Beware of BJP & Patriotism

• Patriot is defined  as one whose ruling passion is the love of his country. It is sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government.
• A patriot is he whose public conduct is regulated by one single motive, the love of his country; who has, for himself, neither hope nor fear, neither kindness nor resentment, but refers every thing to the common interest.
• The claim of patriotism by an acrimonious and unremitting opposition is infallible.
• The quality of patriotism is to be jealous and watchful, to observe all secret machinations, and to see public dangers at a distance. The patriot professes to be disturbed by incredibilities.
• A patriot is lover of the people. But this mark is deceptive. The people is a very heterogeneous and confused mass of the wealthy and the poor, the wise and the foolish, the good and the bad. 
• It is unpleasing to represent our affairs to our own disadvantage; yet it is necessary to shew the evils which we desire to be removed.
• Before we confer on a man, who caresses the people, the title of patriot, we must examine to what part of the people he directs his notice. The people is a confused mass of the wealthy and the poor, the wise and the foolish, the good and the bad. It is he who dissembles his own character, may be known by that of his companions. He may, among the drunkards, be a hearty fellow and sober handicraft men, a free-spoken gentleman; but he must have some better distinction, before he is a patriot.

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel ... Samuel Johnson
Pseudo-patriotism is the last resort of the incompetent Modi government

My View:

BJP is a confused lot of pseudo patriots. Patriotism is to be invoked during war time or terrible internal disturbances, not during stable and prospering times. Modi instead of plugging loop holes in the system to reduce corruption, increase tax collections by plugging evasions without raising taxes and invest in infrastructure for development did nothing during first two years except foreign jaunts, speeches, slogans, anti-congress rhetorics, raised taxes, reckless borrowings, spending on fancy projects, hobnobbing with his industrial friends who funded his expensive 2014 election campaign and  pushed banks to near collapse. Suddenly he found time running out for 2019 elections and saw an opportunity in quack advised single pill demonetization medicine to solve all the ills which resulted in blunder & plunder and destroyed fragile economy of the nation. To cover up his debacles, he started fudging economic data and invoked 'patriotism' to divert public attention away from teething issues. India with huge population and consumption base has enormous resilience and will survive all these shocks at the expense of burdening the poor & lower classes but beware of pseudo patriots like Modi & co of BJP who has no understanding of the realities and aspirations of poor, peasants and lower classes especially living in rural villages.

While Congress was certainly bad, but they had sanity of mind never to disturb lives & livelihoods of poor & peasants. Modi's senseless demonetization effected lives & livelihoods of poor & peasants most and little bit to other classes. Beware of slogans and rhetoric of Modi & co of BJP who will do anything to mislead people and survive in power, worse than Congress. Modi harping on Congress failures even after 11 quarters is unacceptable nonsense.