Skip to main content

The nationalism conversation you never had (but it's never too late either)

Let me open with: Between the two—being Indian or being from your home town, what are you (if one had to be right and the other wrong)? The catch: One is true, automatically making the other one false. In my case, it will be Am I Indian, or am I Bengalurian? Chances are that the one that's true will have to be I am Bengalurian. Being Bengalurian first makes me Indian as much as being from Dusseldorf or Reykjavik doesn't, and being from Pune, Delhi, or any place in today's India makes someone else Indian. If you're still confused, get your probability calculators out and figure that one out. 

That the case, being Indian has to, therefore, be a sum total of being a Bengalurian, Dilliwalla, Kolkatan, <every single Indian place with people>...n.  This exhaustive list incorporates every element of life including food, lifestyle, religion, social values etc. that each of these people live by, even those that don't make the common majority of what that collectively involves. It is also, more importantly, a bottom up structure implying what India is, rather than telling us what we should be - essentially a non-interfering model. It's impossible to not be Indian if India is where you're from and you live as you please, unless you are being a general nuisance or causing a fall of law and order. There's nothing you specifically have to do to earn the tag. It's simply everything you are.

Overtime, we've turned it around. When our strength should be respecting uncommon differences, we've established mainstream, ignoring them. The larger, louder majority gets to define and regulate cultural rights and wrongs especially with respect to language and nationalism. A true idea of India serves each one of us. Now, the lesser different among us must serve this strange idea of India. It doesn't really add up and become relatable, if it doesn't really represent you. 

Nation pride is merely a habit. All the home dynamics play out there exactly as it does at home. It is also an economic construct, a necessary one so it can sustain a country. It should not be understood beyond this. Your country may or may not be the best country in the world. It will not be everyone else's to love as much their own countries. You can call it out its ills for what they are without intending for it to look bad when your only other option is to let it be as bad as it is. 

The nationalism model you follow must not be a blindfold that doesn't let you reason. There is nothing sacred about nation and country that you should not ever be able to question. The fears of those who reject this idea are unfounded. They refuse to recognise the uncommon differences of those to whom else their country is home. Their solace should be that home is home and it becomes a way of life that is meant to make, build and benefit us, which it doesn't always. Questioning removes the oppression - making it a good thing. As matter of fact, nationalism should be self questioning and critical. That's how your national heroes aren't turned into god men and your ideas into sacred idols.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Does your politics make you a pig?

Time, despite the inevitable changes, needs a few constants otherwise we lose ourselves, like manners i.e. civility, grace, respect - that age-old value that can seem really old school sometimes. The manners that maketh the man, they say. They also mark the man apart by miles from those people with lesser or, worse, none of this standard. This golden role can be offered no excuse, none at all. The problem, however, arises with the ongoing intense political age where person and politics know no boundaries. Intentional politicking usually involves supporting one side in total, including its bad parts, to avoid the fallouts of the other side(s) in total to achieve the best world possible yet. Depending on how desperate you are for that world, reason starts to fade, irrationality takes its place and you can't make out the difference between the two.  That's when you lose the manners that maketh you. Name-calling, condescending, patronizing and other collectively influenced adverse...
Post a Comment
Read more

Anything but a headless response

When information overwhelms us, oversimplification is the order of the day - or that is the modern state that we have evolved to (if you'd like to call that modern). We are not capable of the patience of taking in, and keeping every detail, while we build a story that's truly worthy of all of them. That is the unfortunate case with how we react when we most need to, like the Nice killing.  Let's look at the information and calculate the oversimplification. We can, then, get a clearer picture and choose an adequate response.  The Information :  The adherents of extremist belief have decided that their belief ranks above humanity, enough to consider another human worthless (and worthy of death) just because they celebrate other values. One set of sacred values directly, and oppositely, clashed with another like they were sworn enemies to begin with - except that they were not.  It's just the wrong place for both to exist together. The...
Post a Comment
Read more

...and then they came for you

Sometimes it takes what seems like the wrong punch to get the right effect by an expected person - like the recent backlash by many Muslim countries about Nupur Sharma's statements on Prophet Mohammed. Just a disclaimer though: their response is not a complete defense of what many Indian Muslims go through in a stated secular country like India - whether it is by the 1976 assertion of "secular" in the Preamble or the claim that Hinduism is anyway secular making the former unnecessary. The international response is on an equal level to how many Muslims are made to face struggles at home in India. The mirror just flipped. It's all show and no substance, just with a different name.  The countries, which registered their opposition, practice a somewhat equal intolerance of beliefs other than theirs, as does the Hindutva brigade that has been on the rise in the past few months, whose words these very countries have raised an issue with. They, both, have the same cultura...
Post a Comment
Read more