| The Unbearable Lightness of Patriotism
By Shekhar Deshpande
Save
the honking for nuisances in traffic.
As
we have heard over and over again, life as we have known
it changed on Sept. 11, 2001. For better or worse, the
life and place of immigrants in the cultural and social
life (not to say political, etc.) have changed dramatically
as well. All of us, whose vocation is to dance around
the boundaries of identity, find ourselves perplexed
by what has changed since that fatal day. To put it
bluntly, our quest for identity is now challenged by
the dominant demand for patriotism. This is a complex,
troubling and intriguing phenomenon in the lives of
all immigrants, and in our own way, for those of us
whose national loyalties are not exclusive. We are naturalized
citizens, non-resident aliens, and Americans in a legal
sense. But like so many others, our emotional loyalties
are divided between our old homeland and our new home.
Patriotism is the question of the day. Where do we stand?
Let us examine the world before 9-11. We dealt with
this eternally meditative issue of identity. Where do
we belong? Culturally, we bring our traditions, our
values and our history with us. In a pluralistic society
such America, that identity had to be forged into a
new one, the one of belonging to a new culture, new
values and new norms. It is an astonishing achievement
of humanity that something like this could be achieved,
that immigrants could find themselves well positioned
between two lands and two cultures. It is a healthy
state of mind in any culture that accepts this duality
(not to speak of other complexities of identity) and
fosters it.
Since that day last September, we have faced a difficult
public choice. Although we were happy living with a
divided consciousness in this world, there was a new
demand for exclusivity. It ranged from President Bush’s
call that people are “either with us or against us,”
to the bumper sticker exhorting drivers to “honk if
you are a patriot.”
As we have stated in these pages earlier, the demand
of exclusive loyalty has made it difficult to be against
terrorism of all kinds (that of global reach and also
local reach with global implications), and still maintain
a position that the way to eliminate it need not resort
to violence of the sort that the overwhelming force
just created. It was difficult to be against terrorism
and violence used to inflame it, or to calm it. Similarly,
the idea that one must honk if one is patriotic creates
a situation in which one could not negotiate a thoughtful
difference between being patriotic that honking requires
and being patriotic in a discerning sense.
In fact, if being a patriot were just a matter of honking
in the middle of a rather lonely street, such patriotism
would threaten any nation. It did in the middle of last
century. Patriotism since last September has taken a
variety of ominous and ludicrous forms. General Motors
made patriotism available for 0% financing, while other
corporations made a fast buck wrapping themselves in
the Old Glory. The site at Ground Zero now has a viewers’
stand, with its own vendors that could compete with
any other commercial attraction in the country. As Bill
Mahr remarked on Politically Incorrect, the least we
could do is put a flag on a gas-guzzling car made outside
of this country. The contradictions and gestures of
marketing made patriotism cheap. Many immigrants, from
Afghanistan or the Middle East to Korea and India, made
sure there were plenty of flags visible on their cars,
on the storefronts and even outside their homes. The
fear of not flying a flag became a deeper motivator
for this spontaneous expression of posturing for justice
against terrorism. Very few of us reflected on this
moment that spoke of anything but the air of freedom
touted in this nation.
Most “foreigners” have an uneasy relationship with the
Flag of a Nation. One of the cultural shocks in this
country is to accept the unrestrained and almost irreverent
use of the national flag. Within the first few days
in the life of an immigrant, it is difficult not to
see the flag on bikinis, underwear, sportswear, dinner
napkins and all sorts of objects that call for rather
indiscriminate contact between the objects that represent
a nation and acts that represent some of the foul activities
of the human body, not to speak of some crass commercialism.
All this went on even before 9-11. But it is a cultural
shock to realize that there is a great debate in this
country about burning the flag, when there is none about
wearing it on your underwear. One would think the hierarchy
of respect would be rather convincing.
This is a particular shock for Indians. The famed tricolor
that we have saluted and marched to from film theaters
to parades has been, until recently, a sacred symbol.
We were socialized into a reverent attitude toward this
ultimate symbol of modern nationalism. Indians were
banned from using it in public spaces. In fact, it was
only earlier this month that the Indian Government allowed
its citizens to display the tricolor outside their homes
on days other than the national days of respect. In
India, the flag could be hoisted on a prison, but not
on a car of a high court judge! Such was the frame of
the Prevention of Insult to National Honor act of 1971,
which solidified the respect of flag in legal sense.
This act, although now amended to allow ordinary citizens
to display it any time, cannot be used for commercial
purposes and yes, Madhuri Dixit cannot wear it at all
in one of her dance sequences.
With all this cultural baggage in mind, it is hard to
take the love of the flag seriously, even without a
national emergency. The crude commercia-lism is disturbing
purely on cultural grounds, even if one were not tuned
to its dehumanizing and insulting effects.
It is hard to respond with respect to what seems to
arise out of a suspect attitude toward the symbol of
collectivity. If patriotism is the last refuge of a
scoundrel, then the flag had to be the last loincloth
that could hide the shame of the shameless. Those of
us, who, in our search for conformity, went out to get
flags to answer to the demands of loyalties, forgot
that this is the place that claims to worship the spirit
of freedom and choice. If anything, in this world of
increased globalization, where migration is more a norm
(a necessary condition?) than a preference, it should
be possible to express one’s loyalty to the cause without
selling out to the flag. In a world where anything and
everything is a commodity, one has to maintain one’s
ground to resist subscribing to the demands of total
loyalty.
Despite our best beliefs, it does feel as if this clamor
for loyalty and patriotism toward symbols and public
conformity will take the breath out of the thought of
identities, dualities in cultural experience, and above
all, political expression.
If the war on terrorism is going to produce conformity,
then we have not learned any lessons from earlier cruelties
of fascism. It denies the history of the last hundred
years at least. How is it possible anymore to have nations
with clear-cut and total loyalties? The idea of holding
a whole community accountable for the crimes of some
has become so embedded in the recent actions by the
defenders of patriotism that it threatens to taint the
existence of all immigrants everywhere. It is perplexing
indeed to think how we negotiate the necessities of
global markets, cheap labor, cultural pluralism, the
diversity of races, and still maintain the rigidity
of demands of belonging to a nation and holding onto
a flag.
While we meditate on our own dilemmas on belonging,
we must keep in mind that this suffocating and contradictory
atmosphere is a product of a number of factors. It is
said that the mettle of a culture is tested in times
of adversity. And, one hopes that this time of adversity
would bring out the best in this culture. There is no
reason to take any of the talk about patriotism seriously.
We still have to work out this notion of patriotism,
even though it is manifested here in the name of the
flag. We remember the Senior Bush’s to a flag factory
in the middle of a political campaign and indirectly
raising suspicions of the loyalty of all those damn
liberals.
What is crucial about patriotism is that it is an outmoded
concept. With the national identity firmly in question,
we have to move on to a new language and new definition
of what it means to be a patriot. Since we have the
experience of being at two places at once, of dividing
our emotional and legal or social ties, we have to form
that new language. Patriotism is not wrapped in a flag
any more than it is in the commercialism of the consumer
age. It is something about loyalties to principles.
For justice, peace and non-violence.
We may honk for sheer survival, but we ought to be quietly
working for a world in which we do not have to be forced
to honk for anything but a nuisance in traffic.
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End Of Article....
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