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sub: Nationalism

Just returned from an amazing display of fireworks at Santa Monica
college, to mark the 222nd anniversary of USA's independence.

Two things particularly struck me as relevant:

a) The effort seemed to be entirely privately funded. No doubt, the local
police and fire department experts were involved, but at the gate were
huge glass jars where people were putting in money as their contribution
for next year's fireworks. In addition, private sponsors such as Coke,
various car companies, etc., had clearly spent a lot of money on this
effort. 
~
b) There was no "partition" of the area into the 2000 partitions that mark
a state or national level function in India: the big bosses sit in one
place, their cronies sit next, and so on, down the pecking order, and the
'janta' are pushed behind barricades. This was a purely private and local
function, and so this might not be representative of a "state" function,
though. It was a bit funny to see people sprawled all over the grass, and
all over the benches in the stadium, next to the 'dias' and everywhere
else - no "partitions" seemed to exist, I think.

c) More interesting was the fact that when the national anthem of USA was
played at the end of a 'cultural' program, almost the entire stadium,
comprising at least 50,000 people (could be more) simply reverberated with
the people singing the anthem. No formality here, though: people were
standing, sitting (though mostly standing), some were even dancing, it
appeared. And the cheer and joyous screaming that went on after the anthem
was sung was quite a shock. We in India are used to a stunned silence
after the anthem is sung, as if it were a requiem to a dead body.

Who owns America? The answer seemed very clear: the People. They not only
enjoyed being the owners of America but did not care to have any
"Minister" or any political person come anywhere near the dias; it was the
People all the way through. They actually sang the anthem with such
enthusiasm that you would hardly believe that this nation has done this
222 times earlier. On our 50th anniversary, I almost doubt if any young
man exists in India who knows the entire words of our anthem. 

I am not advocating anything to do with compulsory singing of the national
anthem - far from it. Just musing about the vast distance in the quality
of nationalism of an American for America with that of an Indian. 

I have help organize the state level Republic day function in Assam and
participated in many others. I think it would be much better for our
nation and for our sense of 'ownership' of the nation, if we let these
functions be organized entirely by private people including private
companies. 

The government is a contractor and the People are the owner, of India. 
When we bureaucratize our national functions, we allow the contractor to
take over our house. Let us, the people, organize our own functions and
let the government do precisely what it is paid to do: to police and
protect us during our celebrations: not to come and preach at us from the
podium when they are merely our paid servants. They may be our
representatives for running our government, and they are welcome to come
by purely as ordinary citizens when the people celebrate their
independence. But they are not needed to completely take over the People's
prerogatives in everything that is "public." We therefore need to
privatize our national celebrations completely.

Sounds too radical, though, this whole thing. People of India owning
India? Impossible! Also, I seem to be getting too much influenced by a
foreign land where people seem to behave quite dramatically differently
than our people. They seem to be strongly nationalistic in a very intimate
way with their nation. They almost feel "at home" in their own nation. 

SS