Why are we told that nationalism is bad?
Why are we told that India was separated on religious lines?

First things first – India was NOT separated on religious lines. India was separated on Islamic lines. There is a difference. If we had been separated based on religion, we would have had separate Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain & Christian countries. Ok, some of them would have been tiny. But that’s what would have happened if we had been separated on religious lines. Clearly it didn’t. What happened was that the country was split as Muslims did not want to live with anyone else.

Today’s Pakistanis believe that Muslims and Hindus were two separate civilizations that could not share a future.

Pakistani schoolbooks describe 1947 as a ‘liberation from Hindu domination’. The Hindu is not a neighbour, predecessor or ancestor in that telling. He is what was escaped from. There is a course on ‘Pakistan Studies’ in their schools and colleges for over 6 decades which teaches them all this. The generations running that Islamist-terrorist-military-dictatorship of a country have been taught this.

The Pakistani state religion, the blasphemy laws, the systematic erasure (convert or die) of the Hindu minority are not policy failures but their founding principles in action. The Pakistani population has seen it all. And participated actively in it. One off stories to the contrary which are bandied around aren’t the norm. They’re the exception.

A vast majority of today’s Pakistanis believe that Gazwa-e-Hind will happen in their lifetime and a big number of those believe that it is their god-given duty to enact it. So much so that a global cricketer and someone with a massive fan following in India – Shoaib Akhtar – has no hesitation when talking about it in a live interview in Pakistan. It’s routine for him.

I believe that there is no way to extricate Pakistan from this mindset anymore. The two things we need to do are A) Ringfence / dehyphenate ourselves away from them and 😎 Do everything in our power (साम, दाम, दंड, भेद) to keep them weak in all ways possible, so badly that they don’t even think about aggression towards India.

But say any of this in an Indian newspaper or on an Indian panel show and ‘they’ will immediately label you a ‘Nationalist’. A Jingoist. Soneone trying to derail peace. The accusation will arrive before your argument is even finished.

Who is ‘they’?

They are those who have tried to control you through guilt. To make you think of yourself as morally inferior because you spoke of the reality of an Islamist terrorism-supporting military-dictatorship.

You stating Pakistan’s reality is linked to you being communal against Indian Muslims. I have never understood this. But I’ve been thinking and I belive that this linking has a function. A population that knows and accepts the reality of what Pakistan thinks/believes/says about India is a population that stops feeling guilty / morally inferior about Pakistan’s destruction. And a population that has stopped feeling guilty is hard to control.

Understanding & speaking about the reality of the ideology of Pakistan is not aggression. It is self-defence. But In India it has been treated as provocation. As an Indian, this clarity has always been made to feel like a crime to me.

And the “Nationalist” label comes out and becomes a disqualification. Once that label is applied to you, your argument is invalid and you are removed from the conversation. No rebuttal to the facts is needed.

You will be hammered with the “Aman ki Asha is the only solution” nonsense, coz they fear the moment you stop accepting the Aman-Ki-Asha rubbish.

Coz when you think for yourself you have no need for gatekeepers to approve what you are allowed to conclude. A Bharatiya who sees clearly is unmanageable and will not let herself be guilt-tripped into accepting moral subservience.

The last few years have seen a major reversal of this guilt phenomena and a refreshing embrace of nationalism. Nothing highlights it more than the public reaction to films like Dhurandhar 1 & 2, Kashmir Files & Uri. The amount of pearl-clutching I have seen emerge from film ‘critics’ & ‘intellectuals’ on the “Yeh Naya Bharat Hai. Yeh Ghar mein ghusega bhi….” line was quite mystifying to me but their rants against these films have been giving me schadenfreude for a while now 🤭. The symbolism of a Kashmiri pandit helming India’s top 2 grossing Hindi films domestically, is also hugely satisfying to me. As is the country’s embrace of Kantara 1 & 2, Bahubali, Mahaavatar Narsimha and the explosion of people visiting Kashi, Ayodhya and the absolute avalanche of humanity that descended at the Kumbh.

I hope this warm embrace of nationalism, our roots, culture & beliefs continues for a long long long time to come. 😇

Pro Tip:
If you start getting comments like :
– Bhakt
– Sanghi
– Bhajpaaiyee
– Hinduvtawadi
You are going in absolute right direction. 🚩🇮🇳

JaiHind

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