Artice By Cadet Lakshya Pandey From 77 UK BN NCC, Almora. College: Bipin Tripathi Kumaon Institute of Technology (BTKIT), Dwarahat.

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Name: Lakshya Pandey
Branch: Electrical Engineering
Year: 2nd
Regimental No.: UK20SDA130241
Battalion: 77 UK BN NCC ALMORA
Institute: Bipin Tripathi Kumaon Institute of Technology, Dwarahat.
Patriotism means in essence, the love of one’s own country. An individual citizen who
loves his country and is loyal to it at all cost, even at the cost of his own life is, a
patriot. A patriot is one who is always willing to sacrifice all that belongs to him at the
altar of his country. This is the measure of patriot’s extreme love for his country and in
common terms it is called patriotism.
Now, the question that arises is, why does a person get so very attached to the country
of his birth, the reason is not far to seek. He is born here, nurtured here, blooms into
a full fledged lovable youth here and becomes the very soul of the place.
Thus, it is not surprising that, he should love the country that has given him so much.
It is to be expected that an individual loves the country of his birth, just as a person
loves his mother who gives him/her birth. Rather, on the contrary it would be shocking
to see people without any affection for their country, an individual not caring for his
country would sound unnatural strange and even unethical.
India has seen a spate of several patriots in the early decades of the 20th century.
When the motherland was writhing in pain under foreign rule, these patriots took birth
and helped the country to come out of the wilderness of foreign domination. They

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sacrificed their lives, their pleasures, their families at the altar of freedom for their
motherland from the shackles of foreign rule.
The list of such patriots is rather long, and, we have to read of their achievements to
understand what they went through, and, what patriotism really means. It is these patriots
who worked tirelessly for the cause of freeing their motherland from foreign rule. They
worked selflessly and loyally that success could not have avoided their frontiers. It will
suffice to remember a few stalwarts of this patriotic hue the list of which starts from
Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose, and the list goes on.
The fruits of their untiring efforts are being enjoyed by the generations to follow. This is
the gift of a patriot, he works to his full capacity, and the fruits are enjoyed by the
generations to follow. We are all breathing fresh air, living in a free country, and enjoying
all kinds of freedoms those patriots never lived to enjoy. Thus, the freedom that we are
enjoying today is the gift to us from out patriotic forefathers. Let us always remember
them and at least silently pay homage to them.
With this backdrop let us now consider our own standards of patriotism, these days.
We, the present day Indians being the descendants of the patriots who gave us the gift
of freedom, are absolutely opposite to them. We Indians of the present generation are
willing to sell anything of our country to anyone just for a pittance of money to be used
for our own personal benefit. We are found passing on vital secrets, passing wealth to
outsiders, just for petty gains for our individual selves. What a contrast to the forefathers
who left all that was theirs for the nation.
Also, we are keen on going out of India and settling there just because we get more
money there. This is like going to live with our neighbour just because he is richer than
our own parents. How absurd it sounds, and how illogical. However, this shows the
modern standard of our loyalty to our country that is India. We go out of the country,
learn there, earn there, provide all benefits of our knowledge to them, the outsiders,
and, never spare time for the growth of our own country.
A striking example I would like to quote here. Indian Institutes of Technologies spend
lakhs of the country’s money on each student that is turned out from these Institutes,
and, when the product turns out of the IIT, he at once goes to get settled elsewhere to

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give the advantage of his knowledge to others, and who cares how far backward his
own country India may be. This is not his concern at all.
This drastic change in our attitudes towards patriotism has appeared on the national
scene because, we, as individuals have become too selfish, too self centred and
individualistic. We never think of helping our own country in its growth and development.
If our next door neighbour is rich we never go and stay with him as he is better off
than our own parents then, why do we prefer to go and settle anywhere we must only
get money more than what our country can afford to give us.
Our loyalties to our country have faded to such an extent that we do not restrain
ourselves from even attacking the coming generations of our country. Our own men are
smuggling drugs and selling them outside schools and colleges where our next
generations are being nurtured. We are, ourselves helping to make our children into
drug addicts, and thus destroy the youth of the country and all this just to become rich
ourselves. Is this not a shame, the lowest kind of disloyalty to our motherland.
We, in our desire to earn more and more wealth do not even hesitate in destroying the
coming generations – what loyalties were, and what they are, a dismal fact. This
degeneration and deprivation has seeped deep into our Indian psyche – we live only for
ourselves. The societies, the future of the nation, the nation are of no consequence to
us.