The article was originally published on Skit Hub!
It sounds like a tough one, doesn’t it? Especially in a country like India where people are so emotionally attached to the culture that millions of people enrol in the army just to live the royal dream of serving the country and dying for it. And what could be the case against patriotism? The country you were born in has harboured you for years, taken care of the slightest of things and gave you land, food and a job to live your life. Doesn’t it sound perfectly reasonable? We all should be loyal to our motherland and be ready to sacrifice our life for it if the need arises.
Where is the problem then?
We define patriotism as an act of staying loyal to the country we were born in. In simple words, Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, and each one of those is surrounded by an iron gate. IT works on the grounds that Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.
But does that make sense?
You would say it does. You would stress over this fact by giving an example as to how my I was born in a particular family and how I should take care of them and oblige by my duties. That’s a pretty fair argument, Isn’t it?
Sadly. It’s not. Consider a situation like this. There lives a 30-year-old man with his wife and 4-year-old daughter in a comfortable house with all the necessities. But things didn’t turn out pretty well for them. The man had the habit of physically and sexually abusing the wife and one sad afternoon, he kicked the wife out of his house but keeping his daughter with him. The sexual frustration now vented along her way. He was giving her all the basic necessities of life but was sexually abusing her and that too at an early age of 4. In this case, is the child obliged to love the father?
In situations where serious violations of rights have occurred, love or patriotism is not only an unnecessary and inappropriate feeling for us to have towards those who have treated us unjustly, but it may also be positively harmful if it undermines our self-respect and independence and helps to perpetuate injustice. This is definitely an exaggeration of facts here but I guess I have made my points clear.
Another biggest problem that Patriotism brings with itself is extreme hatred. Patriotism is based on the grounds that our country is only the perfect one and there could be nothing else in this world so perfect and great. This, in turn, causes wars and hatred between different communities. Look, for instance, the case of India and Pakistan. Around 70 years back, they used to be the same country with similar people but with partition, everything changed. Indians hate Pakistanis eternally and same goes by the other side. Was that needed? This sense of patriotism has brought us down to this level.
Surely, Patriotism can make you do both things that are good and bad. For example, consider the case of two men, John and Josh. John feels very patriotic to his country and can do anything possible for its motherland. Josh, on the other hand, doesn’t care about anything. Let’s imagine a scenario now where both Josh and Jon are asked to kill someone from their rival nation without explaining to them what it is about. It’s pretty obvious that John would kill that person without any hesitation. But what if that person was innocent? Who cares? He was from the rival nation!
This is the problem Patriotism brings along with it. It’s good to have sense of gratitude towards our own country but without you even noticing, it brings hatred. This is the case against patriotism and it’s your choice to choose between humanity or nation.
