You cannot love someone or something you know very little of. A nation, at its root, represents a community of people united through certain values. To genuinely love the nation, one must first understand what those values are. These values must not only exist but also be worth loving. Moreover, they cannot simply remain ideals on paper. They must find life in practice.
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Originally published in the The Sunday Guardian on 1 feb '25.
What constitutes a nation, and what does it really mean to love a nation? When someone says they love their country, what are they really expressing? Is it love for the land, the flag, or the cultural patterns that make a nation distinct? You cannot love someone or something you know very little of. A nation, at its root, represents a community of people united through certain values. To genuinely love the nation, one must first understand what those values are. These values must not only exist but also be worth loving. Moreover, they cannot simply remain ideals on paper. They must find life in practice.
So, what does the Indian nation stand for? People often complain that the younger generation are losing ‘love for the nation’; but it begs a deeper question: what exactly are the young people losing love for? Do they even know what the Indian nation represents? And do they recognize what is worth loving about it? A nation does not become admirable, respectable, or lovable merely by existing theoretically as a nation. History has seen nations founded on hatred or exclusion, and there have been nations whose unifying threads were as fragile as a shared language, ethnicity, or even food habits. History bears testimony to what happens to such nations. A nation, therefore, is not inherently lovable. We must investigate what lies at the foundation of the Indian nation: does it have something truly worth loving? And if so, have we educated our youth on what India is and what makes it truly lovable?
