The glorification of criminal sociopath!

First and foremost I am a Barun Sobti fan and have been ecstatic and excited at the same time to watch him after many years. However, I am appalled and feel compelled to challenge a main premise of this serial's producer and try to restore a literary concept to its proper meaning.


I am dismayed to hear Advay is referred to as "antihero. I assume that either the writers who confer this designation are uneducated or they are trying to convince us to redefine our values in the same way that the manufacturers of violent video games try to convince us that killing other living beings is a supreme pleasure.

This character is not an antihero. He is, in the language of literary classification, simply a sociopath. This term, sociopath is old and venerable, although it has fallen out of use in our description of the evil characters in narrative fiction. There is no doubt that sociopaths fascinate us. Great sociopaths are among literature's best written characters. Iago, Milton's Satan, Professor Moriarty, Javert these characters draw us in and fix our imaginations as much as do the "heroes of their stories.

The primary difference between the antihero and the sociopath is moral. The sociopath has rejected the value of moral community, moral action, and moral sentiment. The human (and humane) values of love, loyalty, generosity, compassion, justice, and honesty are absent in the villain. The self of the sociopath is an empty space, filled and refilled with delusions of power derived from the suffering of others delusions that only serve to expand the emptiness and demand more, and more vicious, acts of predation on his fellow human beings.

The antihero does not lack a moral center. His moral code is clear to him even if it is not apparent to us. He rejects the conventional morality of the majority who venerate the status quo while continually chafing at it. He also resists the morality of the elites whom he alienates by his blunt rejection of their claim that their values are also his. He follows his own moral imperative, which leads him to do whatever damage is required to people and institutions whose interests he must oppose for a greater good.

As I look at the new series of IPKKND that celebrate the criminal sociopath and the makers who label him antihero, I am somewhat uncertain of the thinking that misnames evil in order to praise its artistic value. I am willing to explore that concept of "the beauty of evil that was celebrated by Baudelaire and his contemporaries. And if the TV producers want us to delight in evil for whatever reason, let them tell us so, boldly and straightforwardly. Advay is an evil character not an anti hero. Please don't misguide viewers and take advantage of Mr Sobti's charm.