GuHa talks patriotism

While delivering the 23rd Justice Sunanda Bhandare Lecture on “Patriotism Versus Jingoism” in Delhi, Ramchandra Guha pushed for “Constitutional Patriotism”, which, he said, contained all true values for one’s love for the motherland, non-violence, freedom of expression and no discrimination on the basis of religion, caste and creed. Guha commented that, unfortunately, “jingoism” was resurgent and “constitutional patriotism” was receding. To a great extent, according to Guha, financial, moral and intellectual corruption of Congress and hypocrisy of the Left were responsible “for the rise of paranoid and hyper nationalism under the ruling BJP. The Left has always loved another country more than India.” Guha said that the Indian Left in party conferences always hung four portraits in the backdrop. “Two portraits are of dead German scholars and the other two are of Lenin and Stalin, the biggest mass murderers of the 20th century.” In his opinion, the form of nationalism that the saffron parivar was practising, was essentially the 19th century European model. European nationalism was based on one language, one religion and common enemy. Hyper nationalism was rooted in these very three points—Hindi, Hindutva and Pakistan. As per the dictionary, Guha said, jingoism simply meant “a bully” who believed in “might is right”. He blamed the Congress for ceding space to “jingoists”. “The Congress has now been reduced to one family. It is shocking how Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi named everything after their family. They even ceded their party stalwart Sardar Patel and a man like Lal Bahadur Shastri to the jingoists.”

An old lady loudly shouted “Hai Ram” to attract Guha’s attention, when her friend politely rebuked her by saying: “That is what Gandhi said when he was assassinated. These are known as the words of someone who is dying. Instead, you can say ‘Hi Ram’.” A third lady sitting with them intervened: “What’s the difference? If you wish to greet him, just say ‘RamRam’, which simply means namaste.”