Patriotism is a good thing but it should not blind your from reason. There was a time when great freedom fighters in India like Subash Chandra Bose was ousted from the INC for their extremist views. In some fairness, Nethaji did try to forge an alliance with Hitler, one of the most cruel dictators known to us in the past 100 years. Sure now many feel that Nethaji's actions were justified because he was pursuing a patriotic ambition but his patriotism did blind him... he was forging an alliance with an evil man. And sure, in retrospect, Nethaji and Gandhiji could have worked their differences out. In fact, many condemn Gandhiji for not attempting to save some extremist freedom fighters from the gallows when he certainly had the power to intervene in such matters. Gandhiji too, perhaps, was blinded by his version of patriotism.
An ideal way to sort out differences is to have constructive dialogue and for that you need to go beyond blind patriotism. When the Berlin wall came down it re-wrote Europe's history. It wouldn't have been possible if people remained patriotic to their respective sides. The CPI and CPI(M) are legitimate political outfits because Pandit Nehru took the risk of engaging the communists in a constructive democratic dialogue. It was a banned outfit before Indian independence but post-independence Nehru felt that it was necessary to have a healthy dialogue with the communists, however divisive and seemingly unpatriotic their party's ideology might be. And as he expected the communists' strong leftist ideology checked an balanced the ideology and policies of INC by anchoring the INC to the center. Thanks to the push from the communist parties we were able to nationalize banks and bring credit to rural India. But the communists also went out of line in some occasions. For example, during the 1962 war with China, the CPI leadership often aired China's view on the disputed border between Indian and China. In that sense, they could have been branded as anti-nationals and jailed on sedition charges. In fact, many from the CPI leadership were jailed for their pro-China stance. This event even culminated in the split up of the CPI into two separate parties. But it was continued dialogue between the establishment and the communist parties using the electorate as a judge that actually prompted the communists to revise their stance in later years... had the communist not been brought to the mainstream they would have fought from the outside and created havoc... the damage done by the naxals and the maoists are sufficient illustration for my point.
My point is very simple. If a section of the society is unhappy with the status quo it can lead to an uprising... it can even turn unpatriotic in nature. But the way to deal with it is not to condemn their protests with sedition charges. We need to understand what is making them unhappy and identify means that will make them happy without harming the unity and integrity of the nation. Kashmiri youth in India are unhappy with the establishment because they have had a disturbing childhood and they think that the Indian army and the Indian state is to be blamed for their misery... propaganda from Pakistan is only adding fuel to their imaginations... Clearly, they aren't to be blamed. The government should lend its ears to the youth of Kashmir and find out an amicable way to integrate them into mainland India. Encourage the rest of India to welcome our Kashmiri brethren with open arms. Give heavy incentives for Indian corporations to set up manufacturing and service establishments in Kashmir. Invest heavily in infrastructure and education in Kashmir. We need to find a way to ease the mobility of people in and out of Kashmir from and to the rest of India. If this happens in a matter of a few decades the psyche of Kashmir will be fully integrated with the psyche of the rest of India.
Jai Hind!
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