Supporting the country

Recently while I was rolling down the news feed of Facebook, my hands just halted for a while when I happened to see a photograph on a Facebook Page associated with the Beauty Pageant of Nepal urging the people to vote for our beauty queen Prinsha Shrestha as much as they can on social media so that she would get direct entry on Top 16 on Miss Earth 2014. 

Yes, our Prinsha has definitely the mesmerizing beauty and is photogenic that she can hold our mind for a while and nobody would turn away without clicking the like and share button for her. But this time, there was another thing that made me stop; the photograph had the tagline India Vs Nepal. The most surprising part is that the photograph had worked so rightly as I could see 148 shares while her photograph with some females with whom she had worked which was just below it urging the same thing had just 18 shares. Why was it? Does this really mean that We Nepalese hate Indians? Or what?

The incident made me go back to one of my classes of Critical Analysis. My professor started the class with just a simple question that "what is the meaning of PATRIOTISM for we, Nepalese?"

We all the students were so eager to answer his question with valuable quotes and deep thoughts. Our professor just smiled and replied."Really? Are you giving the answer for the sake of argument or do you really think so?" 

He added, you as an individual may think that but as in group, we know only one definition of patriotism and that definition is patriotism is just always standing against our neighboring country India. If there was no India then we would never had the feeling of patriotism.

Let me make his phrase clear before you start thinking negative about my professor that he had given that statement just to make us more clear about what critical analysis really is. But this made me really analyze the present scenario of our country and what we genuinely think about being patriotic. 

Yes, we all love our nation and no one can change the feeling that we feel about our country. We get hurt when our team loses any game. We all support our people with all our effort when he/she is representing our country and we want our people to win. But it is also true that the pain is even more when our team loses with the Indian team or lets say the joy is even greater when our team gets victory over the Indian team. 

We show our stand on having our own identity on being Nepalese only when our ego is triggered by some Indian. Why is it? Can't we take India just like another neighboring country which has bilateral relationships with us? We made a history by organizing the 8th SAARC summit in our country; which had so many other news that general people would like to be informed about but the sad part was that more than 80% of the news on most of the news portals were dedicated to Modi and his visits, his plans of visiting apart from Kathmandu Valley, what he gifted and so on? There were other delegates as well who opined about Nepal. But why is it always Modi? 

I also agree that Modi has a personality that would grasp anyone's attention and I also have the agreement on being the neighboring state so many things are connected between Nepal and India; if there is a hurricane in India, Nepal too faces the climatic change. If flood engulfs Nepal, the same flood destroys India as well. Because of the scholarships provided by Indian government, many of us have gained quality education. 

Here, my point is only that we can clean our roads and decorate our historical monuments every day even when Modi or any other Indian delegates aren't visiting us. We can vote for our beauty queen with the motive that she is representing our country not just when we know that Indian beauty queen is going to win her. We can have patriotism even then when we don't need to show it of to any other nationals or countries after all patriotism means supporting the country all the time when it deserves it.