PATRIOTISM AND PROFIT
Napoleon had called England a nation of shopkeepers. We must be wary that in our money-spinning ambitions and in our patent national insincerity at the level of the educated and the accomplished, we do not become likewise.
Tagore had said that our words ought to 'come out from the depth of truth'. But our words invariably issue from shallow, superficial levels of uncommitted flimsiness. And herein lies the problem.
The national concentration has to be built up, the intellectual discourse must be held and conducted in a deep emotional bond with the nation that is free of the trappings of frothy frivolous displays of patriotism but is surcharged with genuine feeling and love that is deep, that vibrates with the spirit of valour and sacrifice for the common weal. There must be feeling and there must be reason and there must be deep thought and involvement behind every act of ours such that our responses to a situation do not reek of a cheap sense of gold and gain and throb instead with the pulsations of genuine passion for a cause that conduces to national well-being which flimsiness certainly does not.
Written by Sugata Bose
Napoleon had called England a nation of shopkeepers. We must be wary that in our money-spinning ambitions and in our patent national insincerity at the level of the educated and the accomplished, we do not become likewise.
Tagore had said that our words ought to 'come out from the depth of truth'. But our words invariably issue from shallow, superficial levels of uncommitted flimsiness. And herein lies the problem.
The national concentration has to be built up, the intellectual discourse must be held and conducted in a deep emotional bond with the nation that is free of the trappings of frothy frivolous displays of patriotism but is surcharged with genuine feeling and love that is deep, that vibrates with the spirit of valour and sacrifice for the common weal. There must be feeling and there must be reason and there must be deep thought and involvement behind every act of ours such that our responses to a situation do not reek of a cheap sense of gold and gain and throb instead with the pulsations of genuine passion for a cause that conduces to national well-being which flimsiness certainly does not.
Written by Sugata Bose
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