Raise your hands those who love your country

What is patriotism and love for your country? To be very frank, I have no answers. To a select few sharing a picture of National Flag and threatening to either share it to 50000 people or face the consequence of being called a traitor is patriotism. To others, singing Vande Mataram is patriotism. What exactly is it? How do you express your love for the country without doing all these flimsy exhibitive actions? 

But what is not patriotism can easily be defined. Provocation is certainly not a sign of love for the country. And we have enough of those which is done under the guise of patriotism. How can Pakistan become the native land of Indian Muslims? How can Israel become native land of Indian Christians and same mantra goes for other religions too. The Indianness comes in being a thoughtful  person far away from divisive ideologies, flimsy and decorative thinking and being a caring human. This is patriotism for me. 

But I dont see this too often. In the recent Mumbai protests, what was the reason to turn violent and destroy public property in a silent march? It is the prerogative of MNS to do that and they have full copyright for any such acts. The biggest insult came in the form of young boys desecrating Amar Jyoti Memorial dedicated to people who sacrificed for our country.  To add insult to injury, there was a Pakistan flag among the protestors. 
It is disgusting to see such acts. Muslims in India are at the receiving end merely for the reason that they are following the methods adopted by people in countries under the occupation of western forces like Afghanistan, Iraq etc. Unable to fathom the atrocities by US and its allies, terrorism was rooted. Let them fight. 

What kind of patriotism are the Indian Muslims subscribing to? I am a firm believer in universal truth that humans have to co-exist, co-educate, co-operate and co-die. To say that miscreants have infiltrated into the Mumbai crowd and vandalised something of national importance is something naive. To say that no one has seen waiving a Pakistan flag in nothing short of a joke. 

No wonder, I see a lot of posting on social networking site and TV discussions asking a certain section of society to prove they are patriots. Unless otherwise proved, they are traitors. I was awestruck when I saw a Malabari Muslim in Kerala wearing a short pyjama and a long kurta replacing the dhoti and shirt they used to wear – replicating the North Indian style of attire. Why should you do this? Why cant a Kerala Muslim live like a Malayali? Why should he follow some one who is fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan or Kashmir? Just to show solidarity?

No. I think the problem is deep rooted here. The culture of a local area or region is the hallmark of a person living in that particular area. Indians have never learnt this. Wherever the Indians are they try to make a short district of their own culture in that area alienating local culture. This happens with every community. Building a place of worship may not be a problem but then putting your morality and bias on that area becomes a problem. Jains do this wherever they live as they try to clean up the area of vendors selling products they dont eat while Sardarjis try to do this by bringing back the same vendors because they are more into eating than anything else. Muslims try to do this in some regions while Christians are also not far behind. 

Part of this goes to the Social Media and the technological environment we live in. Ideas gets generated and circulated and implemented by mobocracy even in democracies. Now take a look at the passion on which the Mumbai story happened.

Read this blog first

In this blog, Faraz Ahmed who describe himself as a tech blogger, Web Designer and Electronics engineer who loves to share his ideas did a research to find out fake pictures are circulated in Social Media to whip up the passion. This is the same method used by Modi Followers to whip up passion for him. The other group just followed.

But again, how can someone not use their brains and do not trust their conscience and instead falls prey to false propaganda in the name of religion. There is something wrong somewhere in our education, our upbringing and our culture that we do not listen to our own minds. 

The moment you listen to your own mind and use your own brain, you will realise the problems around us – in our society, in our community, in our state, in our country. Just have a look at them and think and you will automatically turn a patriot. The real patriot.