True Patriots?

I am normally not a fan of Advertisements. As a critque of Advertising because of its influence on the News media, i am in a very peculiar position now. I am writing this post on the basis of a Public Service Advertisement that i viewed. The topic was regarding the issue of Patriotism, and it was quiet a good Ad. It has an award at the Cannes festival, and it portrayed this theme quiet emotionally. The end message was, "People need to respect the National Anthem". Although, good in structure and theme, it highlighted several underlyings of the rich and poor divide in India.

In the advertisement, only the poor Cobbler, with one leg missing, and some street children stood and repected the national anthem. The pride that they had in their eyes was absent in the rich and affluent youth, who just ran past them as the rain was getting heavy. The rich youth's main motive was to evade the weather, not to respect the national anthem. Can this be interpreted as the Poor who represent the True Patriot or are the rich taking Patriotism for granted?

This is a very touchy topic, and one more so during the age of the Diaspora. There are various levels of Patriotism, i feel, so to put the factor of Patriotism under the garb of true and false may not be worth it. But, we cannot dismiss this fact that majority of Indians are taking our patriotism too much for granted. lots of people do not respect the Indian flag, and because we are so obssessed with material needs, we do not think about our patriotism.

I am not advocating that each of us slit our wrists to highlight our patriotism. I neither advocate the extreme levels of Jingoistic patriotic expression in the case of any event. The Pre-World Cup Cricket Ads, and the subsequent Public Jingoism of Patriotism during Kargil are reasons why the extreme level is also not desirable. I guess a Patriot should be defined by his contribution. By contribution, i stress upon the need to not measure that contribution.

If you start measuring contribution, then even Patriotism will become Materialistic.The rich have this tendency, and so that must be avoided. By contribution, i stress that if every individual maintains his dignity, and also does not shatter the social and economic tranquility, and is who he is, then that is a true Patriot. Expression should be his own personal decision.

By stressing on the expression of Patriotism, we are tending to materialize it. The bottomline for Patriotism is that we stop stressing on the expression of it, and realize that people are responsible and mature, and that there is a true patriot inside them.