Ever since my mind was developed enough to think sensibly, I never had a thing for patriotism. Of course, I always supported India in an India versus any other country's cricket match, but that was because I had to take one side, and there was no logic behind taking the side of the other country, of course. I never was "proud" of my country, to be honest. To be "proud" of your country, you need to have something in the country to be proud of. You need only to switch on your television and watch the national news channel for one hour to get numerous reasons for not being proud of your country. When shit happens before your own eyes, it's very difficult to ignore it and continue believing in those doctrines which have been taught to you since your birth.
No, I do not intend to give the points why I think India is way behind other countries and reasons why "we" are still backward and stuff like that, because such a list of points will of course not adhere to the word limit of a blog-post (whatever it may be). People may say, as they always say, "baatein to sabhi karte hain, par kisiko kuch karna nahin hai desh ko sudhaarne ke liye!" This is one of the most nonsensical statements I've come across with. They mean to say, that to get a good life for yourself, first you have to "sudhaaro apna desh" and then expect anything good for yourself. How fucking retarded. Why can't I, as an individual of the world, have the right to get the best facilities available for myself, wherever in the world they may be? Why can't I expect a society which has minimal corruption, which actually works according to a set of laws of the land, and where you can expect to live a good and comfortable life being a common moderate individual and not a person with radical views of "changing the country?" Why do I have to be stuck in a place I know is not as good as some other place in the world just for a display of my patriotism? I can find no good reason, not one.
Coming out of India in particular, and talking about patriotism in general, I could never find a logic behind being patriotic about any country. As far as I think, a country is not a discernible collection of discernible individuals like a team or a faculty or a local chapter of a voluntary association. Of course a country is a delimited territory. It is also a place, a setting, a geography; it has a landscape, cityscapes, perhaps seascapes; it has old buildings as well as new ones; it has historical sights; it has a light, an air, an atmosphere; it has a special look. But it is also constructed out of transmitted memories true and false; a history usually mostly falsely sanitized or falsely heroized; a sense of kinship of a largely invented purity; and social ties that are largely invisible or impersonal, indeed, abstract, yet by an act of insistent or of dream-like imagination made visible and personal.
What, then, is patriotism really? It is a readiness to die and to kill for an abstraction: nothing you can see all of, or feel as you feel the presence of another person, or comprehend. Patriotism, then, is a readiness to die and to kill for what is largely a figment of the imagination. For this figment, one commits oneself to a militarized and continuously politicized conception of life, a conception that is entirely masculinist.
I ask us to notice that an abstraction of the sort I say patriotism is, is not the same thing as a principle. There is a very sharp contrast between a readiness to die and kill for an abstraction and a readiness to do the same for a principle. A principle must be universal, but an abstraction can have any scope. To embrace a principle, which is of course abstract in some sense, is to pledge oneself to a rule to guide one’s perception of the world and, if one has sufficient integrity, to guide one’s conduct in it. A moral principle…governs one’s conduct toward others, and the expectations one had to the conduct of others. A moral principle must be conceived as universalist, and asks for consistent application; and it aims at respect for persons or individuals, not abstract entities of imagination. There is also a sharp contrast between an abstraction like patriotism and a tangible interest like being protected or preserved in one’s rights of life, liberty, and property, for which purpose it may also sometimes be thought necessary to risk death and to kill.
The highest moral principles teach restraint of self-preference, whether the self is oneself or a group-self; while, on the other hand, a person’s basic rights and tangible self-interest, in a tolerable society, are supposed to be practiced or achieved without morally cognizable harm to the same rights and interests of others. In contrast, patriotism is self-idealization; it is group narcissism without any self-restraint except for a frequently unreliable prudence, and carried to death-dealing lengths. Patriotism is one of the more radical forms of group-thinking, or group identity and affiliation. I will never consider it as a positive trait for any individual.
Yes, I will still support India in an India v/s any other country's sporting event, but don't expect myself to remain here just for the sake of patriotism, in case I am getting to live a better quality of life anywhere else in the world. Not a chance.
