Her Highness, Queen of the Malayali Country in the Facebook world, the omniscient majesty, Maya Leela, Patriotism is generally defined as the devotion to ones country. A country, at least after Westphalia accord, has come to acquire synchronicity with the nation-state. India is a modern nation state. Devotion is a vague word. But, nobody would contest that allegiance is a part and parcel of devotion. For the sake of brevity, let us limit devotion to the singular perspective of allegiance. Also to introduce some rigor into it, let us deconstruct it into proscriptions and prescriptions that make up allegiance. Before we delve any further, lets examine the need for patriotism. A nation-state is a political entity that has to survive in a resource strapped world. For the sake of simplicity, let us resort to an allegory: Imagine nation states as humans in a hunter-gatherer, lawless society. If the hand of a man refuses to cooperate with the body, he would surely not be able to survive. The hand may have genuine grievances: the brain gets more blood and is in a protective shell, while hand gets less blood and is the first to get injured. But, if the hand breaks its allegiance the whole body dies. Likewise, if an organ of a nation, which every individual is, does not owe allegiance to it, then the national organism dies. While going about these pro and pre-scriptions, we need to look at accepted global practice. Why because, politics being a humanities discipline, its concepts are never quantifiable and are rarely provable by empiricism. So, some such proscriptions are: 1. Not to disown once country/nationality in public. 2. Not to wage war against it, by words or deeds. 3. Not to create dissonance between constituents. 4. Not to be treasonous. Some prescriptions would be: 1. To abide by the laws 2. To be a productive citizen. 3. To be an informed elector. 4. To contribute to nation building. It is commonsense that proscriptions are more important than prescriptions. Why because, if it is enjoined upon you not to stab a man but to feed him, then it is imperative that you should atleast not stab him if you cant feed him. Therefore, your scathing attacking on the proponents of patriotism stands on weak props - logical as well as pedantic. And before I conclude, your whole post turns out to be a classical logical fallacy called tu quoque. It doesnt fly in dialectics. Before Her Majesty, I have the honour to remain, Anantha Krishnan
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 08:38:23 +0000
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