My Hero! Your Hero! Our Hero! Whose Hero?

Usually, heroes are well and clearly identified with certain countries; heroes broadly defined so to say. So if I throw the name of Mark Spitz you will think USA, if I mention the name of Winston Churchill, you will think the UK, if I throw in the name Charles de Gaulle, you will think France, Mahatma Gandhi, you will think India and generally you will be right. Unfortunately, some heroes get pulled and pushed around, long after they are pushing up daisies. Let us take a look at some of the rather interesting and amusing incidents.

The first time I came across such a situation was when I read Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi, wonderful writer, absolutely brilliant book. I very strongly recommend this book; it’s about the perpetual war between Don Camillo, a catholic village priest in the Po River Valley in Italy, and the ccommunist mayor, Peppone. For those who want to compare, think of him as an Italian PG Wodehouse. Anyway, I am digressing from the point. In one of the stories, there is a fight between Don Camillo’s and another village about a local hero, and Don Camillo wins the fight because he finds a hidden treasure trove of 16th century birth’s and death’s register, notes that show the hero was born in his village, and victoriously brings the statue of the hero home from the other village.

And then today I was reminded of it again, when I read that Afghanistan vociferously complained to Pakistan that all of Afghanistan’s old heroes, like Mahmud Ghaznawi, Ahmad Shah Abdali and Shahabuddin Ghauri, were used to name various Pakistani missiles. As it so happens, the reason for Pakistan to name their missiles after these great men, was because these chaps were rampaging marauders, who butchered, raped, robbed and pillaged across India, and Pakistan wanted to send a message to India (very subliminal message, NOT). Be that as it may, Afghanistan’s Information Minister Sayed Makhdum Rahin has sent a letter to the Pakistani Government complaining that these chaps were actually Afghan Heroes, and they (ahem! And I quote), "Their names should be bracketed with academic, cultural and peace-promoting institutions, not with tools of destruction and killing and ... had spread knowledge and civilisation from Afghanistan to the subcontinent of India." I think the Indians may disagree, but that’s not the point.

I can just imagine the shock and consternation when this letter landed on some Pakistani minister’s desk. Here we are, symbols of national identity, named after some deep seated atavistic desire for military might and rampaging, and you take that away? How COULD they? Mind you, Pakistan doesn’t treat its own home-grown heroes properly. Think about another hero, a real bona-fide Pakistani hero, Professor Abdus Salam, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics, was hounded because someone declared him a Kafir (non-muslim) and the poor chap had to leave. Well, given the huge number of Nobel Prize winners in Pakistan, you could easily lose one or two without missing much. Apparently, he was invited back to Pakistan to give a lecture after winning the Nobel Prize, but he didn’t following violent threats by a religious party. So home grown heroes are chased away, and then you go about borrowing some from neighbouring countries who, in turn, moan about misuse of their heroes.

It is almost like the example of Moses. One of the most famous law-givers in world history, but do Egyptians think of him as a home grown hero? Nope, he is Israel’s son. Israel gives lots of examples of this sort nearer to our time. Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, former Minister of Defence and Israel Labour Party chairman - was born in Iraq; David Levy, former Minister of Foreign Affairs - came from Morocco; Silvan Shalom, Minister of Foreign Affairs - was born in Tunisia;; Mordechai Eliyahu, former Sephardic Chief rabbi of Israel - came from Iraq; Shlomo Ben-Ami, academic and former Foreign Affairs Minister of Israel - originated from Morocco; Shaul Mofaz, Israeli Minister of Defence was born in Iran and Moshe Katsav, current President of the State of Israel also came from Iran What do you think of these heroes being considered as heroes in their country of birth? I think Iranian President Ahmadinejad will have an apoplectic fit.

Take a peek at India, celebrating and even borrowing some national heroes from outside, not that there is any paucity of any home-grown and bred Indian hero’s. Not by a long shot! Any time any chap has any Indian blood in him, he is definitely taken on board and chests are thumped. Forget the Indian born / origin Nobel prize winners, think of the latest heroine, Dr. Kalpana Chawla, the lady astronaut who died in the Challenger space shuttle crash. While born in India, she became a naturalised American citizen, but hey, there was a feeling of pride back in India for her to be an authentic Indian heroine.

Here’s another example, one which you all know and will recognise. Albert Einstein, the famous physicist. He originally had German nationality, and then he took up Swiss nationality. He gave up his nationality because he did not want to be drafted into the German Army (at 17, if you were German, you would be forcibly drafted into the German Army and he was a committed and declared pacifist). Then after reconsidering and getting caught up into the Weimar Republic’s dreams and promises, he took up German citizenship gain.

Then again came the time that the Brown shirts were being heavy handed and Jews started to get targeted. So he again gave up German nationality, renounced it and took up American nationality (while, all the time, keeping the Swiss nationality), and the rest is history. The amusing bit is, all three countries - Germans, Swiss and Americans consider him to be one of theirs. He is ranked 10th of the 100 greatest Germans of all time according to a recent survey while we all know how well the Americans think of dear old Albert.

Another German, Karl Marx, also falls roughly in this area. Karl Marx, was rated to be the 4th greatest German of them all in the above mentioned survey (ZDF November 2003). While saying that, no prizes for guessing who else thought Karl Marx was the bees’ knees? An entire ideologically based swathe of nations (the communist bloc) took him and his ideas as their founding hero. Never you mind, that he was actually born in London, UK - just to complicate matters. So if the same logic is applied as Albert Einstein, then the Brits should also have claimed Karl Marx as one of their own. Which, as it turns out, it happened with someone else (just to confuse you some more). Max Born, a German born physicist, was awarded the Nobel Physics prize in 1954 for "his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wave function..for the coincidence method and his discoveries made therewith". The Germans claim him from his birth-place, but since he took up British citizenship after escaping the Nazi Jewish hunt, he ranks amongst the British heroes.

A worse state was in reserve for one Paul Epstein, a brilliant physicist with too many national identities and no nest to call his own. Born in Russia, studied in Germany. He couldn’t take up a job in post war Poland (the Russian district where he was born went into Poland) as he had a German education. He could not teach or work in Germany, as he was considered Polish by virtue of his birth. Russia refused to consider him and anyway, it was too dangerous for him to work there. He could not get a job in Switzerland, and since French, Belgian and English scientists had no contact with Germany, they couldn’t sponsor him. Another German mathematician and scientist, curiously by the same name, had an even worse fate. He got fired from his German university as he was a Jew and finally, the tragedy was that the Gestapo was after him, and not wanting to throw himself to their tender mercies, committed suicide. Here’s an unsung hero, I guess.

Let us take the final example, and this is the funniest, most amusing of the lot. This is to do with an entire country. There is a country called as "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia or (FYROM)". It came into being after Yugoslavia imploded and individual states started to emerge. When I hear Macedonia, I think of Alexander the Great, his illustrious father, Philip of Macedon, but to cut a long story short, this little statelet, called itself as Republic of Macedonia. The Greeks immediately went up in flames, claiming that the Republic of Macedonia was an upstart, Macedonia as a land area is much bigger than that small statelet, the flag which the republic chose was a Greek national symbol (showing the emblem of Philip’s dynasty), and the language in the constitution was expansionary and can provoke separatism in neighbouring countries. Then the United Nations stepped in with a typical compromise. They called the Republic of Macedonia as FYROM. Very confusing issue and it has effectively frozen the debate. With FYROM being considered for EU membership, the issue is still rumbling on. Greece refuses to allow FYROM to join the EU under any name which has Macedonia in it, while FYROM refuses to abandon the name Macedonia. I bet that left you scratching your head, it made my hair hurt after I recovered from the stomach ache left after laughing my head off.

I shouldn’t end this essay without looking at it from the other perspective. People who call themselves heroes and when somebody else reads about this classification, they choke on their tea. Take a look at this quote from every body’s favourite dictator, Idi Amin of Uganda who proudly claimed, "I am the hero of Africa". Even the Ugandans would gibber at the very thought of Idi Amin being the hero of Uganda, let alone all of Africa. A couple of additional self proclaimed African hero’s are Muammar Abu Minyar al-Qaddafi of Libya and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Both love to thump their pigeon chests, both have run their countries to ground, both love to be thought of as heroes and both are considered to be utter dastards by the world. Another one is Mulayam Singh Yadav of India, who calls himself a hero, but has turned out to be your garden variety of corrupt politician unceremoniously turfed out of his government accommodation and his seat of power. How the mighty have fallen indeed.

My editor reminded of the quote by Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), British philosopher who said, "Hero worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom." On the other hand, we need heroes when we are rowing up, they may have feet of clay but they show us the heights which we all can reach; they define mankind’s self actualisation heights. Then again, some are so great, that nations fight over them. It is indeed an amazing and amusing situation, to see people fight over their heroes.