Memorized Pride
India needs to look away from the past. As a country of a billion, we need urgently to turn around and take a hard look at what lies ahead of us – what lies in the present, what is in store for the future. It is not so much the problems that we may encounter in the future that worry me, as much as the fact that we’re not looking ahead. We’re walking ahead alright, but we are constantly looking back even as we march ahead.
Take any average Indian. You get to pick who. You could really choose anyone from this country – a college-going teenager from a metropolis like Mumbai, or a poor nobody from the remotest part of rural India. Ask him this simple question: “What makes you proud to be an Indian?”
No matter who you chose, the answer is bound to come quickly and it is bound to be the same. You are going to hear the same rant about the culture and heritage of this country.
We all know the works. We have all been trained from our very childhood to repeat this same ramble, just as a beauty pageant contestant go on and on about Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa.
India is a country with a long heritage. We’ve been around for five thousand years. We have a great culture and heritage that we’re all proud of. There isn’t anything modern day scientists know today, that our ancients didn’t already know. Despite all this knowledge, Indians have always been the most humble too. Indians are the most peace-loving people in the whole wide world. We love each other, and we are the epitome of unity – despite, despite, and despite our many traditions, religions and languages. These only add to the richness of our culture.
It nauseates me to go on. If you are an Indian, you probably didn’t even read the previous paragraph. You simply skimmed over the surface. Why? Because you already know what is written. You’ve heard it a thousand times before. I myself did not have to think before forming those sentences. It was almost as if my fingers knew what to type and did their job without any help from my brain.
We are too much in love with ourselves. Over generations, this love has turned blind. We don’t know what we are in love with. We don’t know why we are in love with it. All we know is that we are a great nation: because our mothers told us so, because the television programmes told us so, because the newspapers told us so.
Sit back and think for a while what it is that really drives your love for this country. When you do so, you will begin finding answers. You will still be in love with this country, but you will know why. The reasons will not be as rosy as the beauty pageant answers; they will be far more humble.
But it is important that we start asking these questions. We all need this reality check today.
what made you think and write about this topic after 23/4 years of ur life? india’s cricket defeat to sri lanka?
btw, what makes YOU proud to be indian?
Very good post Adarsh…
I don’t anything concrete to say to be honest. I like many things from our past (for ex: Hinduism) which I would really like to imbibe into my life. But when I see the way most of us just memorize these things and live like parrots doing what we have been either told or have been doing all the time, it hurts. I don’t know if its just me or if its everybody but somehow I don’t see an open mind. Its moulded at the very beginning with all the culture, tradition, etc bullshit and we refuse to think beyond.
Our attitude, in its entirety simply sucks (in my opinion). It needs to be overhauled. We simply complain and complain and complain but not do anything about it…
don’t know..i am still confused…
@naj:
I don’t claim to be any different than the crowd. What I wrote in the post happens to be my view.