THE TRAGEDY WE LIVE IN

Life in this country for the past six years has been like a constant test of every citizen's "nationalism". Every debate, whether near a tea stall or on the podiums of major prime time news channels, on this governments efficiency has only one possible outcome, you getting declared as an "anti national" and slapped with the advice to go back to Pakistan. It's been a long time since logic was thrown out of the window, if you support the currently elected government then you're a patriot and if not then you don't deserve to live in this country.

I've always felt like patriotism is a very selfishly flawed concept- we are supposed to love our own country and be proud of the fact that we're born here, even thought it wasn't our choice to be born on this particular piece of land, I might be reprimanded for referring to a country as a piece of land because it is more than that, what actually makes a country up are it's people. In case of the country that I live in we have a vast vast variety of people - Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains on the basis of religion who then belong to several different castes, sub castes, tribes etc and then of course there is the distinction of having different skin colors, body shapes structures, languages- there are so many different divisions that for an outsider it might get too much to even remember. But we are a united country who take patriotism very seriously so we do remember- each and every distinction that could make us superior to someone else, we remember and apply them all.

And yet we are required to be patriotic towards a single cause, a single country, a country of people who think they have the right to lynch and kill other weak powerless people due to no fault of theirs, of people who care more about religion than love, of people who think they have a greater right to be humans than a person of a "lower caste", of people who condemn nepotism on twitter, but do not bat an eyelash when it is followed like a tradition in the house of a Dalit manhole cleaner, of people who like to find faults of a rape victim rather than teaching their men better, of people who believe cow piss can cure diseases, of people who elect terror accused frauds to the parliaments as our representatives, of people who still believe that homosexuality is a disease, of people who build temples for celebrities and worship their leaders blindly.

Patriotism is not blindly trusting the sovereignty of a government which is constantly brainwashing it's citizens to be nationalists towards them, even though they have done absolutely nothing to earn any loyalty from us.It doesn't take long for good natured patriotism to turn into xenophobia, chauvinism and jingoism.

Patriotism is questioning the government when they are leading us into a future of hollowed darkness, it is being kind to our neighbors , friends, family, and most importantly ourselves because the country is what we are.