Feeling ambivalent about 15^th August ? You’re not alone.

“Patriot” is mildly defined in my Oxford dictionary as a “supporter of one’s own country”—and yet my thesaurus suggests the word “patriotism” can be synonymous with jingoism, chauvinism, nativism, and xenophobia.

That’s why national holidays like the 15^th of August always present me—and many windmill-tilting idealists who’d like to balance self-interest and patriotism—with a Gordian knot.

We, Indians, look forward to every opportunity to evade our national responsibilities. We evade taxes, disobey and break rules at the slightest provocation, spit on roads and move our refuse to front of the next door, elect political leaders on basis of caste and religion, protest without fathoming the reason, pull down colleagues and still believe in preaching without practising. But come 15^th August, our hearts swell and we hoist the flag to show our unflinching patriotism, completely oblivious of our demeanour all through the year. So is there a solution to replace the pseudo- patriotism that we suffer from or are we simply doomed to follow these scripts ?

Can a nation inflicted by obsessive self-interest can truly be patriotic ? Am still searching for an answer.