For make no mistake, we are part of the apathy, not beyond it
Egyptian pharaoh Rameses II reigned for 66 years from 1279-1213 BCE, leaving behind colossal structures intended to glorify him.
Of him, English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in 1818:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings
Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair!
But while these monuments have survived, Rameses II himself failed to tame time, forgotten now to the mists of history, recalled only through the ruins of his empire.
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The gods have always been all-powerful, but even their power has not been without its comeuppance. Brahma, the creator of this great universe, believed in his omniscience. Who could be more powerful than the lord who had created the very heavens and earth? So, Brahma, mindful of mischief and an attempt to establish his divine domination, decided to whisk away and hide the cowherds accompanying Krishna, in a cave. But Krishna — Vishnu’s omnipotent eighth avatar — was more powerful even than Brahma. Realizing Brahma’s hand in this treachery, Krishna used his great illusory power, or maya, to manifest each of the hidden cowherds, thereby revealing to Brahma that the exaggerated pride in his self was misplaced, and that his overconfidence was injudicious.
The Greeks had a term for this: hubris.
Brahma’s redemption lay in seeking Krishna’s forgiveness, thereby acknowledging his humility. But the acts of the gods are not the ways of humans, whose fatal pride leads not just to their downfall but is often the cause of their misfortune as also of those who surround them.
Ravana was not always the demon we now recognize him as but among the most learned men who had won for himself the boon of indestructability from Brahma himself. But he forgot the caveat that though no gods could destroy him, a mere human being could, and did. Having tempted fate with the kidnapping of Sita, he was, thus, killed by Ram.
Once, Icarus too believed in his infallibility when, flying with the help of wings consisting of iron feathers held in place with the help of beeswax, he thought he could fly all the way to the sun. But the sun’s rays melted the wax, his wings fell away, and Icarus drowned in the sea in which he fell. But had he flown low, Icarus might not have been saved either, for flying over the sea, his wings would have been damaged by seawater. To imagine he had the gift of flight and could challenge the gods was his folly and his undoing.
Out inability to resist belief in our immortality has been the reason why man is doomed to repeat these mistakes, time and again. History is witness to some of the greatest moments of such folly.
Akbar moved his capital from Agra to Fatehpur Sikri in 1571 to commemorate his piety, not realizing that the city he was founding for self-gratification had no source of water, leading to the abandonment of Sikri within years, costing the treasury a huge loss in revenue. Before him, Mohammad bin Tughlaq had moved his kingdom from Delhi to the Deccan in 1327, causing his people untold hardship, resulting in deaths and resentment, causing him to move back to a weakened capital, thereby earning himself the sobriquet of “mad king”. In Bengal, Mir Jafar betrayed the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-din, to strike a deal with the East India Company and snatch power in 1756, only to lose it when he was forced to abdicate, and is today regarded as a traitor.
In more recent history, Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency in 1975, jailing political leaders who opposed her, snatching away freedom from the very people who had voted her to power, only to lose it all when she called for elections in 1977.
Bollywood superstar Rajesh Khanna fell to his own pride and belief in invincibility, passing away in unknown ignominy, neglected by the very public that had once labelled him a “phenomenon”.
Gurus Asaram and Ram Rahim are in jail over their belief that they could manipulate disciples and ashram funds as they chose. In Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina lost her popularity through her increasingly autocratic ways till a civil surge against her leadership led to her fall and exile in 2024, while those who surrounded her languish in the shadows as the country’s interim administration hopes to mete out justice for crimes committed against its citizenry in a show of authoritarian power.
American author and political activist, Marianne Williamson tells us: “Empires always have the hubris to think they are indestructible, when in fact they are always unsustainable.” So, we might well ask whether hubris, hitherto an individual malaise, is in danger of being institutionalized? The signs that point to it are everywhere.
“Hubris is interesting, because you get people who are often very clever, very powerful, have achieved great things,” Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan, tells us, “and then something goes wrong – they just don’t know when to stop.” Was it such a moment when Donald J. Trump, who lost at the hustings in 2019, catalysed a popular uprising in an attempt to stay on in office? That uprising – Trump’s hubris – was crushed; but now that he has begun his second term, is it right to ask whether the hubris was his alone, or the collective hubris of a section of the American public who deluded themselves into thinking they were unassailable? It is a question worth answering, for actor Kevin Spacey once presciently said, “We’re all victims of our own hubris at times.”
Among the rich, hubris can lead to poor decisions, such as Marie Antoinette’s “Let them have cake” moment when the poor in France demanded bread to stave off hunger. To entertain the under-priviliged with posts on social media of unabashed wealth and its crass consumption is to unleash hedonistic mayhem when all they want is employment and security from hunger. Reels of the brand-toting wealthy living lives of unabashed decadence surrounded by the symbols of their Gastsby-esque lives – private jets, luxury cars, palaces for homes, reaching, quite literally for the stars – may feed their curiosity but not their stomachs. For those too wealthy to see outside their bubbles, not all the wealth of nations will be able to stave off hubris when it comes riding in on a chariot of righteousness, impending disaster. That Vijaya Malaya and Nirav Modi had to go into hiding as fugitives from justice in India is to point out the obvious – that you can pull wool over people’s eyes once, even twice and thrice, but not for ever. For, to tempt the gods is to invite their wrath by pushing boundaries not considered acceptable behaviour, as others too have discovered to their misfortune. To not heed it is to be blind to the signs on the wall in which redemption follows loss of all that one held dear.
The pitfalls are many, easily visible to many
But here’s the irony. It isn’t being wealthy or powerful that is the tragic flaw in society. Indeed, wealth and power are essential for creating opportunities for millions of people, provided they are used the right way. If the pitfalls are all too evident in new, shining, rapidly developing India in which a minuscule percentage of the rich and the powerful rule over the largest population of the poor and marginalised, it is their philanthropy and the ability to change systems that move millions out of poverty towards the security they seek and deserve.
Hubris is the crippling debilitation that occurs when some among us – whether politician or bureaucrat, industrialist or professional (in whatever field) believe themselves too powerful to be fallible. When our own success blinds us, we are prone to lose our way within our own dazzling heights.
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest of them all?
There is, alas, no correct answer to that, as there isn’t to any of the pegs of power or success that we wrap ourselves in. For every one of us must surrender our ego if we are truly to count for what we gave rather than what we built.
For every connoisseur of watches or carpets or wines or first-edition books or art, there is someone better, more informed, more charismatic. For every leader, there is another more powerful. For every industrialist, there is someone waiting to take over. As Greek philosopher Heraclitus first said, “The only constant in life is change.”
So, wear the watch, walk over the carpet, drink the wine, read the book, admire the art without condescending to those whose sensibilities are less developed, whose knowledge is a little less, whose wealth might not afford them these treasures.
The good examples: humility in all our endeavour
For, we admire humility perhaps even more than we admire success. Narayan Murthy and his cohorts created a world-class company while remaining grounded, preferring to live simply despite the crores he is worth (well, okay, he did create a minor kerfuffle when he suggested people put in more working hours in the week). Can we think of a more humble industrialist than Ratan Tata in public life who preferred the company of his dogs to socialising? Chef Vikas Khanna’s gratefulness shines through in the food he prepares at his Michelin-awarded Bungalow in New York, yet he appears just as happy doing service at the langar in Amritsar’s Golden Temple. Few will know what former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s daughters – professional ladies all with careers – do in real life, staying shy of any publicity?
These are heartwarming examples of people who have not curried the favour in public durbars, choosing the quiet of their own lives while their work alone speaks for them. Though there are countless examples of this, it is the few bad apples that spread the rot. Their noise drowns out the greater good of the majority. Is it weak to be humble?
According to William Penn, “An able and yet humble man is a jewel worth a kingdom.”
Rapacious greed blinds men to their folly
But because the powerful appear omnipotent and are more visible, they seem, too, to be endemic. In a season where to get ahead of others is a motive in itself, unlike the contentment the sacred books preach, the malaise appears at every level of society. Who in uniform does not suffer it—the government school teacher in a remote taluk who cares a whist about classes, the policeman who scavenges over his petty fiefdom, the clerk in the electricity office, the man who comes to read your water meter, the civil servant occupying the highest office? Were it not for the recent changeover to the private sector for the many services that we take for granted today, these might not have been as easily available too us. Remember the days when the middle-classes were held to ransom by the power wielded by the telephone linesman, the gas distributor, the bank teller?
Not that the private sector is averse to its own trysts with hubris? Who can forget the founder of an airline—now in jail—who thought nothing of siphoning of funds that were not his to purloin? The education platform that grew so big on the young’s quest for quality education, it overstepped its jurisdiction? The real-estate major (or, indeed, majors) who took away public money to fund vanity projects, leaving thousands homeless? What of the contractors and builders whose bridges and flyovers collapse, their apartments fall? Did they think of themselves beyond justice—if not in the courts of law, then in the assembly of gods? Or is the mammon they worship so omnipotent, their greed so avaricious, that the lives of others count for so little in their quest for untold riches and fortune? Do they consider themselves untouchable because they can buy their way to whatever their desire? Time will dull their arrogance too – if only they knew.
The Fourth Estate: is it any better?
What of the fourth estate itself? Does it fulfil the role that it takes responsibility over? Are judgements pronounced in newsrooms the voice of the sycophant seeking favours? “In the days of Caeser, kings had fools and jesters,” laughed broadcast journalist Ted Koppel who anchored American programme Nightline for 25 years. “Now network presidents have anchormen.” Verily, no news is dependable, views are skewed, ownership and influence sway the deliverance and our consumption of information. What India truly needs to know is how—and why—news became a commodity. The collected submission of our willing beliefs and minds to news anchors who manipulate public opinion is part of a larger malady—that of indoctrination over social media platforms. No wonder the fortunes of our anchormen on television hangs on a balance in which speaking truth to power, alas, needs resuscitation in an ICU.
And if pride comes before a fall, our political classes epitomise the swindling of common good for personal gain (mercifully, only for some) or to leave behind an imprint in history as it gets written, then rewritten, again and again (for others), each palimpsest hiding half lies and half-truths from which to sift the chaff is nigh impossible. These, our public gods, who we vote to power and appoint to office, wield authority over a sixth of humanity, control resources, and hold the keys to our collective futures. Are they thoughtfully conscious of it, or rapaciously needy? Do they work for a common good or private coffers? When they respond to their chosen calling, are their actions responsible, just, compassionate, or are they steeped in ego, pride and arrogance?
Deliverance might follow, but what is one to make of this egotism, this inability to see beyond the hedonism of the moment? To be so blinded by power that the arc of approaching misfortune stretches too far into the horizon to cause concern. The Bhagavad Gita warns us that “pride, arrogance, conceit, anger, harshness and ignorance – these qualities belong to those of demoniac nature”. Dashrath’s hubris lay in his abiding love of a wife who exiled his heir to the forests. Ram’s hubris lay in his inflexible morality that resulted in the loss of Sita. Yudhishthira’s gambling was an uncontrolled vice that caused the humiliation of Draupadi and the loss of the Pandava empire, resulting in the greatest war of all times and the slaughter of countless lives. Our gods, too often, have proved to have feet of clay, so how, then, can we measure men who are feebler, short-sighted beings by comparison? We fight over that which we cannot control—the caste or community to which we are born, the gods we worship (or not), our identities and transient abodes and offices—yet are unmoved by that which makes our lives better: clean water and air, government services, the state of our roads, the services towards which we contribute taxes that ought to be provided seamlessly but for which we are grateful when they are offered reluctantly and sporadically.
Who is at fault? You or me, or both?
Therefore, it is time to ask: have we been failed by the leaders of our choosing, or have we failed ourselves? Our hubris, then, lies in blind, apathetic, willing acceptance of the circumstances we find ourselves in, even if for no fault of ours, in failing to challenge the status quo, in staying with the flow. Do we deserve the leadership that we surrounds ourselves with? Here, I don’t mean just the pollical class but include those from all spheres around us – the president of the resident’s association, the secretary of the neighbourhood club, the know-it-all on every WhatsApp group, the self-appointed spokesperson of every social gather – who wish to control every aspect of our lives,? Or do we deserve better? Because if their hubris is of their making, so is ours.
The satirist P. J. O’Rourke once said, “Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.” On every day, in every aspect of our life, we can spot it, even identify it – but do nothing to stop it.
Perhaps because we deserve it.
(K. S. Shekhawat is the hubristic pseudonym for this feature writer, preferring the shadows to the public eye. May he be forgiven.)
