Youth and Patriotism in India

No, I am not talking about the feeling you get when you watch an India vs Pakistan match, I am talking about the zeal with which you work to make your nation the best in the world. The sentiment that crosses your mind when you see a kid selling flags, before Independence day, at the traffic signal. The pride you feel when somebody abroad asks you which country you belong to and you say India. And when you vote with your fingers crossed and hope that this time the country actually sees ache din.

Many feel that the spirit of patriotism has gotten lost with time, the youth doesn’t believe in the country or its future but the truth is different. The youth believes in itself and it is nothing but a very integral part of this country. For youth, patriotism doesn’t mean blindly following the conventional idea of loving your nation, it means that you own up, you take your responsibilities seriously and show your love by making the nation better in whatever way you can.

The youth has brought great development to the country and this is their way of saying that they love India. They have taken initiatives to make the country better. Today we have great infrastructure, a stable economy, the media industry has grown and so has urbanization, we have better healthcare and education system. All these factors point to only one thing, that we all have been working together to show our love and respect we have towards our country.

But this is also a fact that when it comes to criticizing the country, the youth would not step back, it would be utterly truthful but only so that they could show the nation where it is going wrong. That is what we all do with the people we love, tell them that they are wrong so that they could improve and become better. Hence, the youth doesn’t sugarcoat stuff, it is the staunchest critic and the mad lover.

The youth wants to filter the bad and keep only the good. They want no rape or corruption, they want to bring an end to the terrorism, they want the government to prove that they are of the people, by the people and for the people. The youth with its immense power and correct frame of mind calculates how each step will build or destroy the nation. They don’t want to ignore the country the way it has been ignored in the last few decades, they don’t want to lose sight of the goal now that they are about to achieve it. They want overall development, and are not ready to make do with whatever they have.

The only gap lies between what the youth does and what the people think of it to be. The youth is, however, one of the most misunderstood part of the country’s population. But at the end of the day this is our home and nobody would ever want to see their home breaking down. We belong to this country and this country belongs to us and it is about time people started accepting that we are not here to destroy the culture, we just want the culture to change according to the current situation of the world. We don’t want to be called backward anymore and we don’t want people to think that India is unsafe for women. We want the other countries to bow in front of our nation for the co-existence of culture and rationality, unity and diversity, belief and reality, and development and rootedness.

Image Courtesy : https://digital-ray.blogspot.in/2010/08/i-proud-be-indian-digital-paiting.html