THE NATIONAL NEED ... 13

THE NATIONAL NEED ... 13

Indians must learn to be serious about national affairs. It is disgusting to see people laughing when contentious national issues are being thrashed out in public. One must not assume that freedom and sovereignty come without a price tag attached to it. One must value freedom and develop a certain seriousness in preserving what now seems to be like an inheritance by divine right that can never go away. Perhaps, this is the reason why India has lost her freedom to foreign powers so often in the past, and it will recur if Indians are not ever vigilant and active in the defence of the nation.

The armed forces of India are, fortunately, fed a different diet of nationalism from what the average civilian is habituated to consuming. Hence, we are as yet an integrated nation, albeit at a terrible cost to our soldiers who die at the borders every other day. It is a tribute to their valour and patriotic commitment that, despite the utter apathy that they must be beholding in the vast mass of urban civilians towards the serious matter of national defence against internal and external threats, they yet continue to cheerfully sacrifice their lives for the protection of these very ones who are so unconcerned about them beyond making online comments of pretentious grief when one of their clan dies at the border or in the act of liquidating terrorists.

Thus India lives on, although surrounded by enemies and infiltrated by them as well. But how long? When will these foolish participants in joke shows, ill-educated nincompoops going by the name of responsible urban citizens of India, wake up to the seriousness of national defence in truth and not in terms of offered lip-service or thoughtless laughter and clapping at every bend and turn of a pertinent discussion?

India, wake up ! Citizens, educate yourselves in (a) etiquette (b) facts (c) history (d) national ideals and values (e) international relations and (f) the literature of your land and, more so, in that of your enemy, especially its religious-ideological literature. Above all, develop depth of character and do not simply float about in desirous delirious dreams. Be patriotic, be nationalistic, be founded on fact and not fancies of your fertile imagination, and, most importantly, shed this superficiality of attitudes and attributes that has come to characterise you now.

Written by Sugata Bose