Pseudo patriotism

A couple of weeks ago, I had a little debate with a young friend of mine. My fireflies...

I have been thinking after our little debate the other evening about the attitude that seems to be the norm nowadays with young, educated and bright Indians - indifference mingled with cynicism, coupled with a "what's India got to do with me anyway" stance- altogether a pronounced disenchantment with the cause of the very nation whose identity is yet so young. While the statement that "India will never make it" built on intellectual platitudes is obviously a pained reaction to the economic, social and political state that our country is in right now (how well I know this reaction! How many times in the past have I argued on these very lines!), I think its high time that we think through something before we put forward our views. That brings me to the very crux of the argument as I saw it that night- Pseudo-patriotism as you call it (by the way this term denotes those swayam sevaks who call themselves true Indian nationalists on the basis of being Hindus). Wonder what patriotism really is in the first place. If we can define that perhaps we might even agree on what aspect of loving one's land, its culture, its people, the struggles it is coming to terms with and the ways and means through which it is trying to come to terms with those can be termed "pseudo". Don't get me wrong- as I see it there is no need to defend anyone's position neither yours nor mine (and no I am not at all angry, that's not the reason I didn't reply back to your sms). But having come a full circle through almost similar kind of rather extremist/pessimist views, I can say that I do understand the drive to argue for the sake of an argument.

Having said that, over the years, I have also learned to argue for nothing that I have not completely processed in my thought thoroughly and when I see someone young (as I once was) going through the same struggle, I feel its up to me to try stop you and ask you to look within yourself and resolve the issues within first before you form an opinion. As you grow up, you will realize often that quoting someone is less important than having realized that truth for oneself from within. If you had been into the whole debate-elocution routines in your college, I am sure you do realize that laughing anyone's opinion off is not the point of a debate. Nor is condemning. What we humans try through every means of communication is to get the other party to see what you mean and where you come from when you mean that. And certainly not to try change the other party into your photocopy.

When we try to coin a new term, what we really are trying is to fit things into a "box". You know terms like "pseudo-patriotism"- it shows we try to understand the other person's point of view, cannot really come to terms with it, think its source might be shallow and hence fit into the box of "pseudo". And lo and behold, I am superior to you because I cant think like you and if you can think like this, it has to be that you are either wrong/shallow. We will come back to the conformist attitude later. But the presumption in your statement about me living abroad for 10 years and hence being a pseudo-patriot is that one's relationship to his roots is directly proportional to the actual physical distance between him and those. In other words if, one becomes a patriot by passively staying in the country and a pseudo-patriot by searching for ones individual goals in a setting larger than one's country. There are a lot of things mixed up obviously here.

Do you realize that most of us "middle class people" in India are already uprooted from our indigenous cultures? My parents moved from their village to the state capital, started their own life there and were as distant in terms of the time taken to reach this place from Hyderabad as the time needed for me to get to Hyderabad from Europe (yes 10 hours). And yet the tradition I fall back on is that of Andhra and not telengana. By tradition I mean the lilt in my language, the festivals we celebrate, the literature I derive pleasure from, the values and principles we rely on, the food we eat, the customs we hold on to, in short, the way of life I inherited. From my personal experience therefore, the distance physical or empirical between your roots and you do not determine how much you adhere to or rely on them. The choice of course has to be a conscious one. How many in India turn to "western" value system, principles and way of life? What would you make of them? True upholders of the Indian way of life?

You also spoke about the "Mittals" versus "Rockefellers". I do understand what you mean by the "cheap Indian mentality" that you describe whereby according to you we Indians dont really bother about others and all that matters is our comfort (which by the way is not unique to Indians). But you should know that idealism and realism do not co-exist in an argument (they might in real life!). The US is not a great place to live in because of Rockefellers and for every one of those Rockefellers and Bill Gates there are at least a hundred millionaires who would much rather splurge on their cats and dogs than think of the starving millions in the other side of the globe. Yes the world would be a better place if they all behaved humanely but then there is no world if there is no conflict. Yes and about our economic debacles, do you realize that Mittal didn't earn his money in India? And that it was not easy for a tata or a birla to make his millions? That Kirloskars had been out beaten by Toyota although they started off in the same way purely owing to the half baked communistic ideals that were woven into the fabric of our policies? But turn it around- in 1991 after our gold was pledged (remember how close were to going bankrupt?), we learnt our lessons and see where we are in 2006. If you try understanding the history and where we come from, you will begin to see where we are headed too.

Sorry for the digression but lets come back to what you feel I don't know and hence have a rosy picture of things in India. For this you need to understand one thing though – the India that I'd left had no "India shining" label attached to it. All the glamour that it could conjure up was national geographic photographs of starving women who could be killed as and when men wanted to, naked sadhus and snake charmers. It is this India that I cherished- it is this very same India that within a few years was to be projected as one of the most influential economies of the coming years. It is this India that I always believed will reach its potential- the hard way, but reach it will. Sadly, it is this India that had fallen under a spell of pre-independence era indifference and apathy and now after 60 years of independence, we are still arguing with the younger generation about why they shouldn't give up hope. This despite baffling figures – economically, politically and socially, we did made huge strides in these sixty years. Show me one country in the whole world with as many different languages, religions, cultures and traditions (save a single period of emergency), could democratically continue on a path to progress?

The lament your generation has is that this is too slow. But the path we chose long ago is a path that is the toughest. And yet would any of us bear to look at the alternative? Can you imagine in other words to be in a nondemocratic society? If one were to look carefully at the nearest metaphor to the alternative (think of a country), our values are self evident – it is rooted in the improvement of human situation above economic realities. But lets first think about progress-what is progress? Is it related to our GDP? Our economic growth? Our political stability? Infrastructure? Progress is striving for perfection. The economic figures alone wont do it. Why then do Japanese have one of the highest rates of suicides in this world?

A cure-all for poverty, subjugation, lack of resources and in general human misery doesn't exist. As you said, education might help alleviate some problems- to be specific it can create awareness of individual rights and responsibilities in a population but education as a "box" to fit in all problems sadly doesn't exist. Do you know the literacy rate in the U.S is 97% what is its current unemployment rate? What is its crime rate? When we start thinking that our path is wrong, we have to evaluate first the parameters by which is seems wrong and only the second step should be try find alternatives and solutions. But as I keep saying, your generation is quite happy judging the path rather than evaluating it. Perhaps this is the paradox after all, that after 60 years of independence, we still remain largely in apathy to current situation.

All I wanted to say is that intelligent Indians such as you should not fall into the trap of cynical apathy. After all, it is the easiest stance to take. Never fail to ask yourself the question first before you judge anything- policy, situation, morals, values- anything at all. And it is indeed from within that you will find answers to what is the definition of patriotism. And last but not the least, never fail to argue. The one thing I cant stand in people is inability to accept the fervor of an argument. Life without debate is not worth it.