Our Hon’ ble Young Speaker needs to take it easy. He might have meant it casually but his statement that nobody should say “Viva Portugal” was not taken too lightly by Social media users, who vented their ire on Facebook and on other platforms. Nowadays, nobody likes to be morally policed, to be told what to do and what not to do. Our elected representatives need to stay away from creating needless polarising controversies and must focus on the development agenda. With the dawn of cable TV channels, Internet and social media platforms, the World is now a much smaller place. Like it or not, the generation today will support Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, Barcelona, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Federer, Nadal, Sharapova, Carolina, Messi, Ronaldo and other stars. They will shout slogans, wear T-Shirts, do road shows and celebrate every time their favourite teams, Countries or stars win. Nothing wrong in that. Moreover, India and Portugal share extremely cordial relations today. Nationalism is much more than singing slogans or not singing them. We should not bring down its meaning in such a narrow way by reducing it to a particular one–dimensional pattern. There is no measuring instrument to measure patriotism so what is the basis for one person to feel he is more patriotic than the other or one community to believe it is more nationalist than the other? It is not fair to define who is a nationalist and who is not based on such narrow sets of parameters. Swami Vivekananda in one of his speeches had said, “All truth is eternal. Truth is nobody’s property; no race, no individual can lay any exclusive claim to it. Truth is the nature of all souls”. India belongs to all those who live in it. It is in our Country’s interests that a liberal plural form of Nationalism is propagated as against the singular mono-cultural one. India has to rise and we must together let it to.
regards, Sandeep Heble Panjim, Goa 9326129171
