From: sjayanth@ringer.cs.utsa.edu (Satyanand V. Jayanthi)
Subject: hyderabadi muslims, patriotism etc.,
Organization: University of Texas at San Antonio
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 09:15:14 GMT

From Chukka Srinivas...


:Sir, can you please explain this statement. 
:And how many Hyd. muslims did you interact with?
:or talk to?

:First of all, maybe we shouldn't make a big deal of our
:middle class perceptions about patroitism and should stop
:giving this partriotic litmus test to people, be they of any
:religious background.

  Is this not very familiar? Patriotism is a bourgeous concept.hmm... looks
like secularism could just be a facade. In anycase..i come across these
arguments quite frequently..start with a problem at hand,..in this case it
is about the extra territorial loyalities of a section of muslims..and then
we have these lovers of humanity who declare that the whole world should
live like one family....and the political debate is hijacked into one of
philosophy, probably because one can utter all sorts of bullshit and get
away. 

:And maybe, we have to question why and how anybody starts to 
:identify with this abstract notion of belonging to one nation.

:Let's see.
:How much does the nation really care for an ordinary
:person, in a feudal society like ours, for him or her
:to place national loyality above other loyalities.
:(for example, religious and regional loyalities).

  Why do i have this urge to quote JFKs "dont think what the country has
 done for you think of what you can do for it...." :-)

 Now, we come to the point. Do we take it as a process of evolution that
the person will first outgrow his caste loyalities, religious,
regional..loyalities, and finally even overcome his loyality for the
country itself....I think the problem in india is that a few people are
stuck up at the stage of religious loyality and another few who have
outgrown nationalistic feelings...


:Don't you think your middle class status in the society
:has also something to do with your perceptions about
:what constitutes patriotism and why it is so important?
:Doesn't it has to do with what class, caste, tribe, region
:and religion you belong to? 
:Do you think that our perceptions about patriotism
:are eternal and absolute? 


True. our middle class status is an important reason for this perception of
what constitutes patriotism, but it is on this very idea of patriotism that
the other countries have prospered, and i think these perceptions havent
changed at all in those places...and this loyality to ones country is
defined as patriotism. If it is loyality to his caste, it is casteism, if
it is to some religion or region it is fanaticism and regionalism. And i am sure that out
of these three ie., patriotism, casteism and religious fanaticism, only patriotism
enjoys some respect.

:And don't you think as people who left thier motherland
:for greener pastures should be more cautious before
:talking patriotic loyalties of whole populations? 

How about considering ourselves as reporters working for some US newspaper.
Can we now report that there some people in india who stay india, get all
the benifits they can think of as a religious minority and still support
other countries on many issues just because they are their co-religionists?


-Narain.