Lamentations of an old patriot!!

During my school days I have been an ardent patriot greatly influenced by Gandhi and his auto-biography “My experiments with truth” and many other factors.Partially this spirit might have influenced my decision to stay back in this country and share/endure with fellow brethren rather than pursuing my first passion-pursing science/research.This feeling changed my life and profession.Now after completing more than 55 revolutions around sun god my perspective about the country has greatly changed.This I penned down some time in July 2010(I am re-posting it here.)

Very often we are told we should be proud of this country!!We have a rich ‘culture and heritage’!!This is the country of ShriRama who taught us “rajdharma” is above all.We are proud of Raja Harichandra who lost everything worth for the sake of truth.More recently we have seen Buddha and in the recent past we have seen Mahatma Gandhi.Our nation builders made one of the best constitutions in the democratic world.Then what is wrong with this country??
The comic tragedy of this country is that here everything exists in papers only starting with our constitution.Walls of almost all offices in India is decorated with Gandhij’s photo whereas we have forgotten his teachings.Long before our independence we have exported Buddha and his teachings to countries like Japan,Korea,Sri Lanka etc.Secularism one of the finest things this country can can boast off exist in papers and in high decibel speeches of our leaders and secularism has degenerated into appeasement of ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ communities depending on the political gains.We have created great institutions but often degenerating it into white elephants.In this country of Raja Harichandra truth is a casualty.We have a country where ‘genuine’ people are a rare species and if exist will finish their lives in moving from pillar to post.We have created great educational institutions for our youngsters but in practice neither the teachers nor the other officials involved has any time for genuine knowledge seekers.We have a great media supposed to be one of the main pillars of a democratic society but obsessed with TRP rating and often distorting truth by spreading ‘half truths’. :I am compelled to add a quote attributed to Mark Twain on media”If you do not read news paper you are uninformed but if you read you are misinformed” very true most of the media We have judiciary which is a court of law rather than of justice and often proving the axiom “Justice delayed is justice denied”.The list goes on…
Should I be proud of this country??