Patriotism And The NRI

[ravishingravi]

For my friend Khota :winky: Hardbound version is on the way. Very relevant post esp. since large chunk of posters here are NRIs. "[This was published in Yahoo's India@64. Original link here] NRIs are unpatriotic. Having stayed outside the country for many years (twelve and counting), I have heard this and its variations many times. If you are an NRI, chances are you have too. In some form or the other. Let’s look at the first sentence, shall we? We know what an NRI is. Kind of. But what is unpatriotic? To me there are two kinds of patriotism—-Type A wherein people paint the tricolor on their faces, scream “Jeetega bhai jeetega India jeetega” at cricket matches, get all misty-eyed at “Mere Watan Ke Logon” and click “Like” on the “I hate those who hate India” page on Facebook. Then there is Type B, the ones who actually do something for the benefit of Indians, over and above the call of duty. From my personal experience, I can say that the average NRI, in the US at least, is actually more aggressively Type A than their homeland cousins. So by the Type A definition, their patriotism is next to none. This is in many ways natural. In the US, where I stay, a first-generation Indian (the only type who may reasonably be expected to be “patriotic”) despite his best efforts, can never be white. Nor can he be black. Which is why, no matter what his immigration status be in the eyes of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, he will never be American. Definitely not as American as apple pie. Or as Tupac. It’s not just the color of his skin that detaches the first-generation NRI from the American identity. It is the reality of his upbringing, the very fact that he grew up in India watching “Hum Log” and “Buniyaad” instead of “Gilligan’s Island” and “Addam’s Family”. No matter how much he reads up on the rules of baseball so that he may do small-chat with his American colleagues, a baseball game will never conjure up for him images of walking in to the stadium holding dad’s arm and eating hot-dogs at the concession stand. Which is why he will never truly be as emotional over the game as a true-blue. In addition, the almost prevalent ignorance about his country of origin (“Do you guys really drink cow piss?”, “Do you people have modern toilets?” “Would you be allowed to eat with a person of a lower caste?”) in his immediate social context, an ignorance strengthened by simplistic poverty-porn like “Slumdog Millionaire” that defines India in popular culture, makes the average NRI even more conscious of his roots. It makes him that much more protective of his Indian identity, sometimes to the point of being aggressive. Of course this pent-up aggression cannot be given vent to when boss does his best Simpsons-Apu “Thank you come again” accent. At that time, he needs to smile (else he will be considered “not a sport”). But the anger does need out, else he will burst. Some give in to gratuitous self-flagellation in the hope that he can get rid of the brown tag. But most react to the incessant cultural push by becoming even more “Indian”. This strengthening of identity is manifested through regular attendance at India Association meetings every weekend, threats to cut off junior’s allowance if he/she does not attend “Indian cultural workshops” and ceaseless trolling of anyone who thinks “Rang De Basanti”‘s vision of redemptive justice rather disturbing. One would say of course that when an NRI is accused of being “unpatriotic”, it is in the Type B sense. In other words, jingoistic as he be, he does not do anything for the country. Since this accusation comes primarily from non-NRIs, the assumption is clear “The person who stays in India, by the very act of staying, does more for the country than the NRI. ” Whenever I have asked “How is the homeland Indian more patriotic by definition?”, the answer I get, most often, is ” We pay taxes to the Indian nation.” My counter to that is “You pay taxes, because you have to.” You pay only the amount the law dictates, taking advantage of every opportunity for deductions. Nothing wrong in that of course. What however is “not on” is when this kind of altruism-out-of-compulsion is presented as an act of patriotism, as if one had any choice to do otherwise. If there is someone out there who is paying more tax than he is legally obliged to pay then yes, that person is definitely “patriotic”. But can we agree that if such people do exist in this world, they are the exceptions rather than the rule? And that there is nothing that prevents a NRI, if he be so inclined, from sending an envelope stuffed with cash to the Indian exchequer. Is that likely? No. But then neither is the hypothetical homeland Indian who overpays tax intentionally. The other argument I hear is: ” By staying in India, the homeland Indian works for companies that operate locally. Thus his brain is put to the service of the nation.” Another closely related argument is that “The homeland Indian buys “Indian goods”, thus facilitating the flow of service and goods in the Indian economy.” I have two problems with this. One is that in today’s globalized economy, how is working for Indian company Wiprosys more “patriotic” than working for US company Microgle, when most likely the project you are working at Wiprosys is actually doing contract work for Microgle? Who is benefiting from your brain? The answer—the world. As for spending money in India, whose economy do you think is benefited by the iPad or the Motorola phone you bought in Delhi or Bangalore? The answer—–the world’s. I also fail to see the patriotism in providing a service and getting paid for it. The only exception to this are people of the armed forces; their patriotism is beyond question. Why? Because their calling carries with it the threat of death and serious injury and the salaries they receive do not compensate for that possibility—-it needs a special kind of person to be ready to make the supreme sacrifice and on the nobility of that, there can be no dispute. And as for contributing to the economy, if we are going to be splitting hairs, I can say that the NRI also spends on their annual visits to the homeland. Spends quite a bit I can say from personal experience. Many send money back and buy property in India, thus oiling the wheels of the economy almost as well as the homelander. Again that he does so is driven by his personal interest and not from an inherent desire to go good for the country. Same then for the non-NRIs. And if we are looking for true Type B patriots, you will find them outside the country as well as inside. And I am not just talking about the many who press a button and send a cheque to an Indian charity. Not that that in itself is not significant. I am talking about those NRIs who put in labor, taking time out from their jobs and their research, so that things may be better in India. I am talking about those running in marathons to raise money for Indian causes, those volunteering resources for organizing fund-raising events, those who take out time from the 2 weeks they get to go to India to trek to the backwaters and check on projects that are being supported, those who are working to supplement the Indian government’s meager lobbying efforts on Capitol Hills using their own resources. And many others. Are there self-loathing, “India sucks” type here abroad? You bet there are. But for each one of them, I can show you one homelander who feels the exact same way. And for every NRI who does nothing for the country, you will definitely find one homelander who does exactly that. In today’s globalized world, in which where one stays and works is merely an accident of convenience and opportunity, belittling someone’s love for their country and their contribution to it, purely on the basis of where they live, is intellectual laziness at the best. And a sneering “I am better than you” at the worst." http://greatbong.net/2011/08/13/patriotism-and-the-nri/

[IKnowU]

:orderorder: Fix the formatting

[punjabi_khota]

Why I Left India (Again) http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/why-i-left-india-again/ The Hindi movie on my “return to India” flight on Dec. 13th, 2006 was “Swades” (literally: “My country,” a story about a patriotic NASA engineer who returns to India to help improve his homeland). The idea that you can fix India’s problems by adding more people to it — even smart people — is highly suspect. No, I wasn’t going back to fix things; I was leaving the U.S. to go back to Shri Thomas Friedman’s India: an India that offered global companies, continental food, international schools and domestic help; an India that offered freedom from outsourcing and George W. Bush. I was excited about moving to India and I thought I had the right expectations—after being away for eleven years (I grew up in Mumbai), I was prepared for India to feel less like home and more like the flight’s “Indian vegetarian meal”: visually familiar but viscerally alien. Our move was a success by any metric. My wife and I are software professionals, and our careers flourished at an Indian rate of growth (R.I.P., “Hindu rate of growth”). Our daughter attended a preschool in Bangalore whose quality matched any in the Bay Area. Our three-bedroom flat in Defence Colony, Indiranagar, was so comfortable and so American-friendly that my friends called it the Green Zone. And yet, two years and nine months after our move to India, on one of our regular evening jogs along our impossibly leafy street, my wife and I found ourselves discussing not whether we should return to the U.S., but when. A month later, we were back in California. ___ Anyone who’s written about India has at some point claimed that there are two or at most three Indias, whether “airplane India” or “scooter India” or “bullock cart India.” Maybe they stop at three because it is difficult for the reader to imagine more. Early on, all the metaphors rang true. I’d see bullock-cart India beg from scooter India while scooter India was getting honked at by airplane India. But then the metaphors started to fade and the daily grind set in. I stopped noticing India’s newness, oldness and juxtapositioned-ness. Within weeks, I had joined the honking swarm driving in Bangalore. I knew a guy who could repair anything from my daughter’s talking Barney to our Bose Wave radio. I could sweet-talk an auto-rickshaw driver into not fleecing me (even though I was Kannada-challenged). Everything felt familiar, normal, unremarkable, as it should be; I was in India. That’s when it started going wrong. Three months after our return, after a friend told me that his two children were sick with amoebiasis — he thought they got it from their maid — my wife and I designated a separate set of dinnerware for our maids. It’s more hygienic. Within six months, I’d brusquely refused my driver an emergency loan of 500 rupees ($10) to attend his grandmother’s funeral. I’d learned my lesson after our previous driver scammed me into paying for his son’s broken leg (as it turned out, he had no son). It only encourages them to ask for more; besides, they’re all liars. Near the first anniversary of our return, I had my first road-rage incident: I verbally abused a hawker who was blocking the road. I’m not going to let bullock-cart India make my daughter late for her school admission test. The hawker glared but scampered away, the road cleared, and, as I walked back to my car, I saw something new and disturbing in my driver’s eyes: respect. I don’t know how my daughter felt because I couldn’t look her in the eye. Was this even a real problem? Make your peace; it is how it is.At the end of a long phone call to my mother in Pune, she said, “Don’t think so much. Just work hard and you can get whatever you want.” But I never doubted what I could get; I hated what I was becoming. I struggled, I regressed, I improved, I tried learning from others — except so many seemed (to me, not to them) worse off: an offensive Sardar joke here (even the kids laughed), a not-so-subtle inquiry about my caste (I’m still furious with myself for answering), tips on how to keep our maid “in her place” — it just didn’t stop. Et tu, airplane India? And so it goes. In any breakup, there is this moment when a person who was a part of you just an instant ago becomes a surrealistically familiar stranger. After that moment, inertia and denial can only delay the inevitable. On my last night in Bangalore I drank an egregious amount of my favorite takeout Chinese hot-and-sour vegetable soup, and I cried; I knew this second goodbye was final. When I first left India in 1996, I left for the U.S. When I left India in 2009, I left India. ___ Why do I feel better in the U.S.? Maybe it’s not because I’m at home here, but because I’m an alien. Perhaps three thousand years of history have made us Indians a little too familiar with one another for our own good. We’ve perfected Malcolm Gladwell’s “blink” — the reflexive, addictive and tragically accurate placement of other Indians into bullock carts, scooters, airplanes and who knows what else. These issues exist in all countries, but in India, I could see the bigotry in high fidelity and hear the stereotypes in surround-sound — partly because it is worse in India, mostly because I am Indian. India’s wealth and lifestyle disparity is still impossibly great; I probably spent more on pizza than on my maid. She knew this too, because she was often the one who handed the pizza delivery guy his money. Everyone in India has to deal with this, but I coped in the worst possible way: by dehumanizing her and other people like her, ever so slightly, ever so subtly — chronic amoebiasis of the soul. Though my return to India failed, I came back feeling more optimistic than ever about India’s long-term success. India is regaining her leadership position — the position she held ever since humans were civilized, a position she lost only because of a few uncivilized humans (at least give us back our Koh-i-noor!). I know India will rule the future. It’s just that I’ve realized — I’ve resigned myself to the fact — that I won’t be a part of that future. I’m glad I went back to India, and I’m glad to be back in the U.S. Life has come full circle but the center has shifted. I didn’t go to India to find home, but I did find it; I now know where I belong. As Laozi might have said, sometimes the journey of a single step starts with a thousand miles in the opposite direction. (There was no Hindi movie on the flight back to the U.S. Or maybe I didn’t check.)

[Ram]

^ Karan Johar couldnt come up with SRK starring movie laden with such a cocktail of emotions, even if he tried. I am always VERY VERY sceptical some one who was born in India, spent most of his formative and young adult life there, moved abroad in their 20s and then when they go back, find India too suffocating. FFS, you spent the first 2 and half decades of your life living there, you should sort of know what to expect!

[punjabi_khota]

I think the guy makes a lot of sense. It is not like we don't know what to expect, it is just that some things that seemed 'natural', now are constantly questioned because of what we have seen in the US. I came to US when I was 21, which is when apparently you become an adult. E.g. the pizza bit in the article hit home like a mother****ing heat seeking tomahak. . But it of course depends on the person too, some are more flexible/sensitive than others etc.

[Ram]

I think the guy makes a lot of sense. It is not like we don't know what to expect, it is just that some things that seemed 'natural', now are constantly questioned because of what we have seen in the US. I came to US when I was 21, which is when apparently you become an adult. E.g. the pizza bit in the article hit home like a mother****ing heat seek tomahak. But it of course depends on the person too, some are more flexible/sensitive than others etc.

If your implication is that having lived in the US for a while, you get offended when you go back to India and come across situations that challenge your conscience, I am sorry but I am not buying a word of that. Beneath the fake smiles, expensive suits, shiny corporate offices and polite greetings in the US, there lies a very dark and dubious core that is powered by greed, ego and lust for power. This is a country that has made an industry out of the death of 3000 people in a terrorist attack, built phony monuments for them and converted that place into a tourist site. If that doesnt offend you, I wonder how anyone can be offended by dodgy sardar-ji joke. The US is by far the most morally bankrupt society I have ever seen (and I have seen only 2, to be honest). I have never been so disillusioned with humanity and human-kind ever in my life, like I am today. I'll tell you another instance of how I think pretty much everything is fake here Remember the day after Steve Jobs died and every boss of pretty much every corporate company came on T.V, paying glowing tributes to him. I couldnt help but think "What the eff are these guys doing on TV, giving him glowing accolades? I am pretty sure they absolutely HATED Jobs and probably even secretly celebrating his passing.. "And the next day, I come across news that Jobs had declared that his stated intent was to DESTROY Google's Android system.. ' You really think Eric Schmidt meant what he said about Jobs on TV the previous day? I agree - Our country is so screwed up, its not even funny. But there's genuine goodness there, not like the made-up, phony goodness of US of A.

[veer]

I am thinking of moving back to India in couple of years.. I came to US 12 yrs ago when I was 17 and now married.. Couple of major reasons I want to go back - For kids - I still wanna preserve that Indianness for future. Dont want to meet kids just during holidays. Life here is just weekend to weekend. For my senior citizen years - US is not for old people.. dont want to rely on kids to take me around.. hospitals and medical is so damn demanding.. Yes, it will be tough to go back and settle there but it is worth taking chances and I consider myself very flexible and can adjust well in situations. So is there anyone here who went back and settled in India? would like to know your take on this..

[EnterTheVoid]

People are too busy in their lives to really give a **** about patriotism here in India (flying out soon)

[Aaku]

That article is stupid!! omg so much traffficccc omg maids sooo dirtyyy immaaa leaveee indiaaaaaa (again) gadha!

[gs]

Why do I feel better in the U.S.? Maybe it’s not because I’m at home here, but because I’m an alien. Perhaps three thousand years of history have made us Indians a little too familiar with one another for our own good. We’ve perfected Malcolm Gladwell’s “blink” — the reflexive, addictive and tragically accurate placement of other Indians into bullock carts, scooters, airplanes and who knows what else. These issues exist in all countries, but in India, I could see the bigotry in high fidelity and hear the stereotypes in surround-sound — partly because it is worse in India, mostly because I am Indian.

Brilliant!!

[coffee_rules]

Stupid flimsy reason to get back. What was the gist of his issues anyway - he was not happy with the lifestyle he had romanticised about India. He has to realize that he needs to go back to India for his own reasons, not because of patriotism, kids or anything else. What do YOU want to do with your life. He is really a gadha. He just found an excuse to get back to the relaxed lifestyle he was used to for 11 years. It seemed like his thinking is ..."If I am after all eating pizzas in India, why not eat it in America"!. Who told him to eat pizzas in India?

[ravishingravi]

^ Karan Johar couldnt come up with SRK starring movie laden with such a cocktail of emotions, even if he tried. I am always VERY VERY sceptical some one who was born in India, spent most of his formative and young adult life there, moved abroad in their 20s and then when they go back, find India too suffocating. FFS, you spent the first 2 and half decades of your life living there, you should sort of know what to expect!

It is true Ram. It happens. I have seen it close hand in my family, majority of whom live abroad. There are series of conflicting emotions for those who have spent sizeable portion of their life in India. It is not even a question of knowing what to expect and not complaining thereafter. Humans are lot more complicated than that.

[Clarke]

The guy admits to denying $10 worth of emergency LOAN despite being a rich dude, honest but with a pretty short sensitivity fuse. What difference does it make if the $10 does not come back every few months ? Most of us have been cheated of our bucks here and there does not mean we lose trust of humanity. The trouble it seems to me is that he seemed to be keen to creating his personal America inside of India, at least that's what the green zone & the dinnerware case indicate. Most of India lives with an occasional stomach upset/flu here and there and is not paranoid about some friend's assumption. You cannot choose to view India from the Friedman lens, its much more complex & challenging than that.

[mishra]

PK.. Where ever you nicked the article from, It is brilliant. Probably a very honest representation of feelings. I have first hand experience to a lot of it because when i go back it is allmost impossible for anyone to guess If I have ever gone beyond UP ...... My eyes are ashtonished at the pace at which things have developed in say Delhi or in my hometown and locals take it as gaon ka gavadee hai..... Everyone will fleece me (Rickshaw/taxi/Policeman/traffic guy). And you know what, I know i can stop them but just let them do it..... But some time things go too far. For example security guy(a kid in late teens or very early twenties) at Akshardham temple in Delhi was adamant to strip search me because metal detector went off due to buccal on my belt. No common sense was used. He wasnt ready to let me take off my belt and pass through the detector, or I was there with big family Mum,Dad,wife and child and i can not be a terrorist.... And all because i was communicating in pure simple Hindi..... When I came back I told it to my colleague here, I can say he genuinely felt sorry and requested me that next time when I go India, let him know before hand so that he can make sure temple head can meet me and my family too.. So yes Ram... It is not that I can not live there as I have allready lived two decades of my life. Its just that now I see the wrongs in HD at the same I am not happy to show/use authority or pull strings because I don't want that road side policeman or my circle in India to be inconvenienced in any way. After all they are my people

[ganeshran]

That article is stupid!! omg so much traffficccc omg maids sooo dirtyyy immaaa leaveee indiaaaaaa (again) gadha!

:hysterical::hysterical::hysterical:

[EnterTheVoid]

The guy is a dumbass for going back to India in the first place. He wanted an American lifestyle in India. Duh, not happening :bird:

[achilles]

Dude, Ram. WTH man. Hamein bolne ke liye kuch toh choda kar.

[Ram]

It is true Ram. It happens. I have seen it close hand in my family' date=' majority of whom live abroad. There are series of conflicting emotions for those who have spent sizeable portion of their life in India. It is not even a question of knowing what to expect and not complaining thereafter. Humans are lot more complicated than that.[/quote'] Dude, I am not denying that at all. Yes, once you live abroad, the irregularities of your home society do become a lot a more glaring. But trust me you wouldnÃÕ want to have your benchmark as the US of A.

[yoda]

That article is stupid!! omg so much traffficccc omg maids sooo dirtyyy immaaa leaveee indiaaaaaa (again) gadha!

:hysterical: The guy is honest alright, but let's face it, like Clarke said, he is looking for the US in India and ofc when he is the US he is probably looking for India.

[akshayxyz]

TL;DRs please.