Why Do So Few Indians Say They’re Proud of Their Country? New Global Survey Explains

A striking finding from a recent Pew Research Center survey is that many Indians give surprisingly few specific answers when asked what makes them proud of their country. Out of 33,486 people surveyed across 25 nations, India stood out for how often respondeir own words, with responses later coded into categories such as culture, lifestyle, politics, economy, people, history and diversity.

One of the most notable findings is that about 31 % of Indian respondents either refused to answer or said they didn’t know what made them proud of India - the highest “non-response” rate among the 25 countries surveyed. This means almost one in three Indians could not identify a specific aspect of their country that made them feel proud in a free-text answer.

This does not mean Indians feel negative about their country overall, but it does suggest a relative uncertainty or lack of strong association with specific traditional pride factors compared with other nations.



Despite India’s long history and rich cultural traditions, only a very small proportion of respondents mentioned these as sources of pride:

• Only about 8 % of Indians cited arts and culture as something that makes them proud.
• Only around 2 % mentioned history.

This is striking in contrast to many European countries where history and culture are frequently mentioned as major pride points - for example, around 37 % of Greeks and 22 % of French respondents cited history in the same survey.

Other common sources of national pride in many countries also registered relatively low responses among Indian participants:

• Only single-digit shares mentioned the political system (approximately 8 %) or economic growth as sources of pride.
• Some respondents did mention “people” (about 10 %), but this was not strongly dominant.

Notably, some categories that might be expected, such as sports, food or religion, were scarcely mentioned in the survey results for India, based on the coding of responses.

It is important to understand what these findings do and do not imply:

• Indians are not patriotic.
• Indians hate their country.

• Indians may express national identity differently from respondents in other countries.
• Pride may be implicit or tied to everyday life in ways harder to articulate in a short open-ended survey.
• Some Indians may be more critical when answering questions about the nation — wanting to see improvements before expressing pride.

In other words, the high non-response rate and low frequencies for traditional themes do not necessarily reflect a lack of love for the country, but rather a gap between internal sentiment and external articulation.



In many other countries in the same survey:

• A single top pride category accounted for at least 20 % of responses.
• People commonly linked pride to history, culture, political system or lifestyle.
• Even in nations where politics or economy were weak, symbolic sources such as flag, national achievements or community were mentioned.

In contrast, India’s responses were more distributed and less anchored in a single narrative — whether that be ancient heritage, modern governance, or cultural exports.

Experts caution against simple interpretations. National pride can be expressed in many forms — and open-ended interviews often show nuances that simple multiple-choice questions do not capture.

It could also reflect generational or regional differences in how Indians think about identity and national achievements. Survey results sometimes differ from other polls that measure pride through direct rating scales rather than open-ended questions.