What makes you a patriot?

There are buzz words of every period. Some of these are recognized by people from all walks of life. You recognize them or worse, you get affected by them whether you are an accountant or a simple vegetable seller. Nationalism and patriotism are two words that have assumed this proportion in our time, in India. This week the buzz will be even more. To be fair it is not India alone that is feeling this overt, often misplaced sense of nationalism. However, in my blog, I will talk about India as my knowledge is very limited about other countries and of course, my patriotism and nationalism are not tested for any other country.  

Like most of you who have grown up as first or second generation of citizens in independent India, I also grew up with a fair dose of nationalism. My "dedicated trade-union member" father often told me that for a communist, his country comes very high in priority. I am not sure whether he got that in some book on communism or from his grand-father who was quite involved in the freedom movement. 

When I started my work in the development sector (non-profit sector), I got acquainted with a group of highly motivated people who left their mainstream career and were working with people in far-flung rural and tribal areas for their rights. I met many inspirational individuals at that stage who still remain my inspiration. However, this time also brought me out of my comfort zone of patriotism. It did not seem, for the first time, I could always be proud of my country. I also realized that the friends and relatives who were so proud of their country, did not know most of the places in the states they lived in, forget other states. They did not know places of importance in the country, like borders in the North East and last of the islands towards east or west, but they would fight loudly on nation and its idea of development at the cost its people (so far its not them! of course!). And of course had no idea of what kind of people make the phrase "my country man". For example, friends living in Odisha who were very proud of how bravely they conducted themselves during super-cyclone of 1999 and  were ready to draw  conclusion on how people suffered because they were not industrious enough, did not even know names of the places within 50-100 Km of Bhubaneswar (the state capital) where the cyclone had wrecked a havoc. The combination of the two (feeling great about oneself and complete ignorance about others) killed any chance of them empathizing with people who suffered there. This was making me think. And on the other hand I was getting more and more uncomfortable with the things that my country did and the consequences of these on people. This brings me to the Sirima-Shastri pact. Do you know about it?

Sirima-Shastri pact of 1964 was signed between Lal Bahadur Shastri and Sirimavo Bandarnaike of Sri Lanka. During British rule, Tamils were taken to Sri Lanka to work as coconut, tea and coffee plantations workers. Due to recruitment over a period of time the population of Indian Tamils grew to a large percentage in the then Ceylon. By 1936, they were 15.3% of the population. When British left the Indian sub-continent, negotiation started between Indian and Sri Lankan government to repatriate the Tamils of Indian origin from Sri Lanka. Indian Tamils were taken to Sri lanka during end 19th century and beginning 20th century and they had spent more than 50 years already before the talks of "repatriation" of these people started who neither had Indian citizenship nor Sri Lanka gave them a citizenship. In 1964, Sirimavo and Shastri deliberated on it for 6 days and decided that 300,000 of this population will be granted Ceylonese citizenship while 525,000 would be repatriated to India. Not only that, it was also decided that citizenship of 150,000 Indian origin Sri Lankan residents will be considered later. Does it sound unfair to you? "They were apportioned as if they were a sack of potatoes", pointed out R. Yogarajan, an opposition MP. Tamil leaders have called the repatriates "half a million pawns in international power politics". As if this trauma of coming to a foreign land (India, in this case) was not enough, India did not give them citizenship for years. They lived in the Mudumalai tea plantation area as they were brought to that area upon reaching the Indian soil. They were not allocated that land formally. Later, government called them illegal occupants of forest land. Double ummm triple...ummm quadruple jeopardy?! I am actually losing count now. Can you help? I met this group of people, when the second generation was fighting for citizenship and land rights. I had no face to tell them that I was proud of my country. They were then fighting the stigma of being illegal occupants of forest lands and the Government of India wanted to keep them out of the purview of forest dwellers' act. I am not sure if they have got land titles even after the act came into being. And if any one of you want to feel proud of the fact that India agreed to take these people back (our own people), just ponder on what was said about pawns and do a bit of search of the reasons behind this pact. Can you find out what kind of compulsions were taken into considerations? I will only say, another country that was trying to build some military base in Lankan land had some role to play in this. 

Clicked on 23rd January, 2017 in Delhi by Jayeeta Chowdhury

I always felt, Selvaraj who worked with these Tamil repatriates, was a great patriot. I think he was working to do away with a national shame.  He was not turning away his face from the misery to feel proud, much like how we do finding those children selling national flags at the red-lights. He worked on the misery so that the country can really feel proud. Do I feel he was justified at his anger at the Indian state? I do. When I looked at other SRUTI fellows like Amit bhai who taught Bhil children in Sendhwa, Madhya Pradesh, I did not think any one of us could be more patriotic than him. One, who works on building our future by not caring for his present, they are the ones revered as true patriots, right? 

In the years that I have worked in the development sector, Tamil repatriates's misery is one of the many things that I learnt that made me deeply disturbed about my country's role. I can not  thus always say that I am proud of my country. I love my country and I love my country's people almost the same way that I care for the earth and its inhabitants. I cry for the children of Gujarat as I cry for the children of Syria. I am perhaps a little more concerned about the welfare of my country although I know how closely it is linked to Nepal's well-being or Pakistan's. I am still not a world-citizen that way. I am proud of the rights that my Constitution gives me, but also look for making it better for people it ignores, and lend my voice and pen against any attempt to dilute it. I am proud when a daily wage earner's daughter becomes the youngest PhD student and at the same time try how more girls can get into schools. I do not try to be proud of songs that I do not understand but do not make fun of people talking in various accents and their various different features and names. I am not proud of my country when it flexes muscle on its neighbors but I am proud my country gives the biggest thumbs up to democracy in this region. I try to make my country come up as a great nation to live in. Not a country that arm-twists you to say, "I am a proud Indian"! 

Pardon me, but I will keep my humility against the pride that is being pushed down my throat! Till we can remove that child from the street, till we make sure girls are in school, till we make sure one in three girls are not married before 18, till we make sure girls are cherished like boys, till we make sure the dowry vanishes, till every Indian can feel like  a cherished citizen, till we can be more informed and less proud, let me keep my humility. I will of course feel proud of a Sakshi Malik from Haryana and stand up for her in a foreign land, but I would not lose the sight of how many are still left behind. I think working on these is the real test of our patriotism. Not "how still can we be!!" when the national anthem plays.