Overview:
Patriotism and inclusiveness, rootedness and universality are not contradictory; love of one’s own must be disciplined by reverence for the whole, says Pradeep Srivastava
Tempering patriotism with gratitude
“Janani Janmabhoomishcha Swargadapi Gariyasi”
Mother and motherland are greater than heaven.
I find this ancient Sanskrit sentiment deeply moving. It touches something elemental in the human heart. We all owe an immeasurable debt to two great sources of nourishment: the mother who gave us birth, and the land that sustained our body, language, memory, and culture. To love one’s mother is natural. To love one’s motherland is natural, too. There is gratitude, identity, and reverence in both. And yet, with age, I feel this saying must be understood with care and spiritual maturity. If interpreted too narrowly, it can become a slogan of exclusion rather than a hymn of gratitude. It can make us cling to one patch of earth while forgetting the larger truth that all earth rests under the same sky, receives the same sunlight, is touched by the same wind, and is held in the same divine presence.
While celebrating the love for one’s janmabhoomi, Sanskrit scriptures also offer us the universality of vasudhaiva kutumbakam, the world is one family.
The phrase is associated with a verse from the Maha Upanishad, which states that the noble-hearted person sees the whole world as family.
While the first teaches rootedness, the second teaches expansiveness. The first gives belonging, the second gives universality. Wisdom lies not in choosing one over the other, but in honoring both.
A love for the land of birth
Loving the land of one’s birth is but natural. The soil of childhood, the language of lullabies, the rivers and seasons of early life, the festivals, food, stories, and values inherited from one’s people—these are not trivial. They form our emotional ecology.
I understand this personally. Even after living in America for decades, India still lives within me. It lives in the cadence of Sanskrit verses I heard as a child, in the depth of the Upanishads, in the stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, in the taste of food prepared with affection, and in the emotional architecture of a culture that shaped me long before I understood what culture was.
A grandparent may understand this more deeply than the young do. As you age, memory becomes sacred. Homeland is no longer just territory; it becomes an inner landscape, the geography of remembrance. That is why the phrase “mother and motherland” carries such enduring emotional power.
But gratitude is one thing, absolutism is another.
A patriotism rooted in ego
Problems begin when love of one’s motherland is turned into hostility toward someone else’s. Healthy patriotism says, “I love my country.” Unhealthy nationalism adds, “Therefore, I must despise yours.” Healthy patriotism is rooted in gratitude. Unhealthy nationalism is rooted in ego.
Nature offers a corrective. Mountains do not carry passports. Oceans do not stop at customs checkpoints. Clouds do not ask for visas. Sunlight does not discriminate between religions, races, or nationalities. The air we breathe may have passed over many lands before entering our lungs. The water cycle itself rebukes human arrogance. Nature is interconnected, indivisible, and gloriously indifferent to man-made maps.
That is why the beloved song from the Hindi film Refugee expresses such a deep truth in a few unforgettable words:
“Panchhi nadiya pawan ke jhonke, koi sarhad na inhe roke.”
No borders can stop the birds, the rivers, and gusts of wind
What a remarkable line!
Boundaries may organize political life, but they do not define ultimate reality.
Of borders & nature
This is the heart of the matter. Nations are geographical and political arrangements created by human beings. They may be necessary for governance, law, and security; I do not deny their practical value. But they are still human constructs, not ultimate truths.
As one grows older, one sees that many conflicts arise because people begin worshiping their labels instead of the truth behind them. Nation, race, religion, caste, party, ideology—these identities may have relative value, but when made absolute, they become dangerous. Human beings forget that before they are citizens of a country, they are participants in existence itself.
Nature came before nations. Earth, water, fire, air, and space belong to no country. Rivers may pass through many nations, but they are not born nationalists. Birds migrate freely. Winds travel without ideology. Stars shine on all. The same moon that rises above Delhi rises above Damascus, Tehran, Kyiv, London, and California.
Janmabhoomi & Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam
Now we can better appreciate the harmony between these two ideas.
Janmabhoomi speaks to the land that formed us.
Vasudhaiva kutumbakam reminds us that the earth is the shared home of all.
The former begins with intimacy; the latter expands into universality. The former is the affection of the heart; the latter is the wisdom of the soul.
John Lennon’s song Imagine expresses, in secular poetic language, a sentiment close to the spirit of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. Lennon asks us to imagine a world with fewer divisive identities, a world in which there is “nothing to kill or die for” and where “the world will be as one.” The song is not an Upanishad, but its aspiration—to outgrow narrow divisions and recover shared human belonging—beautifully echoes the ideal that the world is one family. Both challenge the mind trapped in “mine versus yours.” Both urge us to enlarge our sympathies.
Seeing both truths
Some may think that revering one’s motherland and embracing the whole world as family are contradictory. I do not. They belong to different levels of awareness.
At the personal and cultural level, it is natural to honor the land that nurtured us. At the spiritual level, it is necessary to transcend exclusiveness and recognize kinship with all beings. The problem comes only when we confuse the relative with the absolute.
I may love my own home dearly, but that does not require me to hate the neighborhood. I may cherish my own mother uniquely, but that does not mean other mothers deserve less respect. Likewise, I may hold my motherland close to my heart while acknowledging that every person on earth loves their homeland in much the same way. Maturity lies in seeing both truths at once.
Patriotism without spiritual breadth is combustible
We live in a time when conflict is fueled by hardened identities. Wars, skirmishes, ethnic hatred, and ideological polarization all thrive on one illusion: that separateness is more fundamental than interconnectedness. Once people are trained to think only in rigid opposites—us versus them, insider versus outsider—violence becomes easier to justify.
That is why the wider vision must be emphasized again and again. Not because patriotism is wrong, but because patriotism without spiritual breadth can become combustible. Love of one’s own must be disciplined by reverence for the whole.
This is especially relevant when the world is already tense with conflicts and war. In such times, rhetoric becomes harsher, identities become weaponized, and nuance disappears. The old wisdom of interconnectedness becomes not a luxury, but a necessity. If more people deeply internalized the truth that the same air, water, sunlight, and earth sustain all sides, perhaps the appetite for destruction would weaken.
I am not naïve. Wars will not vanish merely because poets and grandparents speak of birds and rivers. Nations still need laws, borders, and security. But unless human consciousness expands beyond narrow identity, no political solution will remain stable for long. Peace requires more than treaties; it requires a shift in worldview.
A grandpa worries…
At my stage of life, I am less impressed by loud declarations and more moved by enduring truths. I have seen enough of the world to know that human beings are capable of extraordinary kindness and extraordinary folly. We build homes, temples, schools, and civilizations—and then sometimes burn them down in the name of ideas we have made too sacred.
The older I get, the more I value simplicity. And one simple truth is this: nature is wiser than we are. Birds know how to migrate. Rivers know how to flow. Winds know how to move. Human beings, with all our intelligence, still struggle to live without hatred.
Perhaps that is why songs, scriptures, and poetry matter so much. They remind us of truths that politics alone cannot teach. A child can understand the line about birds, rivers, and wind. An old man can spend a lifetime growing into its meaning.
As a grandparent, I worry about the inheritance we are leaving for generations to come. Will they inherit only stronger technologies and weaker hearts? Will they inherit more connected devices but more divided societies? Will they grow up learning only competition, suspicion, and tribal loyalty? Or will they also inherit a larger imagination—a way of seeing that honors roots without becoming imprisoned by them?
That is the urgent question: What should we teach the next generation?
Widen your circle of concern
We should teach children to love their country but not worship it blindly. We should teach them to respect their culture but not demean another’s. We should teach them history, but also humility. We should let them take pride in where they come from, while recognizing that every human being comes from the same mysterious source of life. We should teach them that maps are useful, but they are not the whole truth.
Above all, we should teach them to widen the circle of concern: first family, then community, then nation, then humanity, then all life. This widening is not a betrayal of one’s roots. It is the flowering of those roots.
We should also teach them that one can be deeply rooted and deeply open. One can love one’s own people without hating others. One can defend one’s home without forgetting the humanity of those beyond it. This is not weakness, but maturity.
The expansive, inclusive motherland
In the end, perhaps janmabhoomi need not mean only the political country of one’s birth. It can also be understood more deeply as the nurturing matrix from which one’s life arose. At that level, the whole earth becomes our motherland. Nature becomes the motherland. Existence becomes the motherland. Then love for one’s janmabhoomi and the expansive ideal of vasudhaiva kutumbakam, no longer clash. They complete each other.
Mother is sacred. Motherland is sacred. But the greater teaching is that life itself is sacred.
If we awaken to that truth, we may still honor our own place of birth, but without shrinking our hearts. We may say, “I love my own land,” and also, “I do not forget that the whole world is held in one vast embrace.” We may learn to be rooted without being narrow, patriotic without being hostile, and spiritual without being abstract.
Then patriotism becomes gratitude rather than aggression.
Identity becomes an offering rather than armor.
Culture becomes a lamp, not a weapon.
(Featured Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash)
