No don’t worry this is not one those posts where I will bore
you with examples saying how bad this country is and topping it with some high
voltage intellectual gibberish. It’s just that while performing my morning
ritual,(no silly not the toxin cleansing ritual)i.e. going through the homepage
of Facebook and checking out what my ‘friends’ are upto, I saw this piece of
news posted by a friend which said, “Two
Dalit girls stripped in examination hall in Madhya Pradesh.” You must be
thinking nothing new right? We are horrified at this heinous act but we know
this happens in India, the age old caste system will not be wished away by
reservations or The Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. But what grabbed my attention and made me write this post
was the comment by the friend, “Proud to be an Indian, think twice.”
She
is not the only one even the ‘Prince of India’ in the aftermath of the
Bhatta-Parsaul violence declared that, "I feel ashamed of being an INDIAN after seeing what has
happened here in UP." The only difference between my friend and Rahul
Gandhi (apart from the fact that he is a prince and she is just the aam aurat), is that he was lambasted for
this comment while my friend is getting all the likes and comments saying, “I
agree with you”, “This is disgusting” and so on.
The problem is I am affected by the question, because I know
if not proud I am quite happy to have been born Indian rather than Ugandian
where either you become a child soldier or a sex slave to warlords like Joseph Kony. I know all the critics of the Indian nation will give me all sorts of
logic that how India is one god forsaken country (Mr/Ms Critic want to get a Saudi
Arabian passport?). I do sound caustic but believe me I am tired of the same
old rhetoric, “I am ashamed of being an Indian, a country where blah blah
atrocities/ etc etc injustice happens.”
To tell you the truth I do say sometimes , “Nothing is going
to change in this country”, but it comes from exasperation but I find it very
silly to declare publicly that I am not proud to be an Indian because I know
even the most developed countries have their own set of problems. Americans are
occupying Wall Street, the Germans are protesting in Berlin against nuclear
energy and the UK, well don’t get me started about that country, from the
editorials in The Guardian or The Telegraph one will feel that it is a nation
of unhappy ladies and gentlemen. So, the point is even if I change countries I
will be unhappy and question my love for that country.
Human beings are
imperfect and by that logic we can safely conclude that no country is perfect.
Being proud of our country is beyond us because essentially all of us suffer
from chronic dissatisfaction. Some of
us strive forward in order to ease this dissatisfaction while the rest sit down
in a corner think about it and some of them fill pages with mundane
pseudo-intellectual rhetoric.
Now that 500 words or more have been said I feel it is time
to make the closing statement. To all my friends who are not proud to be
Indians, please do something about your nonsensical blah blahs or say something
new. I have had enough of your age old dissatisfaction to top up my
not-so-perfect life.
PS: I am not sure whether I am a patriotic Indian or whether
I am ready to lay my life for this country, but somehow I can’t control my
lacrimal glands when I hear the National Anthem. It is quite embarrassing to
admit this but sometimes I watch the opening of India vs Any Country cricket
match just to hear the orchestrated rendition of the song.
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