Hero’s journey
Reaction to Albert Einstein’s seemingly racist diary entries reveals much about the nature of adulation
It may be pointless to argue that the private thoughts of a man long deceased may not be reason enough to question his public, deliberate statements.
In 1933, when he moved to the United States, Albert Einstein was shocked at segregation in schools, public transport, bathrooms. Subsequently, he became an advocate for racial equality, comparing the way African Americans were treated with Jews in Nazi Germany. In fact, for the vast majority that isn’t able to comprehend the intricacies of theoretical physics, it is Einstein the humanitarian — made popular through the repeated citations of his quotations — that they are acquainted with. The anger and shock at the racist comments from his (personal) travel diaries from 1922-23, then, reveals more about the contemporary need for heroes, and the ways in which they are brought down.
In the age of Cambridge Analytica, Aadhaar and sting operations, it may be pointless to argue that the private thoughts of a man long deceased may not be reason enough to question his public, deliberate statements. Or that these are the diaries of a man still forming himself in a different time and place, long before he became a champion for equality and non-violence. It is, of course, disturbing to read of the wizened genius, seen in posterity with wise, kind eyes and shock of white hair, calling the Chinese a “filthy and obtuse people” or Sri Lankans as “living in great filth”. But the larger question is this: Why should an exceptional scientist, a genius, be an infallible moral guide as well?
Perhaps it is in the nature of adulation to assume the best of those we admire. But Wagner was a bigot, Martin Heidegger a Nazi sympathiser, the misogyny of ErnesT Hemingway has been discussed, as also Sir Vidya Naipaul’s view of brown people. And when these facts come out, as when a scientist is deemed racist, there is always an attempt to argue that the hero’s fall must singe her work. To paraphrase Batman, all heroes, if they are around long enough, will see themselves become the villain.
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