What the Anna Hazare movement says about our patriotism

Re-Publish this Article

<h1>What the Anna Hazare movement says about our patriotism</h1><strong> Author: <a href='http://www.articleseen.com/profile_Anas Khan.aspx'>Anas Khan</a></strong><br /><p>Time was when not everyone could get to brandish the national flag. Today, anyone can. On select occasions, like Independence Day, they erupt all over the place like multicolored mushrooms. And at Ramlila Maidan last week, everyone was armed with a flag. Or so it appeared on TV. Not a good sign. Why would you need the national flag for an anti-corruption campaign? Is corruption an external enemy, against whom the Indian state is waging war? One answer trotted out is that flag-waving is an expression of one’s pride in being Indian. But what does it mean to be Indian? When there is no war going on, and no external coloniser (like the British were), where are we going with this overflow of patriotism? Patriotism of the kind that drives you to follow a messiah or to die for a cause is a tool meant to fortify a person against her own humanity. So that she can better serve a larger, non-human, entity — such as a country. In fact, whenever you’re told you’re serving the country, rest assured you’re only serving the interests of those who control the country, which is always an elite, unrepresentative minority. (If you want to know how ‘representative’ our democracy is, compare the percentage of our MPs who are crorepatis with the percentage of our electorate who are crorepatis.) Patriotism deflects the anger of the deprived toward an external enemy. For example, the US defence budget, which should have shrunk after the end of the Cold War, actually shot up. The rationale given for the increase? War against Terror. Given the increasing — and increasingly untenable — disparity between rich and poor, states that abandon their welfare role were in danger of losing their moral authority to govern. They hence need terrorism to justify their existence.The aforesaid ‘development’ being best piloted by an elite band of technocratic, entrepreneurial Indians who have a monopoly on merit, efficiency, and expertise and are thereby the privileged custodians of the answer to the question, “What is good for the country?’ It is this technocratic class that is driving the Lokpal bill movement. They tapped into the legitimate anger felt by a people fed up with the oppressive power wielded by a corrupt state and an unresponsive polity. Anna was merely the poster boy, acting on instructions, and content to do so. And their destination is not so much an equitable society, but a future where there won’t be messy potholes of democracy on the country’s highways of commerce, and no political bottlenecks will slow down the swift transfer of public/communal resources into the clean hands of private capital. This technocratic authoritarianism — proposed as an antidote to a corrupted democratic process that has failed to deliver — is a classic case of the cure being worse than the disease. Yes, corruption is bad. And we all want change. But not all change is necessarily for the better. When it involves a lot of flag-waving, it is usually for the worse. It’s not for nothing that Samuel Johnson called patriotism “the last refuge of a scoundrel.” </p><strong>About the Author:</strong><br />My name is Md Anas Khan and i am a freelancer content writer. I have completed my gradation from Cambridge university. I have wrote at least 1000 plus articles for magazine, newspaper and media.<p> Article Source: <a href='http://www.articleseen.com/Article_What-the-Anna-Hazare-movement-says-about-our-patriotism_79084.aspx'> http://www.articleseen.com/Article_What the Anna Hazare movement says about our patriotism_79084.aspx</a></p>

Article Source : http://www.articleseen.com/Article_What the Anna Hazare movement says about our patriotism_79084.aspx

Keywords : Anna Hazare, anti corruption, lokpal bill, jan lokpal, Rahul Gandhi, Jan Lokpal Bill,

Category : Politics : Current Events