Three Days of Terror: What Now?

Suddenly after recent terror attacks in Mumbai, I see a lot of patriotism in people. People who never talked about India as a country before have also suddenly become the biggest patriot you could see around. There is nothing wrong in being patriotic, in fact everyone should feel that way. But the problem starts when people start doing stupid things in this overflow of patriotism. Like 4 youths in Rang de Basanti suddenly started feeling patriotic due to one particular incident and did something very stupid i.e. killing the defence minister.

The biggest problem with this sudden patriotism is that everyone wants to flaunt his feelings for the country and they choose various ways to do so. I have been witnessing some of these in last few days. People start sending forwarded messages, start signing different petitions, organise public gathering and some of them go to the extent of filing PILs in courts. I think all this has been done before and none of these have worked most of the time, instead these ways of demonstrating your feeling use a lot of valuable resources and time. Some well educated and well known faces have even suggested stop paying taxes. I don't know if these guys actually think about how these suggestions are going to be implemented and most importantly are they really the solution to our problems. By the way, not paying your taxes can never be patriotic. Instead everyone should pay taxes. Can you guys imagine if trillions deposited by Indians in Swiss banks is just brought back to India and deposited in Indian banks, we will not be talking about liquidity crunch for years to come.

I think the best way to deal with the situation and show your patriotism is to do whatever you are supposed to do with honesty and perform your duties before enquiring about your rights. Do whatever possible to educate the next generation and vote for the right candidate and not against the wrong candidate.

The new Bharti campaign comes to my mind. Think about what a billion Indians can do.