Patriotism & The Hindu

 

Invocation: The Verse of Rama

"Api Swarnamayi Lanka na me rochayate Lakshmanah,

       Janani janmabhumishcha swargadapi gariyasi."

["This golden Lanka does not interest me, Lakshmana.  
One's mother and motherland are higher than the highest heavens"]

Shri Rama’s words shine across the ages like an echo in the soul of this land. His refusal of golden Lanka is not rejection, but remembrance. He turns homeward not from poverty of desire, but from fullness of belonging. To him, janmabhūmi is not territory - it is truth.

The Hindu loves the land, not because it is his, but because he belongs to it.

He is born of her dust and drawn by her silence. His breath carries the scent of her rain; his bones remember her rivers. He does not stand upon the land as master, but within it, as flame within the lamp.

The Sacred Relationship

In the Rig Veda, the world is bound by a hidden rhythm: ṛtaṁ ca satyaṁ cābhīd dhāt tapaso ’dhyajāyata. “From the heat of creation arose the order of truth.” 

To live in harmony with ṛta is Dharma; to stray from it is adharma. Patriotism, then, is not sentiment, but the recognition of ṛta within one’s home-country. To protect one’s land is to guard the cosmic rhythm that sustains it.

The Upanishads whisper: yasmin sarvāṇi bhūtāni ātmanyevānupaśyati... “"He who constantly sees all living beings in the Self and the Self in all beings, thereafter feels no hatred for anything".

The nation, for the Hindu, is not external geography. It is the self, made visible. Its borders are not drawn in ink but in consciousness.

The Voices of Dharma

Tilak once said in Benares: “Religion is an element in nationality. The word Dharma means a tie - to connect the soul with God, and man with man.”
To him, the political was sacred duty, and freedom (Swaraj) was not merely governance but Karma-Yoga - The realization of Dharma through action.

Aurobindo saw Tilak as “the first political leader to restore continuity to the national life.” For him, nationalism was sādhanā. To serve the Mother was to serve the Divine. He wrote: “When you work for the Mother, you are doing yoga.”

Bipin Chandra Pal called India “the living soul of Sanatana Dharma.” To awaken her was to awaken oneself. Theirs was not nationalism in the European sense. It was the re-emergence of Dharma after centuries of silence.

The Breath of Compassion

From the Buddha came tenderness. His Dhammapada resounds: Sabbe sattā sukhi hontu - “May all beings be happy.” (Sarve sada Sukhi Bhavantu)
The King Ashoka carved this truth into stone: “All men are my children. I desire their welfare and happiness both in this world and in the next.”

Where the Vedic mind saw cosmic order, the Buddhist heart saw boundless empathy. Together they wove the fabric of Indian civilization - a harmony of duty and compassion. The Neo-Hindu thinkers would later breathe both into a single flame.

The Neo-Hindu Churning

When Vivekananda thundered that “Each nation has its mission; ours is spirituality,” he was not preaching isolation. He was remembering his inheritance.
He saw India’s poverty not as curse but as a challenge to translate her inner wealth into outer strength. He said, “The first sign of religion is cheerfulness, the second, feeling one with the universe.” That was patriotism: to feel one with the universe through the nation that mirrors it.

Aurobindo deepened this vision: “India cannot perish because her soul is eternal.” For him, the land was Punya Bhumi - a sacred field where humanity learns self-mastery. In her awakening lies the evolution of all mankind.

The Eternal Belonging

For the Hindu, the nation is not made by conquest or contract but by smṛti, the remembrance of shared truth. Its essence is continuity. Mountains, rivers, forests - all are lines in the same drawing. As he bows to the Ganga, he bows to memory itself.

This love is not pride but participation, not noise but nearness. Patriotism becomes prayer; citizenship becomes service.

To see oneself in the land and the land in oneself - this is the Hindu’s patriotism.

The Return

Sometimes, standing on this land that named our civilization, one feels what Rama must have felt - the ache to return. That longing itself is worship. The Hindu’s patriotism is not the cry of victory but the silence of remembrance.

"I love this land not because it is mine, but because I am hers."

Her thought, her language, her longing, her light. And in that belonging, my love becomes eternal.

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