-memorabilia in the media recreated a surreal feeling of living under her rule all over again, as if she were alive in flesh and blood and once more commanding loyalty and fierce nationalist pride from her subjects.
The rarity in present-day India of forceful and shrewd political leaders who can pounce on opportunities and strategically advance the country?s interests made Mrs Gandhi?s commemoration all the more wistful. Even her staunchest critics now miss the regal tigress who shepherded, inspired, intoxicated and charmed, rarely forsaking India?s dignity.
Passage of time is supposed to provide much-needed perspective on what a historic personality bequeathed and how she should be honestly remembered. But in Mrs Gandhi?s case, the current pining for a return to a no-nonsense and assertive India has meant that distance in time has only clouded her legacy with a halo of martyrdom and machismo.
Every time India plays second fiddle, gets pushed around as a soft state or is taken for a ride, a murmur rises into a tidal echo across class barriers??If Indira Gandhi were alive, this would not have happened.? It is a fascinating counterfactual that ascribes historical causation to the sheer willpower of great personalities and sweeps under the carpet the complexity of changed global circumstances.
Recalling and celebrating the glories of Mrs Gandhi?s firmness against the sinister Richard Nixon-Henry Kissinger combine or of her alacrity in smelling and executing Pakistan?s partition soothe today?s collective Indian hurt for being impotent against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, Chinese bullying and unreasonable American demands.
Mrs Gandhi?s legacy, which was maddeningly promising and problematic, has thus been refracted to suit the national mood of wanting to make it to the big league of world powers but being constantly brought crashing down to earth by innumerable bottlenecks. Golden eras rarely live up to microscopic scrutiny, but myths about their existence are necessary for an ambitious and expectant national psyche.
Like India, Russia has demonstrated how legacies of long-dead leaders can be twisted to fit the immediate needs of the present. During the presidency of Vladimir Putin (1999-2008), the Russian state resurrected the hitherto sullied image of the feared tyrant, Joseph Stalin, and presented it in a positive afterglow to rally Russian nationalism behind a new drive to regain great power status in the world.
Putin?s logic for restituting praise for Stalin in government-endorsed textbooks and memorials was pure raison d?etat. Stalin was the last Russian ?big man? who elevated the then USSR?s global profile to a genuine superpower. He transformed (admittedly at great human costs) a backward agrarian economy into a military and industrial powerhouse that sent chills down the American spine. He was the patriarch who expanded the territorial and diplomatic boundaries of the Russian empire.
Given these superlative state-building miracles, Putin?s line was that Stalin should be celebrated for making Russia strong and feared. It was exactly the image and national identity Putin wanted to bring back?a tough bargaining and hardnosed Russia, which will no longer be considered America?s doormat or junior partner in Eurasia. Using his almost Czarist control over Russian media and civil society, Putin succeeded in changing public opinion about Stalin during his presidency. Most Russians today believe that Stalin ?did more good than bad?.
Once Putin anointed Dmitry Medvedev as President last year and himself became Prime Minister, a new pseudo-duality emerged in Russian politics. Medvedev was tasked with the role of ?good cop? to Putin?s ?bad cop?, i.e. the former would act as a relatively liberal politician who takes a grimmer view of the excesses Stalin committed during his long stewardship.
Last Friday, on a Russian holiday devoted to the memory of millions of Stalin?s victims, President Medvedev warned the populace to avoid forgetting the strongman?s atrocities. As a subtle foil to Putin, Medvedev argued, ?Now we can hear voices saying that these numerous deaths were justified by some supreme goals of the state. Nothing can be valued above human life, and there is no excuse for repressions.?
Similar political football has been played with the legacy of Mao Zedong in China, depending on which faction of the Chinese Communist Party had the upper hand at a given point in time after the Great Helmsman passed away.
In contemporary Egypt, the legacy of former President and Arab nationalist icon Gamal Abdel Nasser is likewise muddled by the regime survival techniques of the current dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak as well as broader region-wide Arab despair that no current leader dares to challenge Israel and America. 39 years after Nasser?s death, ?Nasserism? continues to have appeal as a form of unifying resistance distinct from divisive Islamic fundamentalism.
One instance of a leader?s legacy being deliberately forgotten or covered up for political expediency is Cambodia?s Pol Pot. The man responsible for committing genocide on his own people between 1975 and 1979 is hardly known to the younger generation of Cambodians today because successive regimes depended on his Khmer Rouge and obfuscated facts. So, 80% of young Cambodians recently admitted that their knowledge of Pol Pot?s deeds was ?poor? or ?very poor?. Many of them were bewildered to learn details of his murderousness for the first time from a war crimes tribunal.
As political ground shifts relentlessly, remembering, forgetting and revising leaders? legacies is permanent work-in-progress. The anxieties, hopes and calculations of the present shade this charade of reinterpreting the past.
The author is associate professor of world politics at the OP Jindal Global University