The Idea of India!

Disclaimer:

The views expressed in this blog are purely apolitical and I am not a Lutyens Liberal but a person who believes that a blend of left, right and center give a better dimension and image to this country called India.

Whenever I meet my colleagues & friends from different parts of the world and when they ask me about India, I keep telling them India is the most complex country in the world. Some of them still believe it’s a land of snake charmers, I simply laugh it off and say they have now moved on to the Silicon Valley and have set up companies like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, just that the snakes have been replaced by humans. They perceive this country as the mystical, magical land of Sadhus and Yogis, the land of the mantras and sutras. They associate us with anything to do with poverty and we are often the poster boys for poor sanitation practices and infrastructure. But in the same vein they also ask about our big fat Bollywood weddings, about the Millionaires, both the soon-to-default-ones and the defaulted ones now languishing in the mansions of the erstwhile sahibs with whom their ancestors hunted Tigers. For the British in their heydays of Colonialism it was the most prized possession of their Empire.

My analogy always was, imagine Europe as a single country, with a Prime Minister from Germany, the President from France, the Defense Minister from  Russia and the Home Minister from UK…(Oops are they in or out) and finally the Finance Minister from Greece! At this they stop me and order the next drink.

That’s how complex we are, our language, food, dress and culture changes as we move approximately 200Km from where we stand anywhere in India; East, West, North or South. One size does not and will not fit all in this country. So one might ask how are you bound to the idea of India, we simply say we are  a bunch of Patriotic Indians not necessarily Nationalistic Indians. Sadly in recent times these two terms have been abused and misused badly. There is no better quote to sum it up as the one below.

“The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility while the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to a war.” – Sydney J Harris

Let us become a billion plus of Patriotic citizens who can force a sense of responsibility in our leaders and also be personally accountable for what the country does and stands for rather than a Nationalistic bunch of citizens who will only blindly lead the country and its leaders to arrogance and from there to ultimate doom!