Having been born in the mid 1980s, I belong to what shall probably be the last generation of people whose grandparents — and for some, even parents — were born before Independence and the Partition. I also had the fortune of having known two of my great-grandmothers. This meant that I grew up listening to stories of that time, a time that, to me, the rapt listener, was unlike any other. These stories included tales of brave men and women, of struggles for freedom, of colonial atrocities, of ideals, of people good and bad irrespective of their skin colour. They included tales of a fearless love for one’s country, of people called patriots. They were tales that left me wide-eyed and open-mouthed. History text books later bore similar accounts of the time, but reading about them in school books with bad grammar didn’t quite measure up to the thrill of listening to my grandmother speak of lived experiences. Her stories were crucial to my understanding of the era — they saved my perceptions from being governed merely by the colonized-versus-colonizer, good-versus-evil binary. I was one of the lucky ones.

But then even the lucky ones have grown up. Most of them have lost their grandparents, their last links to an era that is steadily receding further and further into the past. Their worlds and horizons have widened and their notions of country and patriotism have grown more complicated. This is a shift, but it isn’t difficult to negotiate. Not until you switch on the television one Republic Day and watch a college student not much younger than you look closely — and blankly — for a good 10 seconds at a picture of Subhas Chandra Bose, only to look up and tell the show host “Yaha ka principal hai shayad (He is probably the principal of this college).” I wonder what he would have said if he’d been shown a picture of B.R. Ambedkar. Or if he were asked what the Montague-Chelmsford reforms were. Or if he were told to identify the bespectacled, bald man on a 100-rupee note.

There is a marked change in the way young people today engage with the nation and the idea of patriotism. An interest in the nation’s history and events and people of the past is an important part of one’s relationship with one’s country. One of the reasons for this is because a knowledge of — and engagement with — the past informs one’s opinions and feelings about the changes one sees in every aspect — social, cultural and economic — of the nation’s progress. A basic understanding of some of the rights and principles enshrined in India’s Constitution, for example, might help one discern when a particular law requires urgent amendment. Being aware of some of the ideals on which the independent nation was founded might inform one’s sense of justice when incidents of violence or discrimination occur. Even if one cites concerns about cleanliness when protesting against something as (unfortunately) common as spitting or urinating in public places, those concerns will have stemmed from a deeper, unconscious respect for, and awareness of, one’s homeland.

But most of the youth today — comfortably distant from obscure things called freedom struggles and independence and patriotism — don’t have a clue to what a sense of loyalty to the nation feels like. It is a sweeping statement to make, but one that finds itself proven with uncomfortable regularity. For the average middle-class youngster, the word, patriotism, represents a vague, romantic ideal that induces a faint swelling of pride in one’s heart. The patriotism he feels is tied in with the notion of a great country, a country that can put its errant, evil neighbour in its place in no time if it so wishes. It makes him feel righteous, and he revels in his complacent righteousness when he reads of any misfortune that any Pakistani suffers anywhere in the world. Serves him right, he thinks. His bristling righteousness reaches its peak during the rare occasion when India trounces Pakistan in a cricket match. It soon settles back into complacence. For him, patriotism and jingoism are one and the same. It is the idea of a vast land that one owns, and in whose name, or ‘defence’, even human rights violations can occasionally be overlooked. Not for him the idea of a nation that is made up of common, unwashed masses of people who must be fed, educated and clothed. No, that idea of patriotism isn’t nearly as attractive or exciting. There are, of course, well-meaning students involved in campus politics, but they, too, often lose sight of the fact that working for the good of the people does not have to degenerate into violence.

Then there are those youngsters who do look for ways in which things can be improved in the country. But they are still grossly outnumbered by people their age who could not care less about improvement just as long as their comfortable existences are not disturbed. And every day, the former are faced with the sheer weight of what they are up against. This is not only because they exist in a society that nurtures and encourages injustice and crime; it is also because they don’t find people their age to fight alongside them.