I first wrote this on the 14th of August, 2019, for a debate speech, and recently rewrote it. The result is a somewhat well-formatted rant. I’m posting it on Independence Day, 2020, to remind readers in my own small way that discourse is what makes a democracy. We need to keep fearlessly reassessing where we stand and what we stand for in order to achieve progress while still staying true to our ideals.
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The Two sides of Patriotism
What is patriotism?
By definition:
-Devotion to and vigorous support for one’s country – Oxford Languages
-The feeling of loving your country more than any others and being proud of it. – Cambridge English Dictionary
-Patriotism or national pride is the feeling of love, devotion and sense of attachment to a homeland and alliance with other citizens who share the same sentiment. – Wikipedia/adapted from other sources
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We see quite often how concepts, ideas and innovations lose their defined purpose, and even their definition, over time. I believe that patriotism is a prime example of one of these concepts.
Historically, patriotism was definitely important – especially in pre-Independence times. It served noble purposes – like promoting unity in the face of Divide and Rule, bolstering hope in times of loss upon loss and, perhaps most importantly, helping millions who had been reduced to slaves in their own homes by reinstating and amplifying their sense of self-respect and identity.
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As time has passed, patriotism – once a uniting factor – has become an agent of division and a weapon in the hands of the power-hungry. It has become a hollow slogan, a brand, and, worst of all, it has taken on extreme and ugly forms – xenophobia, nationalism and jingoism.
History is repeating itself, but patriotism is playing for the wrong team this time around.
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Commercialization
We’ve all heard lines like – “Kajaria – desh ka cement”, “Be Indian, buy Indo”, or seen uniform-clad soldiers carrying their trusty pan-masala to the border with them in adverts? Patriotism is being heavily capitalized on by industries, individuals, and political parties. The latter even exploit it to garner blind support (making it all the more easy for us to forget that the government isn’t the nation).
Patriotism is a blurry lens which the masses tend to look through, giving them an obscured view of what makes sense and what doesn’t. And this effect is also misused. Today, very few would think to question whether banning Chinese apps was a strategic decision to curb breaches of data privacy, retaliation for border conflict or just a statement. Yet thousands pass on hate, lies and narrow-mindedness via the internet, hiding behind the armour of patriotism, which – as of today – is impenetrable.
Groups, individuals, and institutions are not blind to this fact, and overrating patriotism makes it very easy for them to exploit it.
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The Proof of the Pudding
Apart from its more obviously divisive effects like xenophobia, patriotic divisiveness has taken on a particularly dangerous form in India – the divide between the “patriots” and the “rest”. The “rest” have many names – we’re not picky. The real clincher is that you aren’t a patriot unless you can “prove it”, and to “prove it”, you need to convince this self-appointed mass organization. And this is where a whole new qualification metric is born – What decides who a patriot is? Who decides what a patriot is?” The patriotism metric has made it very easy for some, and very difficult for others, to justify their ideologies and intentions.
If patriotism was really as simple as “love for your nation”, no one would ask you or force you to prove it. As Kanhaiya Kumar said –
“Assume that a crowd comes to you waving a flag and chanting a slogan, let it be Inquilab Zindabad or Jai Sriram. How do you feel if they say to you “If you love your mother, prove it” How would you answer? And so do all of us. This is our country. We love this. Love is not something that is put on display. We feel pride in our hearts”
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The Power of a Symbol
In an environment where we feel pressured to give our emotions tangible forms, institutions and symbols make it very easy to overcompensate. Sloganeering, flag-waving, boycotting foreign goods, celebrating Independence Day and Republic Day and singing the national anthem cannot help but feel hollow and tainted. In situations like this, it is all too easy for us to associate our love or attachment with symbols. Several who claim to be patriotic do not reflect the basic sentiment in their actions: they do not question bad policies, or help their fellow citizens, or keep the streets clean.
This is another example of an inherently positive concept being taken out of context – the purpose of national days of celebration, and symbols like the flag and the anthem, is supposed to be to remind us of our collective spirit and identity, and to commemorate a shared history. These are mediums of unity and commonality, which is very important in a country as diverse as ours.
But in the new patriotism culture and the turbulent atmosphere of fear, I can’t help but feel that at an individual, subconscious level, this intended purpose has been forgotten and an idol-worshipping, shouting-match, broadcasting mentality has swept over.
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The Death of the Patriot
Some may argue that I seem to be describing more extreme concepts than patriotism. This, in itself, speaks volumes. I described how implementation may deviate from definition and even go against it – I believe that in terms of implementation, patriotism has been almost completely replaced by extreme and negative versions of itself:
Nationalism: Identification with one’s own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations. And perhaps, my personal favourite, Jingoism: extreme patriotism, especially in the form of aggressive or warlike foreign policy.
The fact remains that these three are not so far from each other by definition, and in implementation today, I can hardly see the difference. We have rated patriotism so high that it is very very easily morphing into these uglier versions of itself.
On a macro scale, today’s patriotism isn’t a bad thing the same way religion isn’t a bad thing, in the sense that it seems to be doing more harm than good and it is fostering a regressive, divisive and counter-productive mindset. I feel the need to emphasize that perhaps, on its own, this wouldn’t have been the case, but by overrating patriotism, we have enabled this culture of division and hate on the basis of a false metric. We’ve simply inflated it beyond the space it deserves, and this has let it become a weaponized concept.
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The Rebirth of the Patriot?
I will be nothing but hypocritical if I take it upon myself to define what an ideal patriot should be like. And while I have emphasized the extent to which patriotism has been marred and twisted, I can say with equal certainty that it is not completely gone. There are still people who treat love like love: respect and dedication and attachment. We see examples of citizens working to help the underprivileged, or to eradicate stigma, or to reform our culture and society. While most have personal motivations, and many are just doing their jobs or what they feel is right, these people and groups have a positive impact on the nation and it’s progress (in fact, on a pragmatic level, collateral progress seems better than hollow love).
Respecting the right values and uplifting the right examples could go a long way in terms of diminishing the negative impact of neopatriotism and jingoism, and reminding us which actions have real power.
This brings me to a simple but important question – what is a nation?
Is it, as the definition goes, a bordered piece of land with a government and a set of laws? Is that what we love? 3 million square kilometers of land and the sovereign socialist system?
Is it our legacy? Our history? Our revolutions and our wars and our victories and losses?
Or is it us: the people? Every child of every religion and caste and community and subcommunity that just happened to be born within those 3 million square kilometres, and then was raised speaking endemic dialects, reading the ET on Sundays, listening to Lata on the radio, hearing about another bill and another party and another riot, buying chana on the street or selling chana on the street, nursing a chipped glass of chai? Bumping into each other at red lights and theka shops as we live through our very different struggles, 133 crore lives and worlds all superimposed onto each other with a density of 325 thousand per square kilometer.
I will not answer that, because I do not know.
But let’s take a minute to consider what it is that we love.
14/8/2019
15/8/2020