Patriotism Must For Nation-building

Many nations have been built by their citizens with hard labour. Many nations have risen in their name and fame. Many others have also fallen due to their own faults. The rise and fall of a nation depends not just on particular circumstances that prevail at the time but it also depends on the attitudes and behaviours of the people of that nation. More specifically, leaders of the nation are responsible for the rise and fall of that nation. 

For a nation to build on a solid foundation, the citizens of that nation have to work very hard. They have to perform Herculean tasks to build the nation. The term “Herculean tasks” refers to an ancient Greek myth where Hercules was a hero who once had made some mistake for which he was punished. According to the myth, Apollo understood that Hercules’ alleged crime had not been his fault but he was the victim of Hera’s vengeful actions. Yet, he insisted that the young man could make amends to live a heroic life if he performed hard work. So, he ordered Hercules to perform twelve hard labours for the Mycenaen king Eurystheus. Apollo assured that once Hercules completed all those hard labours, he would be absolved of his guilt and achieve immortality like that of gods. 

Hercules was an individual citizen of the ancient Greek city-state where citizens were largely guided by the sense of virtue and vice. Zeus was the God of Mount Olympus who would decide who was guilty and who was innocent. Unlike in the ancient city-state, the citizens of a modern nation are not punished or rewarded. In the age of democracy, there is no such thing as eternal monarchy, let alone immortal God to scrutinise human actions. The citizens of a modern democratic nation do not make mistakes in the above-mentioned mythical sense. Nor should they be absolved of their mistakes in that sense. But still, they have to be guided by the ethical sense in the modern sense – the sense that they should work hard not only for themselves but equally for the nation as a whole. 

Major impediments

The first and foremost impediment to the act of nation-building is the unpatriotic attitude of the leading class. They say good things but act otherwise. This paradox is one of the major impediments for the process of nation-building. This has been a public discourse which we can hear everywhere we go – workplace, marketplace, public institutions, social media, etc. To express anxiety over the issue is important but expression alone is not enough. We should rather act as we say in the real sense of the term. Saying must be doing, words must be deeds if we want really to build a nation. We should be committed to work days and nights for high or low wages or even no wages at all. The citizens of a nation have to be encouraged by the leaders becoming a good example themselves rather than simply making speech in the public places. Mere rhetoric does not work today. 

But the things that ought to happen are not happening these days. Who is to blame for this unfortunate situation? A particular political leader or a high-level bureaucrat involved in policy formulation and its enactment is not to blame individually. Today’s public discourse is that Nepal is not a good place to live in. In actions too, many of us are making our country simply a working station for making money for individual and family living. We do not offer even the lowest percentage of free-of-cost labour for the country and its people. We blame others for not doing what we expect them to do. But we seem to forget that others also expect us to do for them. We demand that our rights be fulfilled without being aware of our responsibility. We seem to have forgotten that rights and responsibilities should go together.  

The byproduct of the above mentioned attitude and behaviour is the fleeing of intelligent youths in foreign nations never to return. If this trend continues for a few years, mediocrity prevails in the country. This can become next major impediment to nation-building in the near future. It may be our stupidity not to sense the danger of meritorious intellectual depletion in the country. This blatant truth cannot be denied on any pretext. Although this is a matter of national concern and fiercely argumentative debate, we have not taken it seriously to rectify the worsening situation. This indifference to the serious issue of this scale is more than dangerous.

Imagined Community

The only way to help improve the situation is to understand the meaning of nation-building in the real sense of the term. If the nation is really built, the youths surely stop fleeing to foreign countries deserting their birthplace. One might deny the statement that youths are flying because they are unpatriotic. But the incidents prove otherwise. If they had had deserving employment opportunities with sound wages and due respect for their labour, they would have certainly stayed at home to make it a paradise. 

There are different views about what is involved in nation building. Benedict Anderson (1983) produced a book titled “Imagined Communities” to talk about the significance of nationalism. Anderson does not believe in the notion of a nation as simply a geographical territory. For him, a nation is a “socially-constructed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of a group”. In this sense, a nation is the composite whole of various communities who have common culture and common understanding about the territory they are living in. Our urgent need is to understand this notion and adapt it to fit our situation. Unless we develop the sense of togetherness in mind and heart, unless we cultivate patriotic attitude, our nation cannot be built. So, let us join our hands forgetting the differences of all kinds – political, religious, ethnic, and lingual.  

(The author is the chairman of Molung Foundation. bhupadhamala@gmail.com)