My homeland, my country

Question: Are you a patriotic Indian?
Answer: I think that’s irrelevant. Yes I am Indian, it defines who I am, shapes my thoughts, but no I don’t think I feverishly worship my Indian roots. Patriotism is irrelevant whether Indian or any other.

Breeding specific country-based loyalty seems somehow misplaced in a largely migrant world (migrant is not just the physical state, but also our divided loyalties, multiplicities of beliefs and ‘globalized’ living conditions, in a sense we are all migrants one way or another). Let’s begin by understanding where this concept of a nation came from.

Nationalism was born probably in France, US, Russia before it reached all the colonized nations. The concept of nationalism was based on a shared past, customs, and history, or as Tagore calls it a “collective egoism”. The important thing to note is that nationalism is not something that existed and was ‘discovered’ but it is a construct like any other social or cultural tradition. Like the latter it thrives on narratives or stories.

Without going into the debates on origin or venture into: "who fathered the notion of nationalism?", lets veer back to the present. Is there still an umbilical cord that attaches us to our mother-land? Are we free of the almost irrational loyalty to a ‘country’ one calls ones own?

I think our sometimes conflicting loyalties to ‘international systems’ MNCs, WTO, UN have rendered nationalism irrelevant. For those who do not subscribe to loyalties of any of the above, nationalistic loyalty is still extraneous to commitment to a particular cause. For instance: humanitarian movements. There are political agendas(US, Iraq etc) which draw heavily on patriotism but it still remains to be seen if this is shared by large groups of the population outside these circles that stand to benefit directly from making these agendas.

In today’s age and time we can at best hope for pseudo expressions or dull echoes of what used to be a grand fervor. Nationalism is a white elephant, decorative for speeches and confined to museums.

PS: Like most of you reading this, I too grew up on faithful Indian history textbooks. I have also been through the phase of speeches, fervent slogans, even patriotic euphoria at cricket matches.

Picture Courtesy: perso.orange.fr

Today's Update from the WarZone

Recently a very successful young company in Singapore was acquired by MediaCorp: one of the biggest names in Asian Media. The strange thing is that knowing the media space and these organizations one can tell that they have very little in common; in fact they are as different as the baby Boomers and Gen X! And even stranger is the fact that this is probably the highest point for this young company.

There is a new kind of imperialism going on: corporate imperialism if you may. Big MNCs that acquire oust and acquire and continue acquiring. Capturing ‘new’ growing markets, dominating markets: there is a whole lot of militaristic undercurrent here. On the other side of the fence we have small entities: companies, individuals, and groups that do not want to relegate their beliefs and be engulfed by the giants. This side mainly comes together in networks to build on each others strengths, cooperating against their ‘enemies.’ There is a new kind of warfare too, called the media and there are all kinds of it. While big companies continue to dominate traditional media, broadcast news channels etc the small team is looking at ‘new media’, blogger netwoks, internet communities and the like. Even language is being used to suitably gain credibility by either camp: our big guys like to define 'progress' in terms of free trade. Economies that havent 'opened up' are not yet developed.

The war is far from over and there are quite a few casualties. Even in acquired territories there are uprisings and there are those who switch camps or convert. Some get disillusioned of the tireless, dehumanizing monotony of corporation, some get tired of idealism and its disparity with reality. The battle is leaning towards the big guys I think, so you better watch out!

NOTE: I work for a start-up myself, we are struggling to make a place in the world. It’s not easy given the circumstances of our 'free world'...

Photo Courtesy: Inlet.org