Is “Patriotic Non-Resident Indian” an Oxymoron?

                 Over the weekend I was catching up with an old acquaintance of mine who is based out of India. We were talking about how things have changed with time in India and how much potential India has. During our casual conversation he briefly raised a sensitive topic of patriotism of people who have left their motherland. Our conversation ended but his ‘almost’ questioning the patriotism of immigrants made me think, is “Patriotic non-resident Indian” an oxymoron? Just like “Dancer Sunny Deol” or an “honest Indian politician”?

                We go crazy cheering for India in Cricket, in-fact we become more Indian than the 1.25 billion resident Indians when we beat Pakistan. We become angry on hearing multi-billion dollars scams, and feel proud with ISRO’s successful launches. We feel sad when India performs poorly in sports on world stage (ex-Cricket) and hate how sometimes India is portrayed as a snake charmer country. We absolutely disgust communal violence.

                We celebrate all the festivals with the same zest and passion as resident Indians. We organize Garba’s in football stadiums and basketball courts and play our hearts out during the weekends. We as a community take special permission from local authorities to celebrate Diwali with fire crackers. We have successfully exported the festival of colors - Holi to be part of the American culture (color runs). We build ‘Little India’ in foreign land to resurrect the feeling of our Galli’s. And yes, we do feel proud when an Indian is in a C suite, in our company J

                We felt proud when Nina Davuluri won Miss America and became furious of the backlash that followed. We boast of the record that Indians have created in the US Spelling Bee - winning since last nine years. We might be naïve but we love to think that we are an expert on Indian Politics. Most of the weekend parties end with potential solutions for India’s corruption problems.

                Lack of opportunity might be one of the reasons why some of us left the homeland, but it never meant that we are less patriotic towards India. Today we might be speaking with an accent, celebrate other festivals, sing different anthem but our love towards India has not changed. So call us NRIs, PIOs, or the most recent label, OCI - Overseas Citizens of India, we have one thing in common with resident Indians, we still shed a tear or two when we listen to “Sare Jahan Se Aacha…”