Whether you are in the government or opposed to it, everyone is expected to be patriotic. Even activists,  ‘rebels’ with tattoos and long hair, posh avocado-eaters, rebellious teenagers and people who “don’t love anyone." Patriotism has become a foundational virtue. You can say you don’t have some qualities, that you can’t love, that you are greedy, that you do not think monogamy works. You can even say you are an atheist. But you cannot say you don’t love the nation.

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Today, when people are critical of India, they add that they are critical because they so love the nation. Nobody has other reasons. 

A few days ago, Ali Khan Mahmudabad, an associate professor of political science at Ashoka University, was arrested. He had suggested that India’s media briefings of Operation Sindoor, given by two women officers of the armed forces with Hindu and Muslim names,  was important as “optics" but needed to translate into ground reality for women and Muslims. In his defence, he stated that his views were “entirely patriotic statements."

Not long ago, intellectuals who challenged the state narrative were not expected to clarify that they were patriots. In fact, in the artistic and intellectual world, ‘patriotism’ is not a high ideal—rather, it is often seen as an emotion of the masses; even as one of the great dangers in the world. For instance, Rabindranath Tagore said, “Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity." And George Bernard Shaw said, “You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race." And Bertrand Russell said: “Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons."

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Indian intellectuals or artists, it seems, do not say such things anymore. Some of them might be true patriots. Many of them may not be—just that they have to succumb to the expectation of being patriotic. Their public posture needs to be patriotic. I first noticed it when the writer Arundhati Roy faced sedition charges and imminent arrest in 2010, and she issued a brief statement saying, “In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches,’ of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride."

At the time, I felt it was uncharacteristic of her to use the words ‘love’ and ‘pride’ as emotions she felt for India. I did notice that for a writer of great clarity, she did keep the sentence a bit vague.

Every major political party in India, including in Tamil Nadu, professes unconditional love for the nation.  It is almost like time travel (and these days ‘time travel’ chiefly means a journey into the past, not the future), where a public moral is so sacred that everybody is expected to have it—and those who don’t must keep quiet.

When India wants our love, what does it mean, practically? We are among the most corrupt nations, our air is poisonous in many cities, our roads are congested, this is one of most unsafe places on earth for women, our quality of life is among the worst, and, according to the World Happiness Report, the average Indian is among the most unhappy people on earth. This is a country bereft of street joy—but we are expected to love it.

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Yet, it makes sense. That is the nature of love, at least in most people. Like loveable people, a nation need not be filled with excellent qualities. A nation is not just pretty rivers and extraordinary bridges and skyscrapers and clean lanes. In fact, people struggle to define what a nation is—what unites all people. A nation is primarily a habit. A habit shared by diverse people. Nothing else binds a nation apart from this, and a love for this habit. So it is reasonable for a nation to expect its people to have that love as a fundamental attribute that cannot be questioned—and prudent for those who don’t feel it to keep mum.

Also, not loving a nation makes you a cultural orphan. There was a time, not long ago, when a few Indians—disenchanted with India or unable to respect it—assumed they were ‘global people,’ by which they almost never meant they belonged in Somalia, but that they belonged in the West.

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But a lesson that this generation of India’s upper class has learnt is that you primarily belong to your own people, because no one else cares enough. You need a home because everyone else has one. Without patriotism, a person is in the limbo of cultural orphanhood. Most people are patriots—including the new upper-middle-class and affluent Indians—because they do not belong outside India. Many are uncomfortable outside India. Everything about places outside India tends to make them suffer, probably after an initial one week of excitement. Even the chaos of India comforts them more than the tranquillity of a rich-world town.

Even so, there are many people who value their emotions so much that they don’t give them away easily. Or they value the words that come out of their mouth—the meaning of those words. People who want to attach a certain substance to what they say. And they are unable to say that they love India—partly because they are unable to say this aloud anymore.

The author is a journalist, novelist, and the creator of the Netflix series, ‘Decoupled’.