What the Left and Right forget about love for India
Love of the country matters. This is something that liberals, leftists and cosmopolitans sometimes seem to forget in their public speech. We may avow our love for the rights enshrined in our Constitution, but in reality we also love the sound of the speech we grew up hearing, the taste of the food that we consider ours, the songs that we sang, the smell of our "mitti".
When I travel home to Gorakhpur, when I visit our farm, I can see the poverty, hardship and injustice, and the faeces of countless humans that edges the roads, but I can also see the yellow flowers of mustard plants rising over the green fields, the mango trees and the soil that I consider mine.
This is not something you can capture easily, but I do remember that when I was 12, and my father was finishing up a job as a petroleum engineer in Saudi Arabia, we had the choice of coming back to India or going to the US. My mother said, "I have had enough of being a second class citizen," and the decision was made.
Years later, when my father was killed after a truck driver drove over him, while he was returning from the farm, this choice turned out to be a costly one. Nevertheless, he had lived among his own, in a place that - despite all difficulties - was his.
The liberal, cosmopolitan vision of human rights and equality for all has no language for this. If the rights of everybody are equally guarded and respected everywhere - a good thing - then why would one person choose to invest his life and effort in one place, and not the other? If you have the choice to live in a developed country, why would you prefer to live in a poor one?
The only reason that anybody chooses to do so is because this is the place where we would like to be, where we are at home. The conveniences of a developed country cannot replace that feeling. It is why The Beatles sang, "You can't buy me love."
Having said that, in a country as vast and as diverse as India, what we call "our land" is different for different people. The pork curry enjoyed by a person from Nagaland may not be to the taste of the Hyderabadi who might prefer biryani.
Certainly, no self-respecting Kashmiri is going to throw away a gushtaba in favour of a dhokla. There is no one way to be Indian, or to love being Indian. This is the lesson that the right-wing happily forget. When they shout "anti-national", it does away with any idea of the fact that India contains multitudes, which often contradict themselves. Which nation are you being against? India accommodates many. Instead of the old song, "Mile sur mera tumhara, toh sur bane humara," their verse is, "tum gaayo sur humara".
More importantly, what the Right fails to understand is that you can't bully love.
Every riot, every attack, every insult creates hatred and contempt for India and Indians. Does anybody believe that Gujarati Muslims are in love with a government that had the mass murderer Maya Kodnani as a minister? Does anybody believe that Kashmiri Pandits are overwhelmed with affection for Kashmiri politicians - mainstream or separatist - who assisted, or stood by, as ethnic cleansing took place in the state?
Was the shoe that journalist Jarnail Singh flung at the then Union home minister P Chidambaram an expression of gratitude for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) giving Jagdish Tytler - one of the accused in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots - a clean chit?
Is Irom Sharmila's continuing fast against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act [AFSPA] an expression of devotion to how the state has treated the Manipuris?
When Kashmiri children scrawl, "India, go back!" with chalk along the roads where the paramilitary patrol day in and day out, is that an expression of love? When Dalit students shouted, "Narendra Modi murdabad," after the BJP had pushed Rohith Vemula and other Dalit students into despair, did it sound like appreciation?
The action of right-wing parties - of whatever hue - to force dissenters into subservience only creates a vast class of people who see no reason to love India or its institutions. It creates a country full of potential "suspects", because so many have been wronged.
And it creates a nation where we are all afraid of our neighbours. Disaffection, if it exists, can be dealt with. India is not so weak that a few slogans will break us, but if we imprison our students, if we attack our teachers, surely we are creating the enemies of our future, making India into a monster that few can love, and fewer still will remain loyal to.
If you love this country, this should matter to you.