Yeh jo deshbhakti hai tera…
We’ve successfully created ourselves a world where we have to keep going back to the dictionary to be sure. Words change with time and so…
We’ve successfully created ourselves a world where we have to keep going back to the dictionary to be sure. Words change with time and so do their meanings. What doesn’t change though is our persistent attempt at distorting the essence. Yesterday, i ranted on how profound concepts — be it feminism or liberalism or nihilism or nationalism or conservatism or other such isms — are getting tweaked so easily for ulterior means. Infuriatingly enough, the skewed version of a given concept is presented as the whole truth when it’s clearly not. Nothing ever created by humans is perfect. This is as true for the scriptures as it is for the most modern innovations. They are all flawed, perfectly garnished by unavoidable mortal flaws. But being flawed doesn’t make them irrelevant. Take for instance, the case of nationalism.
Going back to the dictionary, this is what the word means today.
When Gandhiji was walking our streets and helping us build the notion of a nation, nationalism meant only one thing: love for your land. The sense of superiority was neither required nor warranted. Basic patriotism was more than enough to arouse the crowd. Small surprise why the concept of nationalism not only helped our forefathers — a lot of them quit lucrative jobs to join the freedom struggle — to step together towards a unified cause. Fortunately, this concept didn’t stop at gaining independence. The spirit of nationalism continued after the Partition as well. The founding fathers kept reminding the countrymen that nation comes first and everything else, later. A belief that continues to keep India united for the most part in spite of seasonal frictions.
Fast forward to 2017, the word nationalism means something else. As churlish as it may sound, it points to the impossible task of loving one’s country all the time. Any concept that exists today owes its presence to the most central of all human emotions: love. Nothing else. If you are a feminist, you love the possibility of seeing a world where women gain (not granted) the status they indubitably deserve. Similarly, if you are a conservative, you are in love with the values that helped build the society in the first place. And so on and so forth. Love is the common factor in all the concepts in the market today. Hatred might be a gigantic force but it never started anything. For a concept to take birth, love is a must.
However, if you love something wholeheartedly, there are going to be moments when you will be fed up of what you can’t otherwise live without. Parents are bound to hate their kids sooner or later and the kids are nurtured so that they can hate their parents someday. It’s going to be a seesaw of love and hate. Chances are that one side stays up longer than the other. And this relationship quotient applies to country too. It’s well nigh ludicrous to presume that you will be in love with your nation 24/7. There are going to be days when you’ll read about the advents of more prosperous countries and feel let down by your country. There are going to be days when you’ll confront fellow citizens’ acute lack of civility and you’ll take it out on the country instead. There are going to be days when you’ll be disappointed in how little you could do for your country. There are going to be days when you might want to leave everything behind and supplant to Iceland. But these feelings fade away and you’ll be back to oneness with your land of origin. Whatever nationalism means or doesn’t.