[Guest article by Dr. Shahadat Ahmed]
Patriotism is a cool attribute to have in one’s neurons to live peacefully in most countries of the world. It does not matter whether you live in Somalia, Afghanistan or USA; you are made to believe that you are living in the best country in the world as you grow up chanting the national anthem of that country. There are aberrant people in every country who show some resistance in following this concept and once in a while those people deny to accept the passport of a particular country, be it America or Britain or Vatican City. When we argue that if there is no boundary of countries in the world, everybody will tend to move to more resourceful countries and it will be impossible to live in those countries, it probably makes sense, looking at the present situation of Syrian refugee’s European exodus. Getting a rented place in Munich will be impossible when suddenly a million people end up arriving at the major railway station of Munich. Even the roads of Bangalore are an example of how unplanned migration can be devastating. So the need of restricting people's movement across countries is very convincing but does that justify making everybody so patriotic that they start hating people of other nations? After going abroad only, I realized that in Pakistan also, clean shaved modern thinking human beings live and so was true with the Pakistani scientist whom I met in Berlin. He was of the opinion that India is a country full of saffron clad hate mongers. I was surprised to hear the opinion of friends from Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka about my beloved country India. It seems people from these countries have some complaint about our dealing with either their politics or their natural resources. They don’t love India, as much as we think they should. Sitting in India, we would never know, what brainwashing, those citizens go through in their childhood, to hate India so much.
