Proud to be an Indian….MAY BE THAT IS THE PROBLEM!

Proud to be an Indian….MAY BE THAT IS THE PROBLEM!

There have been many times when I have thought about the answer to that question (in case it is asked), and I realized I can never bring myself to say “I am proud to be an Indian”(IAPTBAI), I will be lying otherwise.
I response will be, “I am OK to be an Indian”, or better “I am cool to be an Indian”, or may be just state it as a basic fact “I am an Indian” take it or leave it.

I believe we have for too long and with disastrous consequences lived on IAPTBAI. Think about how many of us are proud Indians and how many are questioning Indians. I am often surprised by between Proud Indians and foreign nationals, where the Indians tell them so many Good things about India that when the foreigner passes by a slum he gets utterly confused about the tales of Proud Indians.

Another example of Proud Indians goes back to the last year of my college in Durgapur. There was a stabbing incident where an Indian student stabbed a Palestinian student. The Palestinian student was a friend and we wanted some action to be taken against the Indian student within the law. I was horrified when a lot of my batch mats and some people form college staffed actually came up to us and in casual conversation told us, “why are you bothered, the victim is not an Indian”. I can not in my life understand what makes a human being come up with such a Hitleristic thought.

OK so I am a Proud Indian, the question I will ask myself is what about millions of people who don’t get 2 square meals a day? What about 100,000 thousand women who are forced to be prostitutes in one city alone, Imagine what will be the number if we think of whole country. Take a guess will these women be daughter/sister/wife/mother of someone. Do you think they will be proud Indians? Or may be they don’t count!

History/culture/tradition to be proud about and I am sure we all know all the good things. Lets just balance that with some other not so glorious things about our past. Right from our mythology where Sita was abandoned and Dropdi was molested - something to be Proud about? DO you know about massacre of Jain community in Tamilnadu by a sect of Hindu’s in Tamilnadu? One of my journalist friend has done a PHD on it. What about a whole lot of people generation after generation for centuries being humiliated/insulted/treated as scum and termed as untouchables. Do you think they were proud to be Indians? OR can we today be proud of centuries of discrimination? Now we get angry about reservation and talk about how that has not worked at all?

So many places in India you go and tell your first name, what will be the immediate response – “what is your surname”. May I ask WHY? Can we not be just proud Indians why do we have to be Proud Brahmin Indians, Proud Rajput Indians, Proud Yadav Indians?

I can go on and on and ask about girl child being killed before or after birth by parents Proud Indians??

Garbage on the road, spitting on the wall, bribing to solve our problems, What do we do? What are we doing to change anything that will change even a little bit for better?
The whole politics of IAPTBAI is exactly to make us ignorant and inactive, because a proud nation does not need many changes, it implies things are fine with us, it prevents introspection, and it stops questioning old and outdated social order.

Even if we stop being proud Indians for one hour every day and in that one hour do something to become proud Indians we can make a big difference.

So my request is, LETS STOP Being Proud Indians even if for an hour every day!

Even with this Mumbai attack, why do you think it happened? We can blame/curse many people it will not stop the next one from happening. We need to recognize that we have angry/hateful people who are looking some way of expressing it and someone used them very skillfully to create this whole episode. We can say they are wrong or there is no place for such hatred or that those people are not proud Indians but the fact remains, there are people like them and I am sure the number is not small but significant. The more we hate the more this number will grow. The only way is to find ways to reach out to all angry people.

The Mumbai Attack - An appeal for Peace

The Mumbai Attack
Another attack, life’s lost and in all probability Hate and Venom seeded in the minds of thousands.
I wonder what is the bigger success of people who’s brain behind these things? The attacks themselves or the amount of hatred they are able to generate.

Strangely I remembered what Bhagat Singh the revolutionary of Indian Freedom struggle said after throwing smoke bombs in the parliament run by British rulers, he said, you need a bang blast to open the ears of people who have stopped listening to the calls of freedom.
The question in my mind is what are we suppose to listen to. Also what state of mind we need to be in to listen.
Compassion is what comes to my mind.
The easy way out for all of us is to blame a group, a community, a religion, the inefficient security, and what not. It will allow us to curse them and wish horrible things to happen to their near and dear ones as has happened to 100 or more people who have died. Again will it stop anything is the question?
But can be listening to the pain or the hatred in people, who do such things, Imagine 22 year old young people, putting their life at stake, how many us will risk our life for anything. What will be the reason, what passion (hatred/pain) they might be carrying? In coming hours and days, you will her a lot of rhetoric about how terror is taking over, how Mumbai is so resilient, how we need to act against terror (like Bush said). Watching countless hours of TV and reading news and discussion we will also get passionate and speak with hatred about some group/community. I am wondering how more HATRED will help any of us? Can we be different from people who do these kinds of attacks and actually listen to what is going on, what is making us more violent?
Normally talking about peace is seen as weakness at such times, and I want to reaffirm that Peace is not absence of violence it is way of living. We all have a choice we can contribute to the hatred that exists between groups/people/communities/individuals and it will only create more hatred and lead to more violence. Or we can distance ourselves from any kind of hate and even doing that will tilt the balance in favor of peace.
Question is Do we have the courage?