-Savio Saldanha SJ
DOI
– 10.5281/zenodo.18349011
23-01-2026
Growing up in India, patriotism
entered our heart long before it reached the intellect. We learnt it standing —
straight-backed, silent and attentive — as the national anthem played. We
absorbed it through school assemblies, textbooks, parades, and films that
repeated a simple truth: the nation is sacred, the flag untouchable, the
motherland beyond question. Loving the country felt as natural as breathing,
and obedience to authority quietly blended with devotion. Patriotism was not
something we thought of, it was a sentiment, an emotion. For many of us, this
formation was not cynical. It carried genuine warmth: pride in diversity,
sacrifice, freedom from colonial rule, and the dream of a nation based on the
ideas of freedom, equality and justice for everyone irrespective of caste,
religion and social standing.
Yet for some, due to the events of
the past decade, a deep dissonance set in. The language of patriotism grew
harsher. Suddenly it was not about equality, but, some were more equal than the
others. Differences began to be spoken about openly, there were some who were
Indians and then there were others who became mere residents. Critics and
intellectuals were branded as “anti-nationals, jihadis, Khalistanis and Vatican
agents.” Students, journalists, activists, and intellectuals were imprisoned
under sweeping security laws and draconian acts – vestiges of colonial laws.
Meanwhile, those aligned with power — sometimes accused of rape, lynching, or
corruption — found protection or silence.
So, the question is who is an Indian
today? Political theorist Roger Griffin calls this as ‘Palingenetic
ultranationalism’ referring to the belief that a nation must be reborn by
purging those labelled as ‘inpure’ and only certain people count as the real nation.
We have seen similar condition in the 1930’s Nazi Germany where people were
branded as enemies, traitors and national threats. The precursor to the
horrific violence that followed was enabled by this language of ‘othering’.
Bertolt Brecht, a German playwright and poet, who himself had to flee from the
Nazi persecution, said, ‘the womb is still fertile from which the beast emerged’.
He was warning that even
though Nazism had been defeated, the social, political, and psychological
conditions that produced it were still present. That it can emerge from another
part of the world with another name, but with same destructive intentions. Thus,
when everybody is an enemy, nobody is safe. This is an organised fear portrayed
as national strength. I am not saying that India has become a fascist state,
but we are well on the way.
This is the place I call the
crossroads of conscience. It is the uneasy space between what we were
taught to love and what we now see with painful clarity, between the national anthem
in our bones and a quiet resistance stirring in the heart. The question is no
longer whether we love our country, but what kind of love is being demanded
of us — and by whom — and is it ethical?
Patriotism
- A mask for the powerful.
Emma Goldman described patriotism as
“a menace to liberty,” arguing that it assumes the globe is chopped into
“little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate,” whose inhabitants are
taught to think themselves better than all others and to kill or die to impose
this imagined superiority. For her, patriotism is not a spontaneous affection
for home, but a manufactured passion serving the state and the wealthy; it is “not
for those who represent wealth and power… it is good enough for the people.”
When officials insist that “the nation” is in danger, it usually means
that their interests, profits, or prestige are in danger; the common people are
then summoned to prove their loyalty with their bodies and their children.
This logic is visible when criticism
of government policy is denounced as “anti‑national.” The target is not the
nation’s well‑being but the regime’s legitimacy. Goldman notes that schools, places
of worship, courts, and the press glorify the flag and romanticize war while
branding resisters as traitors; the result is a “thinking being turned into a
loyal machine.” In India, students raising questions about caste, militarism,
or majoritarianism are charged under national security laws; activists
defending Adivasi land or minority rights are confined as “urban Naxals,” while
those accused of lynching, rapes or communal violence may be garlanded. This
inversion, where those who care for the vulnerable are treated as criminals and
those who inflame hatred are being paraded as patriots, mirrors Goldman’s
diagnosis that patriotism demands “allegiance to the flag, which means
obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister.” It is not
love but obedience that is being enforced.
What Goldman exposes is a form of
devotion rooted in fear rather than care. This patriotism needs
enemies—foreigners, minorities, internal dissenters—to sustain itself. It
promises belonging and protection, but only on condition of silence. Violence
committed “for the nation” is sanctified, while those who question it are cast
as traitors. In such a system, institutions become catechists of false
devotion. Goldman’s insight rings painfully true today: patriotism often
functions not as love of people, but as loyalty to power, and as the cultivated
‘hatred of the other’. Patriotism is less about protecting the
vulnerable than about shielding the authority from accountability.
The Cheapest Sort of Pride
Arthur Schopenhauer, from a very
different philosophical starting point, reaches a congruent verdict. In The
Wisdom of Life he calls national pride “the cheapest sort of pride,”
because it belongs to those who “have no qualities of [their] own of which [they]
can be proud” and thus grasp at something they share “with so many millions.”
The person truly endowed with character and talent, he suggests, is keenly
aware of the faults of their own nation, precisely because those faults are
constantly before their eyes; by contrast, “every miserable fool” clings to the
nation’s supposed greatness and is “ready and glad to defend all its faults and
follies tooth and nail.”
This insight helps explain why
thoughtful critique provokes rage in nationalist environments. If a person’s
self‑worth is built not on integrity, compassion, or work, but on belonging to
a supposedly glorious nation, then any mention of injustice—say, the
imprisonment of dissenters or the release of violent offenders—feels like a
personal attack. Patriotism, in this degraded sense, is not about
responsibility for one’s country but about shielding one’s fragile ego from the
shame of its crimes. Schopenhauer’s point is not that one cannot cherish a
cultural home, but that when nation becomes the main object of pride, it
betrays an inner emptiness and a refusal to see reality clearly.
Schopenhauer’s insight helps us
understand why patriotism can feel intoxicating. It offers belonging without
responsibility, pride without self-examination. But it comes at a cost: the
loss of interior freedom. A person who cannot bear to hear the truth about
their country is no longer free; they are captive to an image they must defend
at all costs.
Such intoxication works on the vulnerable
youth of a nation. The supposed historical greatness of the nation – facts
mixed with myths and legends, to create an alternate mythologized history – is
fed to such targets daily through media channels and social media. The lack of
culture of questioning information and regarding every video, text message, or
a speech by political and religious leaders as the ultimate truth can be a bane
of any nation and culture. These targets are fed fake information creating a
cheap pride in the historical greatness of their nation. When the pride is
threatened, it is directed towards a
perceived ‘enemy’—a neighbouring country or religious/racial minorities at home.
The
Working Men Have No Country
Karl Marx adds a further structural
dimension by tying patriotism to class power. In The Communist Manifesto
he famously writes: “The working men have no country. We cannot take from them
what they have not got.” His claim is not that workers have no memories or
attachments, but that the modern nation‑state belongs, in effect, to the
bourgeoisie that owns its property and directs its policies. Under capitalism,
the flag and the rhetoric of national greatness conceal the fact that the state
primarily protects the interests of those who control land, capital, and media.
For Marx, when workers are exhorted
to defend “the fatherland,” they are usually being asked to defend the profits
and power of their own ruling class against rival capitalists abroad, and
against other workers who wear a different uniform. Patriotism in this sense
becomes a sophisticated ideology: it persuades the poor to risk their lives for
decisions made without them, and to hate ‘the others’ instead of
recognizing a common exploitation. Applied to the Indian context, one can see
how nationalism can be deployed to crush labour unions, delegitimize farmers’
protests, or marginalize minorities by framing their grievances as threats to
national unity, while crony capitalists flourish under the same tricolour. The inequality
deepens, and accountability recedes behind the rhetoric of development and
security. Patriotism redirects anger away from structures of exploitation and
toward imagined enemies.
Some decisions, whose burdens fall most heavily on
the poor and working classes, are often portrayed as ‘for the national good’.
The ‘demonetization’ and the ‘national lockdown’ during the COVID-19 are some
examples of these decisions.
Joan of Arc and the Logic of Sacrifice
The story of Saint Joan of Arc
reveals the sacrificial logic beneath nationalism. I visited Rouen, the place
where she was martyred, it led me to read about her history and reflect on her
life. According to me St. Joan was without a doubt a woman of incredible
courage and faith. The story of Joan of Arc dramatizes how nations and institutions
alike instrumentalize individuals for political ends. Joan, a peasant girl,
devoted herself to what she believed was God’s call to save France; she led
armies, raised sieges, and saw Charles VII crowned at Reims. Yet once her
utility waned and her presence became a diplomatic embarrassment, she was
abandoned, tried as a heretic and witch under clerical auspices, and burned
alive—only to be rehabilitated decades later and, centuries after, canonised as
a saint.
From a political‑theological angle,
this sequence is revealing. At the time of her trial, Joan’s condemnation
served the interests of both the English occupiers and French elites eager to
distance themselves from an uncontrollable, poor visionary. Her later
rehabilitation and canonisation, while no doubt influenced by genuine devotion,
also served royal and national image: the king could not be remembered as being
crowned by a witch, but coronation by a saint added sacral legitimacy to the
monarchy and, later, to French national identity. The same institutional
structures that branded her dangerous were again used as the instrument to
incorporate her story into an edifying narrative of nation and faith. In her
story I find the dangers of fusing
nationalism with religion.
Here the logic of Goldman,
Schopenhauer, and Marx converges with the narrative of Joan and with
contemporary martyrs of Indian democracy. Joan’s burning, like the imprisonment
and demise of figures such as Stan Swamy, reveals that institutions that appeal
to God or the nation can sacrifice inconvenient individuals, erase them, and
later selectively rehabilitate them when it suits the dominant story.
Patriotism functions as the story that makes such sacrifices appear necessary
or even noble. Their suffering is later absorbed into the national myth as
“necessary” or “tragic,” while the structures that killed them remain intact.
The deaths of Stan Swamy, Gauri
Lankesh, Narendra Dabholkar, and the silencing of countless students and
activists follow the same logic. They are labelled threats to order, purity, or
security. Later, history may soften their image — but too late for justice.
Ignatian
Discernment: Reading the Spirits at Work
At this crossroads, Ignatian spirituality
offers not slogans but tools. Discernment does not begin with ideology; it
begins with attention — to the movements of the heart, to freedom and
unfreedom, to truth and illusion. Ignatius teaches that not all that feels
good leads to God, and not all discomfort is a sign of error. Patriotism
often produces a powerful emotional rush: pride, belonging, certainty, moral
superiority. Discernment asks: Does this movement expand my capacity for
compassion and truth, or does it narrow it? We must remember that an authentic
consolation leads toward humility, mercy, courage, and solidarity with the
suffering. Desolation breeds fear, rigidity, contempt, and a need to silence
others. When patriotic rhetoric produces hatred of minorities, suspicion of
critics, and indifference to injustice, Ignatius would recognise the marks of
desolation.
St. Ignatius would have
warned us that even good things — nation, religion, tradition — can
become obstacles when absolutised. When being “Indian” or “patriotic” becomes more
important than being truthful, merciful, or just, attachment has become
disordered. Freedom is lost, and conscience is compromised. In the Meditation
on the Two Standards, Ignatius contrasts two banners. One offers honour,
power, and security; the other offers humility, service, and truth. Toxic
patriotism clearly marches under the first. Those jailed for conscience, those
who stand with the poor and silenced, stand under the second.
Ignatian discernment insists that
sin is not only personal. Systems can lie. Institutions can deceive.
Patriotism, when fused with state power and religious sanction, can become a
structural sin that demands human sacrifice in exchange for belonging. At the
foot of the Cross, Ignatius asks us to look honestly: Who is being crucified
today? And just as importantly: Who calls this necessary?
Beyond the Altar of the Nation
To stand at the crossroads of
conscience is to accept risk. It is to love one’s country enough to refuse lies
told in its name. It is to recognise that our deepest loyalty is not to a flag,
but to the truth, to the poor, and to the God who identifies with the oppressed
and the rejected. This does not mean abandoning our nation, but it means
refusing to worship it in everything. It means questioning the authorities and
decisions which go against the greater good of its citizens. It means
protesting peacefully against the authorities when forests are destroyed;
livelihood and homes of millions are destroyed. It means speaking for those who
are voiceless and marginalised, for those who have no one to speak for them. It
means demanding clean air, water and infrastructure facilities, demanding
schools and medical facilities, demanding equality and dignity to everyone
irrespective of their religion, caste, gender or race or any other division
that divides one human from the other.
To see through this illusion is not
to become cynical about all bonds, but to re‑order allegiance. Goldman invites a solidarity that
refuses to kill in the name of others’ interests.
Schopenhauer urges people to abandon national vanity and cultivate personal
virtues that can bear the truth about one’s own society. Marx summons workers
to recognize that their true “country” under capitalism is not the state that
exploits them but the global class of the oppressed, and that any lasting
liberation will be international or it will not be.
From this standpoint, the deaths of
honest journalists, activists, and students are not unfortunate excesses of a
fundamentally noble patriotism; they are structurally logical outcomes of a
system that requires periodic human offerings to sustain an imagined unity.
Patriotism, in its dominant form, is indeed a scandal: a pious language used to
sanctify the suffering of the many for the comfort of the few. The task, then,
is not to refine this drug but to wean ourselves from it, learning instead a
love of people more than flags, of justice more than reputation, and of a world
where no one is burned, caged, or silenced in the name of the nation.
Bertolt Brecht, correctly warns us
that if these
conditions persist, the same catastrophe as with the Nazi Germany can happen
again. Evil is not a monster that appears from nowhere — it grows from human
societies. The defeat of a dictator does not mean the defeat of dictatorship. The
social conditions that produced fascism still exist — and therefore the danger
of its return remains. Eternal vigilance and active resistance are necessary. Every
society must remain vigilant, because the “womb” always exists.
A patriotism that silences
conscience is a sham. A patriotism that demands victims is a scandal. Ignatian
discernment does not ask us to choose between God and the nation in abstraction
— it asks us to notice, concretely, which one is asking for blood of the
innocents. At this crossroads, the Spirit does not shout. It invites.
Quietly, insistently, it asks: Under which standard do you stand? And
somewhere you can hear Jesus saying, ‘Give to the Caesar, what belongs to
the Caesar, and
to God what belongs to God.’ (Mt. 22:21).
References
- Emma Goldman,
“Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty,” in Anarchism and Other Essays
(1910).
- Arthur Schopenhauer, The
Wisdom of Life and Parerga and Paralipomena, sections on
national pride.
- Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Chapter 2.
- Roman Rosdolsky, “The
Workers and the Fatherland,” on Marx’s statement that workers “have no
country.”
- Bertolt
Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1941)
- Roger
Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (1991)
A Pastoral Afterword
If
these reflections leave you unsettled, uneasy, or even defensive, pause before
judging that reaction. Discomfort is not always a sign of error; often it is
the first movement of conscience waking up. Many of us were taught to love our
country with our whole heart long before we learned how to question it with
integrity. When that love is challenged, it can feel like a personal wound.
This
essay is not an accusation against love of country, nor a denial of the beauty,
sacrifice, and hope that shape our shared history. It also does not demean the
sacrifices of those who died protecting what they felt were highest morals of
freedom, equality and brotherhood. It is an invitation to love more truthfully
and more freely. Ignatian spirituality reminds us that God often speaks not in
certainty or applause, but in the quiet stirring that asks us to look
again—especially where suffering is hidden or justified.
You
are not asked here to choose sides, abandon your roots, or surrender hope. You
are not even asked to give up on patriotism or your national identity. You are
invited only to listen: to the cries of those who pay the highest price for our
collective pride, and to the gentle voice of the Spirit asking what kind of
love makes us more human, more merciful, and more just.
Remain with the unease. Pray with it. Let it teach you. At the crossroads of conscience, God does not coerce; God accompanies. And that accompaniment is itself a sign that love — when rooted in truth — has not failed, but is being purified.
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