Sushant, a friend of mine recently wrote a post about anarchism and a lot of other things, after reading it, a conversation ensued between us and there arose the issue of “Country” the definition of it.
Made me ponder!! How do you define country? Why do you call a country your own?? What is the boundary of a country??
Answer to the second question is very simple, the place where you are born is generally the country (or you can also call it mother land or ‘matra bhumi’ for us Indians), sometimes people move to different countries and take the citizenship of that place, pretty simple procedure, live in the place for sometime pass some tests and tada.. You are a citizen of the new country, but does it make that country yours. Is it so easy to lose your association with a place which you have been calling yours for so many years, proudly proclaiming it as your mother land.
Another question which arose in the discussion was that of patriotism. Is patriotism directed towards a government or a ruler or towards the Country? Common answer will sure be country who ever gives a hell to the government and my answer was the same and is still the same according to me country is the basic thing which is the entity while Govt is the rulers which are entitled the responsibility to maintain the good will of people living in that particular region which is the country, but he had another view….
According to him, Country is just the region where your Govt rules and nothing more, you certainly can’t deny this line of thought too. After all how is the boundary of a nation decided, it is never decided on the basis of a landscape or the people, it is the area which is under the rule of the Govt of that particular place (Or is it vice-versa?? I am certainly in a soup here, not able to decide). To, this I have a counter argument, we have Govt at every level in a country but the area under each level of Govt is not called a country so why should the definition of a country be defined by the ruler but where ever it is a country the ruling body is the Govt however small or big the country might be.
Here we can have two terms as Wikipedia describes them, a state and a nation, perhaps the two definitions which we have been using satisfy different entities, State is a political entity in which case I guess a state is defined by the Govt and will satisfy the definition provided by my friend while Nation is a cultural entity and in this case I think my definition applies to a nation in which Country is the defining unit and the Govt comes after it.
So I think here the main issue is that which under which category does a “Country” fall… Is it a State or is it a Nation??? If you can give an answer to this then the answer to the above question is also the same, though I don’t think this is simple, whatever points you give in support of one option, the other can come up with some counter points to the same.
Song of the Day – : There are places I remember (Beatles)
PS1:- Cary Grant is the baaap of comedy… You gotta see his movies like His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby and The Awful Truth to see how comedy can be induced without being slapstick!!
PS2:- “Wonder Years” gotta write a post on this show… How can they play with emotions so easily, each episode of the show reminds you of something of your childhood
PS3:- Alas I couldn’t reach 10 posts this month, which is my highest ever for a single month and have achieved it three times till now.
PS4:- Have 3 projects to work on and I am doing nothing save writing these posts and lamenting here.
PS5:- For reasons unknown to me, I start to feel sleepy at about 12 or 1 and this is very very early for me. Guess I will sleep now and its only 1:35 now!!
PS6:- To my own admission I havn’t gone into details of all the things but these are some of the thoughts which came to my mind and just started jotting them down.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: Country, Nation, State, Government
Ye Meri Life hai... 