What is the importance of patriotism in the lives of Today’s youth? Yahoo answer Patriotism is a love for one’s country and a desire to make her better. It is contrasted with simple nationalism (or jingoism) in that nationalism and jingoism represent a blind loyalty to one’s country even when it wrong (an example would be the people of Nazi Germany). Patriotism, on the other hand, recognizes when its nation is wrong and fights to correct the wrong even as it supports that nation. Patriotism is important in the lives of youth today for several reasons.
One is because the youth of today will inherit the nation tomorrow. If youth do not become involved in making our nation better, they may not receive a nation worth inheriting. Second, the nation built by today’s youth will be the nation they pass along to their own children. If young people today wish their children to have an America of freedom, the young people of today must protect and defend that freedom by supporting our country’s greatness and working to make her ever better. Third, the youth of today owe a debt to those of the past who sacrificed, worked hard, and even died to build us a free nation.
To keep faith with those who have gone before and upon whose toil and sacrifice the nation was built, youth need to show patriotism. Are We The Youth Not Patriotic? – Think Again (An Appeal) I do not like to generalize, but most Indians who are 40 plus consider today’s youth as ‘not patriotic’. Patriotism per-se means love for the nation, and we youth have no dearth of it. As youngsters, born in independent India, we haven’t had the opportunity to see how our people toiled for a century to attain freedom. Most of us have not witnessed the four wars that were fought by our Armed forces in 1947, 1962, 1965 and 1971.
Thus, we may not feel our eyes watering we hear Lata Mangeshkar’s ‘Aye Mere Watan Ke Logon’, the song that immortalized the sacrifice of Indian soldiers on icy Himalayan peaks in 1962 and which brought tears to the eyes of Pt. Jawahar lal Nehru. Our interest in reading documents about great freedom fighters and freedom struggle, if any, is also academic, as our generation fails to really connect to that era. That, however, does not mean that we are not mindful of the hard work of our countrymen, because of whom, we’re living a dream life in a vibrant and growing India, which has created a niche for itself in the world.
It’s just that we do not identify with the spirit of freedom the way our elders may, because our relations with that era are not even second hand but third hand. Merely because of this disconnect we should not be classified as less patriotic. It only makes us patriotic in our own special way: the youth’s way. Had the youth lacked devotion for the nation, where would the Navy, Army and Air Force have got their new recruits from? Those who join the forces are ready to give their life and that too without asking for anything more than a remuneration to keep their family alive.
Mind you, this remuneration is exactly same as the country pays to its Babus and Bureaucrats. While the whole country works only eight hours for that pay and gets paid overtime for every extra hour, it is they who work tirelessly 24 X 7, in adverse conditions and not even talk of overtime, so that their countrymen can have a good night’s sleep, day after day. Without the youth, the defense would have been crippled with only oldies and vacancies plaguing the Armed forces. Since this sorrow situation hasn’t materialized, one can safely conclude that the belief that today’s youth is ‘not patriotic’ is nothing but a perception.
What would have happened of Indian culture, values, tradition and way of life had it not been due to joint effort of our parents and us youngsters. Our parents brought us up in a cultured environment where traditions and modernism go hand in hand. We the youth have retailed and nurtured the Culture and Values of being Indian, while borrowing certain things from foreign land which is attributed to our curiosity. Dressing in western attire, talking in Englis