“Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.” — Karl Kraus
Stories of the rise and fall of nations are remarkable as they portray the true character of the people that are their part and parcel. In other words, nations are not built by just one person but by everybody’s collective will. In yet other words, a single individual cannot withstand any onslaught and obstacle unless he or she has the community’s unfaltering support. This is only possible when the levels of consciousness, self-love and self-respect are above normal for ordinary human beings who are merely programmed to believe that they are inadequate in themselves and cannot survive without someone assisting them in their everyday existence.
If one retraces history starting from the end of the Second World War one can easily decipher some nations that have risen from poverty to prosperity, whereas a few have destroyed whatever was built up by their forefathers. While for some, the Cinderella story holds ground and they have enriched themselves despite minimal resources, some have not only fallen from grace but have induced financial ruin although blessed with the richest of resources, and made their people slaves to those from whom they were once liberated. Students are taught history purposefully so they can learn lessons from the past and improve their future. Therefore, it is highly significant that historical facts should be presented as objectively as possible, because contamination, like ecological pollution, can cause perceptional imbalance.
A cursory look at various societies would reveal that elders warn their children against befriending kids from dubious family backgrounds but encourage closeness with members of respectable lineages. Popular adages like “a man is known by the company he keeps” reflect this sentiment. They imply that people are generally inclined to form relationships with people who share similar values, thus echoing their characteristics.
Today, if for some peculiar reason our new generation needs to build up its character, it must transform its thought processes by erasing applications of falsehood that its mind was programmed with earlier. As the world grows closer, knowledge about distant lands and nations is no longer a rarity. Gone are the days when travellers visited different countries and returned to talk or write about them to provide information to others. This is not the case now. Innumerable documentaries and video links have profoundly gelled various nations into an intimate awareness of each other.
How can any nation thrive when its leaders conveniently hand over people under their protection to aliens just to appease their benefactors?
Sitting thousands of miles apart, two people can easily look into one another’s locations, environment, lives, culture and values. This has eliminated the necessity of spending huge sums of money visiting foreign lands, although one is tempted to make travel plans in the hope of seeing things with one’s own eyes. Countries like Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Vietnam that were reduced to ashes in the previous century are prominent examples of resilience and the collective will of the people to evolve from their adversity into prosperity. Even though it has not suffered an atomic bomb and war devastation like Vietnam and Cambodia, but much impoverished and lacking human resources, China is now a formidable power that is on the verge of attaining superpower status.
The secret of their success lies in the character of the entire nation that consciously resolved to extend a helping hand in building their countries as against inflicting torture on their countrymen as happened in the Indian subcontinent during British rule. Ruthlessness of natives at the behest of foreigners is indicative of a mindset that has no empathy, self-respect or sense of affiliation with its land and its people.
How can any nation thrive when its leaders conveniently hand over people under their protection to aliens just to appease their benefactors? This has happened before the partition of the subcontinent and even as late as the early twenty-first century.
Each year, our nation celebrates independence with much fanfare, strums patriotic songs with great fervour, vociferously chants about national pride but the moment a foreign ally, before whom heads are bowed, demands specific performance, guns and boots are quickly targeted against their helpless and unarmed people with the objective of either punishing or eliminating them. Selling conscience in return for a few pennies has become second nature. A sure-shot recipe for suicide, but definitely not prosperity.
Nations that refuse to gel
Can only expect a life of hell
Corruption as the way of life
Is national wealth’s boning knife
When guns are turned inwards.
Youth will escape outwards
Where education is sans skills
Then result is closure of mills
When the poor finds no refuge
Let the rich prepare for deluge
When loyalty is found on paper
The only destination is danger
The pit of peril can never fill
When traitors keep running the drill
With a heavy heart, one patiently awaits the break of that dawn which would wake up the slumbering among us. This can only be possible when we consciously look inwards and ask ourselves crucial questions pertaining to our credibility as a nation, like the Japanese, Singaporeans, Vietnamese and others who bore suffering but stood by each other as an iron wall against oppressors. They stand upright while we are still struggling to find our grounds.