This story is from October 18, 2016

Patriotism for Dummies

Patriotism for Dummies
Vivek Menezes
Writer and disability activist, Chorao-based Salil Chaturvedi is one of the gentlest souls you could ever encounter. He was part of the original cast of the beloved children’s television programme ‘Galli Galli Sim Sim’ (the Indian version of Sesame Street). He compiled the first Konkani audiobook specifically for the blind, and (along with Goa Bird Conservation Network) likes to take blind children bird-watching.
His best-known poem (described by the great novelist Amitav Ghosh as “a favourite”) is pure pleasurable whimsy. Its subject is a tree frog.
Like almost every Indian, Chaturvedi loves going to the movies. Though Panaji’s multiplex halls remain inaccessible to wheelchair users, helpful ushers carry him to a decent seat. But those fun visits seem over forever now. When the peaceful poet settled in to watch Rajnikanth’s latest blockbuster, he was viciously assaulted from behind during the national anthem. The patriotic husband-and-wife duo standing – and ostentatiously singing – in the aisle above took offence that the spinal injury victim could not rise to his feet to parade similarly belligerent nationalism. So the man hit, and the woman shouted, “why can’t he get up?!”
Chaturvedi is the son of a career military officer, but he’s still not the kind to lash back with violence. Though extremely shaken – and physically hurt - by the unprovoked attack, he simply turned around after the anthem, and asked, “why don’t you just relax? Why do you have to get into people’s faces? You don’t know the story here. You will never know”. The bellicose couple again shouted at him about standing up during the anthem, then slowly realized their error. No doubt fearing a police case, they slunk out and left.
The aftermath of this ugly, absurd incident is that Chaturvedi has not gone back to the movies. “I can’t go,” he says, “I’m afraid someone will hit me even harder, and worsen my spinal injury. I just don’t understand why it seems impossible for so many people to express patriotism in a non-aggressive manner.” Thinking hard in the aftermath of the cowardly blow, he says, “I now believe that even if I could stand up during the national anthem, I would rather not, simply because I am being forced to do so. My father is an Air Force veteran. I represented the nation in wheelchair tennis at the Australian Open. Look at my life choices! Who are you to judge how much I love India?”

Crude, virulent jingoism has spread widely in India due to a combination of factors: deeply cynical politicians; a baying television media that routinely defaults to craven or hysterical; but also very real anxieties stirred up by unprecedented social churn and runaway globalization. The end result is, just like the USA after the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks, it has recently become a requirement for Indians to clamorously declare fealty and allegiance to a highly dubious concept of nationalism, which very few people actually believe in. Here it should be noted George W Bush, of “with us, or against us” fame, is the most disgraced US president in modern history, his ostensibly patriotic preening thoroughly repudiated.
The Chaturvedi outrage in Panaji is usefully contrasted to what is happening in the USA after quarterback (the critical position in American Football, akin to strikers in soccer) Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers began to protest the national anthem by kneeling when it is performed before games. He explained, “I am not going to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people, and people of colour. To me this is bigger than football.”
Soon after he began this silent, solitary protest, Kaepernick’s team supported his right to dissent. Then many US military veterans did the same. The women’s professional soccer player, Megan Rapinoe, began to “take a knee,” followed by the entire Indiana Fever team of the WNBA. Currently, Kaepernick’s replica uniform is the highest seller in the league’s official shop, and a fairly complex nationwide national conversation is under way about the underlying causes of his actions. President Obama said, “I don’t doubt his sincerity. I think he cares about some real, legitimate issues that have to be talked about.”
Now imagine a cricket player in India attempting any similar protest, for any of the myriad horrific and systemic injustices that both state and society perpetuate. Consider how Goa’s true pride, defence minister Manohar Parrikar would react, considering he termed the chants of mere students “not freedom of speech, but treachery”, and told army veterans their legitimate protests were “unlike a soldier”. When Bollywood star Aamir Khan made some mild, thoughtful comments about the rise of intolerance in India leading to “a sense of insecurity” for his family, Parrikar threatened, “if anyone speaks like this, he has to be taught a lesson of his life.”
Salil Chaturvedi has the sanest analysis. He says, “Is this why we fought the colonialists? Did we get our freedom only to become sheep, and that too led by the most sinister, manipulative brutes among us? I will not participate in this sham.”
(The writer is a photographer and widely published columnist)
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