Disclaimer : This idea isn't formed. I am not preaching and I am
not hoping that anyone changes any existing opinion of their country or the
people who fought for it's independence. Consider this as a troubled mind,
thinking out aloud. Also do forgive my digressions and runaway thinking at
times. It after all is patriotism that we are talking of here.
Rishi Kapoor, the acclaimed Indian actor in a recent interview
promoting his movie ‘D-Day’ spoke about the changing idea of patriotism in this
country and as depicted by Indian cinema. He spoke about many movies talking of
the freedom struggle in the years around 1947 and the decade that followed.
Gradually with the economy and development taking centre stage, the Green
Revolution and its proponents (the farmers) became the hero and as Hindi cinema
discovered color and more verve we also began to unite behind the one constant
enemy, Pakistan, and saw many movies made about the wars fought against them.
Some have adhered to the principles of exaggeration to the point of indigestion
of the real facts but in totality managed to create the required patriotism in the
hearts and minds of today's India. By summing up these eras he very succinctly
ends it with how today’s India needs to stir up its patriotic concoction with
ingredients like cross border terrorism, the likes of Dawood Ibrahim and Hafeez
Saeed who finance and incite hate against India and the idea of fundamentalism
in Pakistan that doesn’t allow peace and safety in India.
I must say I was sold. There really isn’t much we can say in the
opposite. Yes, there is a proxy war being waged by Pakistan and well, there
really isn’t a different way for them to play it. With the US and its allies
pulling out of Afghanistan, the emphasis of the Pakistan Army has shifted
considerably to their northern border, with an incensed and fast regenerating
Taliban looking to avenge what they see as treason by Pakistan who joined US in
their pointless war in Afghanistan. Their government is also grappling with a
sticky situation in the border towns in the Xinjiang province in China with the
firmly rooted Uighurs (Muslims) now being overcrowded and out thought by the
Hans (of Chinese origin) for the sake of development of China (More here).
And finally the battle with India for Kashmir which sometimes doesn’t even seem
to be in the hands of the Pakistan government, with the ISI and groups like the
LeT and the fast growing Tehreek-i-Taliban calling the shots. To top it off we
have men like Dawood Ibrahim who conduct business in the name of chaos in
India, all this with clear knowledge on both sides of the border of the exact
address and whereabouts of Dawood in the city of Karachi. If you need to Google
it, just type ‘Café Flo’.
We live in this world. We live with these apparent solutions to
our problems and a trigger ready to be squeezed a moment away from each other.
A lot of it is in the name of economic development, what with pipelines becoming
political and elections becoming the motivation for peace. We actually have
surrendered our ambitions and opinions to very little fact. Why do I say that?
What is the connection between ambition and opinion with our geo-political
situation, you ask? I wish I could say it is simple but it isn’t, but I shall
anyhow endeavour to have you see it through my eyes.
Our ambition as a nation is limitless, but it isn’t necessarily
congruent with our reality. Yes we boast of some of the largest businesses,
entrepreneurs by the hordes, a supremely fast growing middle class and a
tedious tendency to boast about our youth (more on that later). We have the
ingredients, we just have to many recipes and more importantly we have no clue
of the conditions required to attain the perfect broth. It’s a great concern when
many of us wake up every morning, read the news about skirmishes on the border
and resort to dialogue on peace and war and then go about our daily work with
these opinions intact. That is where opinion meets our ambition. Our ambition
is not independent of our opinion. We have been taught by free thinking Bengali
poets and JNU mavericks that thinking and opinions are our birth right. Yes,
they are but ignorance has no place here. We are in too precarious a place to
be caught unawares, to not know the real picture. When we rejoice at the idea
of economic reform in this country, do we ever question if this growth is
inclusive? When poverty declined due to a redefinition of daily incomes of the
people below the poverty line recently, did we for once look at the other
factors that contributed to this remarkable decline? (Read more here). We
balked at what seemed like a conspiracy and continued with our vacant opinions.
We are cynical, yes we are cynical. We have every reason to be cynical. Cynicism
can just be the solution for a country drowning in hate politics and relentless
violence against the mind. But our cynicism seems to be stemming from
ignorance. We seem to believe that nothing can happen in this country like
there is a tested case study for it. Like the formula has been prescribed and
that we have already got the variables wrong and it is opposed to any reversal.
We are far from complete anarchy, we are also far from a solution. And the
solution for geo-political, economic, social and political harmony of a nation
with the most diverse population in the world, cannot possibly be easy right?
But what surely can be a step in that direction is matching that
ambition, of a harmony between entities, with opinion that is steeped in fact.
It needs to be enriched with facts, it needs to reek of knowledge of this
country. It needs to become a bloody obsession! Not all of us are going to
become ‘doers’ or ‘changers’, but we sure can all be ‘influencers’. We all wake
up in different beds, some are just sheets on the floor, some are just
mattresses on the floor and some are large comfortable beds. Yes, we then have
different breakfasts, go to different jobs or institutions of education and
have varied interactions in a day. These interactions range from the lack of
money to survive a month to your next electronic purchase. We are the youth (I
did say I will get back to this) and we have a duty to this nation. That duty
may not be to join the Army or IAS or the Police Service all the time, many of
us will continue to do that and continue to excel and disrupt this system of
ours we often curse yet hold dear, but we have a larger duty than that. We owe
this country a resolute idea of patriotism that doesn’t limit itself to hating
Pakistan or waxing lyrical about how ‘guss ke un Chinese chinki ko udha dena
chahiye’, we owe this country sense and a definite idea of what is its reality.
We are living in an age when real opinions are available because the facts that
will equip those opinions are available and I am not talking about that
deranged Arnab Goswami losing the plot on TV every night. I am talking about
independent blogs like that of a Pakistani journalist exposing the truth about
his own country, about reading newspapers that don’t align with anyone but the
truth and of opinions amongst our friends that are rooted in reality and fact.
We owe our nation a chance for change and that will only come when
we decide that there is no place for empty opinions and that patriotism will
only find a form and wield power if it is defined - and most importantly,
informed!
