Politicians in India have come to acquire a rather nasty image. In such a scenario, images of the Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar come out strikingly different.
Soon after his coming to power, the Patna West MLA and a close friend of Nitish Kumar, Naveen Kumar Sinha passed away. The pictures taken at the time showed a tearful Nitish as he attended his creamation. Nitish lost his wife a couple of months back due to pneumonia complications. People saw a grieving CM captured weeping inconsolably on TV as he took her for her last rites.
Just a couple of days back, there was the sudden death of the Bihar Education Secretary on whom Nitish was relying very heavily to bring in reforms in the education system. Picutres of Nitish were published with visibly moist eyes as he went to pay his last respects.
Conditioned as we are by the culture of the modern Indian metros (and away from the rural culture of India), we may find such public display of emotion rather odd.
The western culture even considers tears in the eyes of an adult male as a sign of wekaness. However, expression of such genuine human emotions can only come from a man deeply imbued in humanism. Only a person who is confident will not feel shy to show his emotions even under the glare of media. It feels great that even today, such a humanist is able to hold his own in rough and tumble of Indian politics. This certianly fills me with a lot of hope and optimism.