A leader is just a comma

This article is dedicated to the memory of JRD Tata, whose 120th birth anniversary is on July 29.

- R GOPALAKRISHNAN

Leaders rarely display selfdeprecating humour in public. To his credit, Rishi Sunak did so in the British Parliament last week when he spoke about "having achieved, at age 44, a bright future that is behind". More commonly, we witness the leadership afflictions of charisma, megalomania, and cult. Mercifully, many leaders minimise bad effects through the art of humble leadership; they imagine their tenure as just a comma, though an important one, in the long sentence of history. About a decade ago, I had written a book about social change in India from the 1800s through the eyes of six generations of my ancestors from a village in Thanjavur. Titled A Comma in a Sentence, that book has inspired the headline of this piece.

Voltaire had said, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." Messiahs with names beginning with M - like Mahadev, Moses, and Mohammed invoke God by promising a golden period if only people would heed them. For contemporary leaders, however, invoking God borders on danger. As writer Ferdinand Mount points out, "lay people must do their best to be alert to an upcoming Caesar with his relentless egoism, lack of scruple, thoughtless brutality, and cheesy glitz" (Big Caesars and Little Caesars).