Patriotism is the sentiment associated with the country one lives in. Since the country is considered motherland or fatherland it draws the respect of the people. Thus patriotism is a noble sentiment as it is based on devotion and selfless sacrifice of the people. It is the foundation that holds the structure of the nation. It is a pious sentiment and has always been adored by the people of all the nations.
All hold the patriots of their nations in high esteem. They build either their statues or memorials on which they offer wreaths with a heavy heart.
A man who hasn’t this noble sentiment lacks the sense of self-respect too. He is the weak end of the nation who can succumb to pressure and may not become slave himself alone but may assist the aggressor in making the whole nation slave.
India has been prone to foreign attacks for centuries. It is neither just a chance nor a sheer miracle that the country has maintained old traditions and culture. During different periods there have been patriots who sacrificed all they had to save the motherland from the foreigners.
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Right from the invasion of Babar we have Rana Sanga-Maharana Pratap during the expansionist designs of Akbar. The terror of Aurangzeb was faced by the Maratha and Punjabi patriots who gave Shivaji and Guru Govind Singh. The latter sacrificed all his four sons at the altar of the nation. Then comes Banda Bairagi who smiled when his son was dashed to pieces on a stone. His skin was cut and chilli powder sprinkled all over. The spirit remained undaunted. It was this patriotism that sustained the nation and kept the culture intact of which we are proud.
The survival and revival of patriotism in India during British regime is just yesterday’s history. This period gave India largest number of conscientious martyrs and patriots. Right from the martyrdom of Adivasi patriot Tilka Manjhi in Bihar in 1747 the stream flew to Karnataka where Rani Chenamma of Kittur and her five associates Rayanna, Jagvir, Nagarkatti, Chennavasappa and Balanna laid their lives for the cause of the nation in 1824. It was from Karnataka that the anguish blew to Maharashtra and then to the North when in 1857 the whole country followed the lead of Mangal Pande, Nana Sahab, Tantya Tope and Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi.
The first war of independence took a toll of largest number of patriots in the history of India’s fight for freedom. Right up to 23rd March, 1931 when Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were hanged in Lahore Jail it was a period of upsurge of patriotism that took a violent shape-was rather based on violence. It was an age of intellectual patriots which was followed by Subhash and his Azad Hind Army.
Gandhi’s non-violent movement too gave a large number of patriots from 1921 to 1940 who sacrificed their lives or were persecuted in some other way. 1942 again saw a rise of violent patriots. Whether violent or non-violent expression the aim of the patriots against Britishers that started in the South from Kittur in the form of a people’s upsurge ended too in the South in Hyderabad in 1947, against the tyranny of the Nizam, a stooge of the Britishers.
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Spearheaded by Ganapati Amrate, Sambha Kavle, Mahadevan and Keshavshende in Umri it took a toll of more than a thousand patriots. Patriotism in India reached its climax when lakhs of people offered satyagraha in Goa to face the bullets of the Portuguese rulers. The first to fall was Jagmohan of Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh. Hundreds of patriots from different parts of the country laid their lives to have a complete picture of free Motherland.
Indian patriotism has never taken a negative attitude. Indian patriots have never been aggressors and have never disturbed the peace of the world. It cannot be linked with the State nationalism of Hitler or of Mussolini or Napoleon which took an aggressive turn and can be called narrow patriotism. It can be associated only with the sentiments of Joan of Arc of France, Abraham Lincoln of USA and De Valera of Ireland who had a pride for and worked for their motherland without any aggressive designs.