Patriotism sandwiched in Hypocrisy

Galore are the challenges we face in the emerging global order. We have seen the exhilarating spectacle of yesterday’s implacable foes becoming today’s prominent friends, the uncheckable march of consumerisation engulfing into the vital domains of our nervous system, devastation wrought brought by local wars and internecine strife , creation and demolition of power blocks making the route for small powers for a temporary gyroscopic orientations. And all these hurly-burly changes that keep on adding to the ever growing human queries always force us to pause and look into the elucidation in deep detail. This concealed craving in human cerebral hemisphere has given birth to all the scientific evolution that keep on changing the shape of every present and future of human being. Me ,being no exception, stare at some of the societal laws of our value system, to get into the source of this all this confusing compulsions that has been amalgamated into our whole bodily existence. I ,pause ,I think and ask –Am I right ? Or what I visualize and realize are all correct? This dilemma in self realization keeps on haunting me to scrape all the principles of societal obligations and fabricate my own world in my own hands. But Alas!! I find myself too weak to redefine this fixed laws of the Almighty, let alone execution of the same. Most of the time I revolt only to find, I ,being the looser again and again. But In the morning in the dining table, one small discussion among the intellects from our colleagues had banged again my tiny spinal cord to filter out the awful from the rest. The discussion started from the recent cricket tour to Pakistan. Being the hot topic of the town, all were quite energized to contribute their part. The discussions revolved around the way India should play, the issue of support of the Muslims opposing India when India fights with the Pak in the play ground. This topic geared up to produce few debatable topics that had all impressed the political celebrities to generate their citadel of hypnotic political clout. One gentleman questioned the Patriotism shown by the Muslims in India and their love for Pakistan. He questioned the manner in which Muslim populace in side the boarder react when there is a big cricket match on the ground. At the very moment he was bombarded with a counter argument which is worth mentioning here. The other gentleman asked “If we feel we are patriot enough then why we cry over dollar going down against rupee when we come back from overseas tour and have handful of money to be converted in the Indian rupees.?” Since everyone was busy adding their arguments and counter arguments, so his voice could not reach the eardrums of all. But, nevertheless he told a very valid argument to shut up every Indians who claim to be true Patriot. Yes ,lets put his arguments in a logical steps to make those things bit clear. Most of Indians (me and you all included) claim that we are patriot. What are the parameters, when you ask somebody, then many prompt replies that just comes out like spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings are like this-
--Yoo Man(The accent of Desi Englishman)Me patriot because I love India Very much. I love Indian foods, love Indian heritage(when u ask them ,many of them can’t say few lines from the Ved , Koran or bible?). Yes, most of them will tell Christmas on 25th Dec , Mahabharata was a B.R Chopra production and Mohammed has been maligned by Salman Rushdie in Satanic Verses. That is the way they call them true patriot.
--So what if few could not reach the Patriotic ladder. We are patriot, you will hear this shrill voice from every nook and corner of the city. See, we speak national language that is Hindi and that too very fluently. When asked about the no of letters, no of matras in Hindi alphabets, many of them falter and give silly excuses for not remembering the same . This I am telling from my practical experiences . Still some of them don’t know what is called national language. We had strong debate few years back on the topic and one of my friends just made me clear that in Preamble, there are 15 nationalized languages and Hindi is official language, which was latter misinterpreted as a language without which we cant call ourselves a true patriot. Shame on us. We are all hypocrites . Do we filter the patriots from the non-patriots on the basis of languages only? That means a deaf and dump cant be patriot at all?
--Still you will find few others who will show you searchlight in the name of God, in the name of Puran and in the name of historical incidences. They just forget that we learn from the mistakes from our past. But not carrying the past mistakes ,mingling with present and still carrying forward to the future , which has got no correlation with the same. So what if Rama Janma bhumi was devasted by Babar? So what if a Muslim monument was destroyed in the past? They are all historical incidences which if mingled with the present can bring in sorrows and apathy to all of us . Some say if few had made mistakes then their offspring should suffer. But had it ever happened that a historical win was possible which was based on revenge only? A big no pops up.
We all know how much the enmity with Pak is costing us. More than 17% of our budget is spent on the same, which could have changed the fate of India in one budget itself. But alas!! We are all hypocrites .We are all selfish. We change our rules to suit our selfish wishes and always claim that we are true Indians only to show others, though we know very well that we are not. Why I ask same? You will definitely ask. Here are the logic. If any of the answers turn out to be no for anyone , then he could call himself as true Patriot.
1> How many of us don’t do illegal means to hide tax payments to governments?
2> How many of us don’t forget to take bills for every purchase they make?
3> How many of us don’t become happy when there overseas money gets good INR returns?
4> How many of us follow all the traffic rules ?
5> How many of us are very honest to their work? Honest I mean they never keep their work till tomorrow. As honesty delayed is honesty lost.
6> How many of us know exactly what is a civilian rights and duties towards nation? And how many of them implement the same?
All the questions find a big NO to prove that we are not patriot enough. If we had patriot enough then we would not have been ruled by a small Island for more than 2 centuries . And still we are far behind the economic super powers like Japan, France, US etc despite having 100 crore dedicated patriot Indians. There goes a saying first step to become great is feel great and first step to become patriot is become honest to ourselves only. Till the time we live in idiosyncrasies of false paradigm, we cant come out of shell and enjoy the true freedoms that were ever dreamt by our warriors of the independence . I remember the few lines of the Movie Prahar by Nana Patekar where he shouts against this rule of ours. Let’s defy this rule and come together to bring in better world for India.