Are you a patriot?

If someone held a knife to my throat, I would most certainly say, “Bharat Mata ki Jai”. Would I say it otherwise? Would you? How many of us shout slogans to declare our patriotism? Let me hasten to add — and it’s important to do so in today’s climate of hyper-nationalism when you have to wear your patriotism on your sleeve, on your arm and your forehead — that I am as patriotic as the next man. In fact, I can confidently say that I am more patriotic in the real sense of the word than Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat, who initiated this particular controversy, or Ashish Shelar (Bharatiya Janata Party),

Radhakrishnan Vikhe-Patel (Congress) and their fellow MLAs in the Maharashtra Assembly who made a huge issue of it and got All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM) MLA Waris Pathan suspended from the Assembly.
I am confident of this because I am an Indian who will respect someone’s wish to say “Bharat Mata ki Jai” or “Jai Hind” or “Jai Bharat” or “Sare jahan se achchha…” Or not say it. I will assume, unless shown otherwise, that the man standing next to me is as patriotic as I am, without demanding that he proves it to me. I am more patriotic than them because I respect my country’s most important virtue, that it is a democracy.

So I will respect the fact that everyone has their own way of showing their love for the country, and that way does not have to conform to mine. I will also have the humility to admit that no one has given me the right to test other people on some hypothetical “Patriotism Meter” devised by sundry politicians and religious zealots.

That’s not all. My patriotism is so strong that I respect its secular foundations and want to ensure that our country does not go the way of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other similar countries overrun by religious fanatics. And I definitely do not want that my country will be populated by vigilantes who want to chop off people’s tongues or cut off their heads because then we are no better than the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Finally, my patriotism is strong enough to say that I will welcome criticism of the government, its policies and its functioning, and similar criticism of other institutions like the judiciary or universities or various religious/cultural organisations. That’s because this criticism comes not from any feeling of anti-nationalism, but because only criticism of bad policies and faulty implementation, and anger at injustice, ill-treatment of fellow citizens and discrimination of people because of caste or creed, can get rid of these evils.

These are all general points, and most of them, I hope, are blindingly obvious to you. But they are not even remotely obvious to our hyper-nationalists who seem to be in a kind of feverish competition to show each other that their brand of patriotism is greater than anyone else’s. How else do you explain the scenes at the Maharashtra Assembly which suspended Mr Pathan? One newspaper has quoted Gulabrao Patil of the Shiv Sena saying to the two AIMIM legislators, “Is desh mein rehna hoga kutton (dogs), to Vande Mataram kehna hoga” I sincerely hope that this is a misquote.

To get to the basics, why this fuss about Bharat Mata? Is she part of Hinduism’s original deities? In fact, she is the creation of a set of Bengali writers and artists in the late 19th century. The first reference seems to have come in a Kiran Chandra Bannerjee play in 1873. Later Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, in his celebrated novel Anand Math, took the idea further and brought in his hymn, Bande Mataram (or Vande Mataram). The “goddess” — and you must use quotation marks because she is the recent creation of a few writers — seems to follow in the Bengali tradition of worshipping Durga or Kali.

However, her first pictorial depiction by Abanindranath Tagore was very unlike the usual Durga and Kali figures. In a painting, he depicted her as a rather pious-looking lady, demure in her body posture and clad fully in a saffron sari. She could be any devout Bengali lady on her way to a puja, except that she has four arms, there are lotuses around her feet and a halo around her head. Since then, statues of Bharat Mata have come up in a few places, with the Indian flag in her hand, and a lion (depicting strength and power) standing behind her. There’s a statue of that description in Kanyakumari and at an Army base in Leh. The first temple to her seems to have come up in 1936 in Varanasi, while one opened in Hardwar as recently as 1983.

It’s interesting to note that Rabindranath Tagore — whose patriotism even our most virulent fanatics will not dare question — wrote in 1937 to Subhas Chandra Bose when the latter was Congress president. The question of adopting a national anthem had come up and Vande Mataram was being considered. Tagore’s letter was unambiguous and strongly worded. The hymn can be considered a part of literature, he said, but not suitable as a national anthem of a secular country because it was a hymn to goddess Durga. Tagore’s views played a strong part in setting aside Vande Mataram from consideration as our national anthem.

You may not agree with Mr Pathan or his fellow MLA Imtiyaz Jaleel or the AIMIM’s leader Asaduddin Owaisi’s refusal to say “Bharat Mata ki Jai”, but you can understand the refusal of deeply orthodox people from praising deities of other religions. (Incidentally, Mr Asaduddin is the moderate Owaisi — a Bar-at-Law from Lincoln’s Inn. His brother is the one whose speeches are highly inflammatory, so much so that they seem actionable).

What is truly frightening about the Maharashtra Assembly incident is that all political parties got into the act. The BJP and Shiv Sena’s attitude doesn’t surprise us, but even the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party joined in Mr Pathan’s suspension. Where is all this taking our country? I have no idea, but I do know that wherever we are headed, it will not be a nice place.