India - an accidental nation?
If you have recently been reading news coming out of India, it does paint a (somewhat unfair, ofcourse, given the culture of the main-stream English media's predisposition toward running India down at every opportunity) gloomy picture about the state of the Indian State.
All this has germinated this rather uncomfortable, yet undeniable thought in my mind - are we Indians even supposed to be together under this huge, sometimes unwieldy nation-state that we call India? Or is this just a marriage of convenience amongst the various peoples who are actually too busy and too haughty to try and come up with a common sense of identity?
I have this nagging doubt as to whether we Indians will ever be able to show a sense of pride and belonging to the country - will nationalism ever override the immense sense of regionalism and factionalism that is rampant in the country? Unfortunately the answer currently is a resounding no. And why do I feel so? Mostly a sense of apathy bordering on the ridiculous, an almost unnerving sense of not being perturbed any anything.
In short, I feel now that India is a nation put together by accident, that is bumbling and hurtling its way apparently no where, freewheeling from one disaster to another prosperity back to disaster. I usually do not like to be wrong, but in this case, I am just hoping, in fact praying from the bottom of my heart, for the love of God, that I am dead wrong in my assessment. Only time will tell....
2 comments:
first, what is the "gloomy picture painted" ? and second, india is neither an "accident" nor a "marriage of convenience".. they don't last for 3000 odd years, my boy! sure, there is regionalism and factionalism! but that exists everywhere.. doesn't it? want to talk about regionalism and factionalism - how bout jesusland and the ku klux klan (www.kkk.bz)?
provided she has a strong and sensible leader, she won't be "bumbling and hurtling (her) way apparently no where" .. i doubt if that's the case even with the wobbly govt. now..
probably india is a complex, dynamic, colorful, funny and an open experiment in social evolution.. you can't explain everything, but u damn sure will see her totter, limp, walk and insha allah, even leap towards the might and power (and that permanent seat in UN Security Council) that her billion people so truly deserve!
And oh! for the love of the same god, you are SO wrong !!
For a moment, lets first forget the comparisons to any other nation. Comparison is not going to justify the fact that as a people, we Indians are apathetic - heck we take no pride even in the society we live in. Proof? Visit any of the umpteen "residential neighborhoods" in the appropriately misnamed "Singara Chennai".
As for the "3000" years, from what I see, for most of those 3000 years, it was never a united nation. Splinters held together under a loose umbrella of various empires. Want further proof? See the ugly incidents in Mumbai and Ahmedabad as a result of communal riots, riots in Bangalore on account of Tamil-Kannada feud over sharing the waters of the Kaveri, the occassional feuds that keep cropping up in Old City Hyderabad...
So the obvious question here is, why then hasn't the nation gone to the dogs, say like the Balkans peninsula? Apathy for one, disguised in the veneer of sheer indifference or the "sab chalta hai" attitude that has permeated the social fabric. Jingoism and shouting mera bharath mahan can sure warm the loins - but they do zilch to improve the livelihoods of millions of Indians who are in such an impoverished state, they can only laugh at their own poverty.
For every step forward initiated, inescapably, there are multiple backpedals on other fronts.
What is cooking my grits the most is the fact that this is a nation, that, when it sets its sights on something, has actually shown determination to get it done - see Pokhran and Pokhran 2, see the various space endeavors. And the people are infinitely capable. But the lack of passion, the ho-hum attitudes, make it seem like they just dont give a damn about any body's lot but theirs.
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