I was thinking about things which create strong feelings and are easier for me to write about. I guess besides love, which I don't want to dwell upon cause I have spent quite a few years of my teenage life on it, national pride and a sense of belonging to a country and/or culture is the thing. National pride has to be understood properly in order for one to know its goodness. I think it can be summed up as the collection of values uniting people living in any particular region of the world. The reason why I say one has to understand it properly is because one can be fooled easily into doing something disastrous when motivated by this strong feeling, like a war or what not. But I say we need strong feelings like these because it is much better to stay vibrant about our values and correcting our mistakes rather than being stale. It is what makes the progress, it is kind of a self proven statement in a sense. It is inevitable. Why? because call it a magic or a gift we have this sense of finding out what is right and wrong. We call it justice.
So when we are sure about our values we create nations, religions, castes and what not. Its in our blood to discriminate and/or be united through these values. Or at least this is what I feel about it.
Anyway, considering what I said above how does it feel to be an Indian?
I certainly was born there on the subcontinent of India and the the culture is influenced by so many religions, wars and great people like M.K. Gandhi. I am guilty of not knowing what it is in its entirety. So I take it as a concept rather than a concrete set of elements. Since I had the freedom of ignoring the culture and the traditions and the history on the most part (or rather not be able to relate to it highly) I got the residue of the legacy and I collected them as a set of values rather than a cherished memory. I share the same language with about 15% of the population. I get most of the idiosyncrasies. I see conflict of values in the system as I see them in me.
So it doesn't feel really great. But it is a part of who I am and I cannot change it as much as I would like to.
So it has been like 63 years since India was born again after the British rule and this constitution was made by these great scholarly men of those times like Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. So the ancient Vedic legacy was passed into this so called constitution to take charge of the subcontinent. Capitalism was the deal. I am more of a socialistic and liberal kind of guy personally therefore I am not as much on the same page as others were at that time and are now. Also, the policies of the government in last 60 odd years haven't been really great although sufficient enough to keep the system together. Not that I know how the system works as a whole, but I am assuming that it is working sufficiently at the moment. Okay so not getting too much into politics and government policies at the moment I would pretty much like to conclude that I feel good to be a child of this nation who has seen many great men, but I feel that no nation/government has the power to force me to think anything, I have the power and right to think independently as I see fit.
I think the following lines from this Victorian poem by William Ernest Henley says something that I agree with deeply:
"I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul."
P.S.: I am an elementary blogger and writer and English is my second language. So, I will greatly appreciate any constructive criticism from anyone who reads this about writing style and stuff like that.
