Jingoism or patriotism

I am sure you have seen it already; and if you haven’t rest assured it will make it to your inbox real soon. In the last few days an email – purportedly from a Dean of IIT, Madras – has been in circulation. The dean says it is a moment of national pride that finally India was self-sufficient enough to send relief material to the US. He recalls an incident in the sixties, when Pakistan threatened to stop food-aid to India: “Lal Bahadur Shastri went to Ram Leela Grounds in Delhi and appealed to each Indian to observe one-meal-fast every week to answer the American threat. As a school boy, I joined those millions who responded to Shastri ji's call... I had vowed to stop my weekly fast only when India starts giving aid to USA.” Well, I am sure it is indeed a great moment for the dean or whoever it is. However, I fail to understand such jingoistic nationalism, where pride in one’s own country seems to arise from putting down another. Why do we always feel the need to look at ourselves from another’s eyes and reaffirm to the world and to ourselves how good we are? Why do we always have to compare ourselves to a white man and showcase us as the more fortunate beings, see happiness in others’ sorrow? Isn’t that a pointer to some kind of insecurity within us? I understand one needs a measure to gauge one’s self-worth; but a measure based on death and destruction and sorrow?

In fact, I have a serious problem these days relating to the how_well_is_India_doing feeling that seems to be pervading the urban lands in the country. Sure, the cities in India are on an upswing, but the ground realities are very different – we are still struggling to cope with immense poverty, traffic, population. No, I am not getting pessimistic about this; I also understand it is easy to criticize, and all the arguments about how we are still a young nation etc. What infuriates me, however, is the over_the_rooftop shouts one hears – oh, look at us and see what a great nation and what great people we are. What I surely would like to see is a more balanced take on the country and its people. And I rue the fact that such things don’t get circulated in emails!

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Last month (Sept 10), I had written about the mail in circulation then – the one comparing the tragedy in New Orleans and Bombay. I am reproducing that here (I no longer have posts from that time in archives to link to the same), because this post talks of something similar:

There is a mail doing the rounds – and every Indian who has some form of email Id, I am sure, would have received it by now – the one comparing the death and destruction in New Orleans after Katrina and in Bombay after the July 26th deluge. Uma had an excellent post on this here. I had an argument with the family at lunch today while we were discussing this email. To be honest, the whole exercise of comparison between New Orleans and Bombay disgusts me – the fact that we are finding our sense of achievement in someone else’s sorrow. Is this some kind of perverted pleasure? It seems to me that the good in us becomes apparent only when showcased against the bad in you. Well, maybe otherwise it just doesn't exist. For heaven’s sake, there are people dying out there and we should be empathizing with them. Yet, here we are – the vast spread of Indians across the world thumping each other on the backs, deriving malicious satisfaction and triumphing over these facts – that more people have died in New Orleans; that there has been wide-spread looting and carnage of the inexplicable kind; that relief has been rather slow in coming et cetera. Can there really be a comparison of this sort? How can death and destruction ever be a contest? Besides, correct me if I am wrong (maybe I am an ignoramus), but aren’t hurricanes vastly different from rains? And maybe, just maybe, before we wallow in such self-congratulatory gimmicks, it could help to take a look around and think once about the following as well: the increasing atrocities committed on women, the countless dowry deaths that happen even today, the slaughter of Dalits that one knows is an everyday phenomenon but that one turns a blind eye to, and many more!

Update: Today, Dilip had this to say and has the text of the mail as well. And yes, do read Gurumurthy’s article that Dilip is referring to.