Components of a Nation

A nation is not built on a piece of land, it is not the populace that gives birth to a nation, the religions, traditions and cultures also don’t bring about a nation neither it’s an ideology which a nation stems from, you can’t simply put mountains, valleys, rivers, forests, plains, deserts and archipelagos together to create a nation.

A nation actually is built on the emotions of people. When people treat a piece of land as their “Mother” that’s only when a nation is born. When countless hearts open up to unfurl and hoist with a piece of cloth and move with one tune, one anthem together, that’s when a nation is created. It indeed is not born in minds; a nation is born in hearts. Sacrifices of the young who lay their lives in the prime of youth and the old who shatter their lifelong nurtured dreams, selflessly, regretlessly and with pride only give birth to a nation. A nation gradually comes into being when generations get consumed defending one another despite not knowing one another and all of that only for the sake of a shared thought of freedom and a shared philosophy of life – it is unto us to protect and take forward what our predecessors passed on to us, bet it freedom or a value or a philosophy of life.

And we need to realize that freedom here does not mean just freedom, you can’t simply grant freedom to fanatics, xenophobes and faith militants who would again flip a nation into a subjugated colony. Freedom means the righteous freedom that doesn’t seek to divide on the basis of narrow thoughts to the contrary, the one that seeks to unite, integrate and endows with the priceless gift of self-determination and these only are the components which a nation consists of. We need to constantly remind ourselves of this to renew our sensitivities for the nation we inherently belong.

Our nation is known as a multiethnic, multicultural society of multilinguistic people believing in and following different paths of religious approaches but all of this is superseded by a common philosophy of life which suggests that nation is however paramount and each of us is individually accountable for maintaining and further straightening its integrity perennially. 

Sulabh Gupta