Statecraft
HAPPYMON JACOB
This is the golden age of desh bhakti in the modern history of India, with even the hitherto neutral among our liberal intelligentsia showcasing increased signs of their true love for the motherland. I can stand the newly minted cyber patriots based out of India, as I have done all my academic life. But the ones that irritate me way beyond my high levels of patience are the Non Resident Indian (NRI) deshbhakts who burn the midnight oil running amok on the internet masquerading as patriotic Indian nationalists. The anonymous, faceless, fictitious Internet trolls come out of nowhere and condescendingly preach their cyber patriotism to the rest of us, the intellectual subalterns left behind in India. They hang out on the facebook, twitter, email as well as the readers’ commentary section of newspapers that do not believe in moderating the reader’s comments. Anonymity, immediacy and access have given them such a potent weapon that our newspapers are full of their comments (read advice, expletives and sermons) even before they hit our front lawns, and not a day passes without my facebook ‘Home’ page overflowing with advice to fellow Indians how to clean up their third world country.
They get a certain patriotic relief, I guess, of having done something for the country, the sacred duty, by abusing Indian politicians, officials, government, and analysts who question the country’s defence expenditure, defend Article 370 in Kashmir and propose peace with Pakistan. Except a select few, everyone is a traitor, not fit to be in India, and at least some of them suggest, sitting in San Francisco or London, that a great number of us should be sent to Pakistan or Bangladesh!
I get quite a lot of this through emails, facebook chatter and twitter traffic, on a daily basis. While there are many variants of these cyber patriots, What is characteristic of most of these cyber patriots is their undying ability to express the nuances of their condescending nationalism towards the ones living here in India, that the ones in India are not doing enough for Mother India!
Typologies of deshbhakti
Let me bring out the three most exceptional prototypes among the NRI deshbhakts. The first is the ‘more-loyal-than-the-king’ kind of nationalists. They, the most dangerous of all in my opinion, consider India to be the greatest country in the world (one wonders why they went away in the first place then!). They also think that India is going astray from its rightful destiny of being the greatest nation on planet earth simply because it is following the faulty western liberal, democratic and secular values. As Samir saran argued in an article in India Today earlier this year, “there are the Indians who have emigrated abroad and project the loudest voice. This Indian has to be even shriller than those they give their advice to.”
Incidentally, these very same people will also insist that their daughters wear ‘proper cloths’, learn ‘Indian values’, don’t date guys from the host nation who, of course, have no moral values etc. I can understand why they say so: Perhaps they have failed in integrating themselves into the new culture or migrated late in their lives and hence no acculturation was possible. Perhaps their secularism comes from being persecuted for being Hindu there or because since they are a minority in the host nation, they would like a place where they are a majority! Their biggest desire is to see India becoming a Hindu nation, one day.
They also insist that India needs to be a militarily powerful nation. Perhaps because they get bullied in the host country since they come from an impoverished third world country? So the feeling of having come from a powerful nation could potentially gain them more respect in their adopted homes. A militarily powerful nuclear India that can show Pakistan its place and balance China is the fantasy that they carry deep in their desi hearts. They left the country because everything is terrible here. And yet they insist that India is a great country and so nobody can criticize it. And if you and I dare criticize this country, they will get angry and call us names.
The ‘India-can-never-be-saved’ is the second type. These NRIs think that everything is wrong with India - its ideas, ideologies, governance style etc. They are the ones who are ashamed of their country of origin. They bend over backwards to identify with the host nation and in doing so disapprovingly talk about the filth and traffic in India, and imitate the accent most often with such disastrous results. Their advice to you is to leave this country if you want to do something meaningful with your lives. Fair enough, but what I cannot put up with is how some of them gain an accent in a matter of months!
Then there are the liberated ones with no hang-ups about traditions, values or destinies. These Indians, in the words of Samir Saran, who are “settled abroad and yet are engaged in writing the country's script”, think that Indian policies are necessarily wrong, and that India should learn to emulate American policies. That’s where India and Indians can find salvation. Make no mistake, they are perceived to be contemporary India’s biggest intellectual capital. I have no problem with bright kids from IITs and IIMs settling in cushy jobs abroad, but I do get a bit agitated when they tell me, after having long-settled in foreign lands, that I am not doing my bit to help India grow!
Caveat: This article is not written in criticism of every Indian living abroad, or doing such wonderful work in some of the world’s best institutions. In fact, most of them would not even fall into any of the categories I have outlined above.
(Source: Greater Kashmir, June 8, 2014. URL: http://greaterkashmir.com/news/2014/Jun/8/nri-deshbhakts-and-cyber-patriotism-5.asp)
