CITIZEN OF THE WORLD. Review on Favourite Books Of Childhood

All are citizens of some country or the other. Many are proud to belong to a nation. People are exhorted to be proud of their country, love it and sacrifice their lives if necessary for its defense against enemies. People take oath of allegiance to the constitution of their country and are called upon to protect its culture, institutions, religious beliefs against any kind of onslaught from outside.

Love of one’s nation sometimes takes extreme forms like jingoism, xenophobia and exclusivity and a complete rejection of what might be alien to one’s culture, but a perfectly good thing from a commonsensical point of view. In India there are political ideologies based on caste, creed and religion. The Indian novelist Raja Rao in SERPENT AND THE ROPE said that in India a man could not escape his caste. People are asked to be proud of everything Indian and reject anything that is not Indian in origin. Politicians and even teachers are responsible for this kind of dissemination, along with misguided parents wishing to “protect” their children.

While patriotism may be good up to a point; it would be appropriate to pause and think whether we have a higher duty as human beings quite apart from our concept of duty as a citizen of a country. Citizenship is a fact, inescapable in its clutches of geographical confines. It is an accident of birth. You had no choice or voice in it. It is like the caste or religion you are born into. Every “great spiritual leader” tells you how lucky you are to belong to a set up and how it is your duty to talk of its greatness and defend it in every forum of debate. If necessary, they aver that even force might be used to drive home your point of view.

All our education has done is help us acquire impressive degrees and nothing more. We have not been really educated in the true sense of the word. We have passed exams and nothing more. But in the exam of life, can we say whether we have succeeded? True education should be liberating. It should take your mind unto realms of “dangerous” thinking that shake all that you had been told were holy and great. Socrates asked his students never to accept a statement without verification and thought. He encouraged his students to debate and argue with him. That is why he had great students. Of course this dangerous man who was considered to be a corrupter of the morals of the youth was removed by a dose of hemlock. This was a good deterrent to all teachers; there has not been another Socrates!

Albert Eienstein, the great physicist, born a Jew, rejected the faith of his fathers. He decided that he would have no obligations that he did not make for himself. He need not be a Jew just because his parents were Jews! What a contrast to the thoughts of most of us who dare not be in the right with two or three! Eienstein was an admirer of good things in every religion, without belonging to any one of them. Physics, he maintained was international, interdenominational and universal. Eienstein had the courage to speak out against Hitler when he was in Germany unlike other patriotic Germans who were collaborating with Hitler in the war effort either willingly or out of fear.

Bertrand Russell, the famous mathematician, thinker and philosopher criticized his government’s war policies during the First World War and was jailed as a consequence of it. He was a pacifist and advocated internationalism when people were narrow minded. He was out of tune with his times. He outpaced his contemporaries with his manner of thinking and thought of the whole world as an entity and worked for global peace.

Great people, time and again have demonstrated how knowledge was universal and a holistic approach to it for benefit of mankind was called for at all times. When one thinks of only his own country or people, a narrowing of vision takes place unconsciously.  Remember that geographical boundaries define nationality and concept of patriotism. India earlier comprised Pakistan, Bangla Desh, parts of Burma and a few other areas in the North. Just before Partition it consisted of India, Pakistan and East Pakistan (Bangla Desh). After Partition, boundaries were tightly drawn and our concept of nationality and loyalty underwent a change. This concept could undergo many changes if there be upheavals in future. Divisive tendencies have come to the fore in the country after the reorganization of states. Still divisions of States are on the anvil and a time may come when we might have city States as in ancient Greece. My point is that this kind of attitude is not congenial to human development and progress. Our liberating education should help us to encompass the whole world as our home, as the author James Michener stated in his autobiography THE WORLD IS MY HOME. People like he and Somerset Maugham could feel comfortable in any part of the world.  They were truly CITIZENS OF THE WORLD. When you travel to different countries, you are able to realize how deep down, people are the same, with similar worries and joys, aspirations for themselves and others. A stranger is a friend you do not know, as the line of a Jim Reeves’ song goes. Once you interact and relate, all your walls of prejudice break down and you are a part of a greater brotherhood of man. Your aim is as E.M. Forster said, to “ONLY CONNECT”. Barriers of Caste, Creed, Nationality and prejudices melt away like snow in the sun. You are a CITIZEN OF THE WORLD.

It was actually Oliver Goldsmith, who first in his book CITIZEN OF THE WORLD gifted this concept to mankind. His essay on NATIONAL PREJUDICES is a classic. I have taught this essay several times and students have taken tests on it, but very few of the people I have known have made this tenet a cornerstone of their lives. This is the tragedy of our education. We read sublime and noble things, but when it comes to applying them to our lives we have innumerable excuses.

Where do you stand as a human being in your duty towards others in the world? The time has come for you to honestly address this question in your mind and act upon it.