The national pride is more important than the nation itself.

The national capital recently witnessed a spectacle designed and performed for the western audience.I know, I am not telling you the complete story, at least the advertisements shown in the intervals were aimed at the western tourists. So, my dear country men the incredible India image is not for you, it’s for the foreign guests.
The exhibition went well,I preferred to overlook all the hiccups in the preparations and aftermaths including scrutiny of few officials on the home turf for making money and using it for their own benefits.These obvious byproducts did hurt the national pride of a country desperate for declaring its emergence.However,even the bad publicity couldn’t take the sheen out of ever growing self pride.The TV commentator in the gala ceremony couldn’t hide his pride for the nation either,while proclaiming that it was a proud movement for the largest democracy of the world.India did declare its prominence in the emerging world(that’s what burgeoning middle class still like to believe).Thanks goodness,considering that China has already proven its worth on a bigger scale,the pride of middle class India was somehow salvaged with this onslaught of world games(Not many,like to mention that all the participating nations were in Delhi 2010 event because they share the same colonial past)

Pankaj Mishra in a recent essay on the reportage in and from Asia writes “Not surprisingly, more than China, it is India, with its cacophonous democracy, that has become a source of existential and ideological self-affirmation for Western elites. India fits a Western discourse much more neatly by possessing both the impeccably Western virtues of secular democracy and free-market capitalism.”

This western affirmation of rising Indian state has worked as steroids for the burgeoning middle class of a country who likes to believe that the status of Super power nation is only a few blocks away. Free market capitalism has certainly helped India and the ever growing middle class somehow reflects the benefits of the free market trade.However, there is a large section of this country that doesn’t come under this bracket of‘the great Indian middle class’.
The people in this country love prosperity (who doesn’t,everyone loves that) but the prosperity tend to corner less prosper people in oblivion as if they don’t exist at all. It would be better if this well being can be pushed and jostled around the other sections as well,pumping up a balloon of spreading prosperity. However, that doesn’t happen in this free market world where you can only make money out of money.A country which has always been more inclined towards spirituality has certainly become more materialistic with the economic rise witnessed lately.
The Slumdog millionaire did receive Oscar awards.However,a large section of bourgeoisie critics objected that why a western should come here and depict a story of poor and filthy India and neglect India which is richer and cleaner.The same middle class was as jubilant as Anil kapoor on the night when the awards were announced.We still believe that we would emerge as a great nation only if the west acknowledges our worth.

Despite all the well being, the great Indian middle class is completely aware that the nation is still evolving in terms of economic stability and democratic governance. The shortcomings that can’t be neglected somehow generates a sense of insecurity. We don’t want to appear vulnerable to the outer world. The national pride is considered more important than the nation itself.
India fits in the western discourse despite all the shortcomings because it supposedly possess the virtues of a democracy unlike other major growing economy of the Asian world

Pankaj Mishra in his essay on ‘reportage in from Asia says “China, which has many internal problems but none of such severity as the Maoist uprising, remains the politically ‘unstable’ country while India seems to be cruising smoothly to its tryst with destiny. So while Han Chinese paramilitaries murdering or maiming scores of teenaged Uighur or Tibetan demonstrators would provoke days of thick black headlines, followed by an orgy of international condemnation, India’s brutality in Kashmir and the Northeast—arguably greater than China’s in Tibet and Xinjiang—generates hardly any consistent reporting”


A country which leaves no stone unturned in proclaiming that it is the largest democracy in the world certainly won’t like commentators calling it a cacophonous democracy.Democracy is a more a form of government and less of an ideology that a country practices. However, there are several instances where Indians were deprived of their fundamental rights. There are a number of people movements against the Indian state active in the different parts of the country.The differences of views in the country have never been handled in a democratic way.
The Indian democracy is different from the concept of western liberal democracy. The political mobilization in the country which always works on the principle of populism and tends to work towards the group rights rather than the plights of the individual.

India was the first country to ban 'The satanic verses' and the recent scrapping of 'Such a long journey from a University curriculum at the behest of youngest scion of a fascist organization wouldn’t have been possible in a liberal democracy. A country whose most famous painter is living in exile can still be called a democracy,why not. The democracy is still an idea in this country and not a mode of government even after six decades of creation of the republic. The Indian state and its great middle class has been pushing hard to prove other wise because the great democracy is the biggest USP of brand India.

The great middle class is still putting up a brave front against the voices of disconcert.Any body who tries to break this myth of great democracy is bound to be termed as a traitor. The middle class has no problem with the likes of Bal Thackeray and Narender Modi being part of the India political intelligentsia because these political goons don't claim to be pseudo-liberals or liberals for that matter.The free market capitalism has also given this country a number of big corporate media houses which constantly work towards inflating the national pride of the great Indian middle class. They prefer to show and highlight only the greener and richer side of this great Indian story(most of the times, if not always)
The idea of secular liberal and progressing India has not been challenged by many political analysts and commentators but only a few on the home turf.Arundhati Roy has emerged as a consistent basher of the idea of rising India and its bourgeoisie that prefers to negate the sufferings of the voiceless millions in the country.No surprises,why the Middle class doesn’t love Arundhati Roy.
Roy has been haunting the lazy, unimaginative and selfish middle class with her vision of a capitalistic system that’s headed for making this world hell for the weaker and vulnerable sections. It was year 2008, when Roy first endorsed the Azadi sentiment of the Kashmir valley and the famous statement “India needs azadi from Kashmir as much as Kashmir needs azadi from India” was made in Srinagar and not in her drawing room in Delhi home. Most of the Indian middle class like to dismiss her as some communist loony and yet they get hurt because of these statements .The greater anger is aimed at Aunadhati Roy because she was the recipient of a world literary prize which somehow gives her an audience even outside India.Arundhati Roy has been playing a spoilsport for the brand India for quite a while now and there is mass anger against her, some credit for generating that anger goes to the rich corporate media houses of India, who feel as provoked as other well off people in this country by her consistent verbal and written onslaughts on the high handiness of Indian state and capitalism.
The word ‘sedition’ has been added to the national conscious, thanks to the Man booker prize winner Arundhati Roy. Her recent call for justice for Kashmir hasn’t gone well with the nationalists, even the fellow writers are accusing the writer turned activist of a radical mindset.

A large number of people in the Indian social circles are demanding that Roy’s anti national ranting has to be checked and an Indian court should charge her for sedition.Sedition is an uncommon word so,I had to look for the exact meaning (although,I knew its something anti national).The act of sedition is ‘incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority’. I am still amazed to think, why an artist or a writer needs to commit an act of sedition in a country which is not only secular and liberal but also the largest democracy in the world.