“A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it” – Frederick Douglass

Matru Prem and Rashtra Prem are emotions that mirror each other. Isn’t it natural to unconditional love the forces that created you from nothing to at least something? Everything else is adulterated except the infant’s unconditional love for his parents.

Patriotism is the same feeling, it’s unadulterated, joyful and inspiring. It’s an empowering association with one’s national identity.

India is intrinsically patriotic. One has always seen the spontaneous outpouring of unbridled love for the nation, be it a cricket victory or war. For most, patriotism is an exhilarating feeling until one comes across a section of people I call “Chronic Deserters”.

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So who are these Chronic Deserters?

Are these turncoats or just true-blood traitors? Perhaps, they are worse. They stand for nothing except hate. Hate for India’s glorious culture, vibrant customs and diverse traditions. They call Lord Ram a misogynist. Krishna, a mere mortal. The Ramayana and Mahabharata, fictional folklores. They make fun of our gods, call us ‘cow piss drinkers’, much like the terrorist who rammed his explosives-laden car into a CRPF convoy in Pulwama.

They have invaded our society. Manipulated our history books. Branded us as brainless, brown slaves. Made us pity ourselves. But it all changed in 2014 when there was a Hindu resurgence.

As a society, we fought back and broke the shackles of slavery. We started talking about our real heroes. As kids, we were told India is only about Mughals and the Gandhi Nehru dynasty. Is this actually possible?

Can a 10,000 old civilisation lack heroes? Then what is this about? This is the oldest rule of colonialism. Destroy the King, Burn the Kingdom, destroy the culture, ridicule the customs and eventually give the subject a chronic inferiority complex. A feeling of a society trapped in a black hole, a feeling of hopelessness.

Is this new? Not by a long shot. This is the basic component of colonialism. Colonialism doesn’t work on physical prowess and warfare alone. Psychological warfare trumps physical warfare.

Lack of motivation, feeling of hopelessness, pity and self-loathing are perhaps emotions that can even destroy the world’s best armies. The United States of America suffering a bitter thrashing at the hands of Vietnam was a perfect case in point.

These chronic deserters are not new in the Indian context

The lust for power and cultural hatred have produced legendary traitors like Jaichand and Mir Jafar.

These short-sighted people have compromised the security and safety of the nation for immediate gratification.

These chronic deserters or pseudo-liberals in common parlance have some quintessential traits. They repeat the same flawed logic over and over again. Their tropes are almost set in stone with the hope, that repetition would obfuscate their absurdity. Some of them are:

1) Terrorism has no religion but rape has a religion. (Inspite of India having lower rape percentile numbers)

2) Eating beef is a litmus test for modernism.

3) The Indian army is an aggressor in Kashmir and Kashmir should get plebiscite.

4) Pakistan is a land of saints. A peaceful country.

5) India is a land of intolerance irrespective of the fastest increase in the minority population in the world.

6) There are Hindu terrorists irrespective of no such incidents.

7) Triple talaq is liberation for Muslim women, the problem lies with Sati irrespective of its abolition 100 years back.

8) Sabarimala preaches oppression of women, Triple talaq doesn’t.

9) Bursting crackers in Diwali is a pollution menace but doing it a new year reduces pollution.

10) Navratri increases noise pollution but everything else is music to the ears.

This hypocrisy is staggering and hardly amusing. This cabal has geniuses: they spot seamen’s in balloons and call it Hindu pride, write articles claiming Ramayan happened in Afghanistan, call Imran Khan (fondly known as Taliban Khan to the rest of the non-delusional world) a statesman inspite of supporting World’s most dreaded terrorists, accept doles for writing pro psephological articles but talk about honesty and integrity, give out the survivors details during terrorism operations, talk about national security, abuse people on social media daily and cry victim, whining about trolls.

Our fault lies in not recognising their deceitfulness. These people use Guerrilla warfare to destabilise us, discourage us. It’s time to worry because they are back. They are back to demoralise us and they are back to demotivate us. These two faced people will try everything in the book to make us believe that we are losing the war. Don’t believe in their propaganda, identify them and expose them.

It’s time to unite and it’s time to destroy the enemy. While the Army, Navy and Airforce do so regularly on the border and they stand a post so you and I can sleep in peace, the question that we must ask ourselves is whether we are willing to identify these chronic deserters and make them irrelevant? Will we remember that a war is won on more on psychological strength than physical strength.

We will win the war the day we expose these Chronic Deserters.