Virat, you didn’t see that coming?

In plain sight, there is little incentive for anyone to be patriotic in a poor country. Seemingly, it’s far less for a 20-something who is basking in the fame and perks of a successful career in competitive sports, armed with multi-million dollar contracts and recently married to one of the leading ladies of tinsel town. His fairy tale wedding was proof enough that he had escaped the fate of failed young men in this country – an undesirable marriage as a social punishment for career failures, the kind of marriage which is assigned as social work to men who couldn’t succeed in their youth. Yet there is a kind of fate that Indian celebrities like Indian cricket team captain Virat Kohli have preferred for themselves. It’s something that we miss while reacting to how Panna Lal Shakya, MLA from Guna constituency in Madhya Pradesh, questioned Virat’s patriotism for marrying in Italy.

To get to the point of how celebrities have contributed to such absurd scrutiny, first it’s important to get rid of a red-herring spotted in indignant response to the legislator’s remarks.The point isn’t how the venue for marriage can be a measure of Virat’s patriotism – that’s an argument that’s deflecting the more basic question to be asked. The primary question to be raised is: Why is a sportsperson, like any other career professional, expected to love his country at all? Why this a priori expectation of being a patriot at the first place?

Explanations for that can range from ideas entrenched in popular psyche about our ownership of our icons to the political narratives of the times. But, that can’t absolve Indian celebrities from their culpability in reinforcing such unrealistic expectations. As argued by this writer in a recent piece, among other reasons, the collectivity of individual inclinations as well as mass psychology of inadequacy have ensured that Indians tend to seek vicarious fulfilment of emotions and virtues through their heroes – ranging from group identity and nationalism to human traits like humility and magnanimity.

That being a given, image-conscious celebrities have made it a point to cultivate a type of persona that’s positioned to leverage most acceptability from emotional demands and sense of virtuosity coming from the base of mass adulation: people looking for embodiment of cherished values. On an average day, for instance, Virat would go that extra mile to be seen as a patriot, mouth sweet nothings like how victory for the country is more important than his personal milestones of centuries or man of the match awards. Wearing the team spirit, a short hand for national sentiment, on the sleeves is something he can’t claim any aversion to. It’s obvious that he can be seen showing that eagerness to be seen on the right side of all national causes – from sanitation to armed forces welfare and of course, protection of environment and preferably, women’s safety too.

The fact that sporting performance is synonymous with national glory in India is something that Virat is quite aware of, for the sake of his marketability, if not for anything else. While George Orwell might have described modern sports as ‘war minus shooting’ seven decades ago, its resonance in cricketing passions of the country could be felt in last four decades. One may still remember what former Deputy Editor of The Telegraph, Sumir Lal wrote in a piece for the 15th Anniversary issue of Outlook. “My greatest day of regret was one of the Telegraph’s best days of sale: a front-page banner headline I wrote during the 1996 cricket World Cup that screamed, ‘India Forces Pak to Surrender’. The headline could not have been any different or any bigger had it been a story on an actual war,” Lal recalled.

Patriotic posturing isn’t restricted to sports icons. The stars of the silver screen, another national obsession, are equally keen to display their love for the land. That’s where the stakes of their appeal and showmanship are, assuming they have little talent and affection for their craft. So you have Amitabh Bachchan rooting for any Indian excelling in any part of the world, snubbing anyone criticising any Indian performance in an international contest and, of course, taking offence to the Bollywood nomenclature, as according to him, it smacks of imitating Hollywood.

So does the Khan triumvirate. Shah Rukh Khan has gone on record in the 1990s to claim the global blockbuster Titanic was an anglicised shadow of Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, apart from extending his on-screen patriotic persona of Swadesh and Chak De India to public messaging about love for the country. So has Aamir while stretching his reel life avatars in Lagaan and Rang De Basanti, and maudlin blend of social causes and patriotic righteousness in the TV show Satyamev Jayate.

Both stars know how minor detours from the nationalist track can cause a backlash and can cost them their popular image. Shah Rukh’s experience stems from the reactions to a statement about missing Pakistani cricketers in the Indian Premier League (IPL) and uproar over Aamir’s statement about growing intolerance were enough to remind them to stick to their carefully nurtured public projections. Salman’s corny promotion of the rather cloyingly branded social organisation and merchandise chain Being Human also comes across as a part of that public image management exercise following a slew of criminal allegations against him.

The conformity to popular expectations, however, don’t stop at sounding patriotic – it also ensured the stars make the effort to be seen as virtuous in other ways too. Humility, expectedly, is in great demand as if to make the adoring fans feel a little less bad about their own ordinariness and banal lives. Sachin Tendulkar, Virat’s illustrious predecessor in batting stardom, could be seen as the most alert respondent to that demand, and hence, a beneficiary of goodwill too.

Such expectations also become part of journalistic judgments about public figures. Eight years ago, in a perceptive piece about Sachin’s legacy in popular perceptions, journalist and novelist Manu Joseph talks about the high premium we place on humility in judging people and what it actually deprives us of. “No other nation is as fond of this line: ‘What strikes you about him is his humility’. It is a compliment usually given to a celebrity with good manners, who has made a journalist feel comfortable, who has offered him a glass of water to drink. How many times have we seen Tendulkar being described as humble, and readily accepted that view. And his self-centered caution that ensures he does not always speak his mind, are we misinterpreting that disappointing aspect of his personality for humility? He might be humble, as somehow required by all his devotees, but my point is we don’t know,” Joseph observes.

We may add to the adjectives that celebrities seem to have invited for themselves. That’s part of their bid to appear as someone who could be more acceptable as a sum total of many desirable selves and the cathartic embodiment of emotions of their legions of admirers. For their own position on the pedestal, they can’t afford to appear their usual and ordinary selves – something you and me already are. For every absurd statement that a Panna Lal makes about the marriage venue, there is always a celebrity like Virat to be held guilty for. Not because of his choice of country to get married in, but because he, like most celebrities in India, is keen on, and thrive on, making people believe in their nativist love. That’s a cost the stars have invited upon themselves.