Independence Day Greetings to all the fellow Indians!
The non-violent like Gandhi, the moderates like Nehru, the extremists (not today’s version) like Bhagat Singh, all fought valiantly for India’s freedom from British rule. Their struggles and sacrifices bore fruit and India won its independence at last on the midnight of August 14, 1947.
“Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues and freebooters. All Indian leaders will be of low calibre and men of straw. They will have sweet tongues and silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power and India will be lost in political squabbles.”
These are the words attributed to Winston Churchill. If he did indeed say them, it just shows that he knew more about Indians than the Indians knew themselves. It is painful to be negative on this festive occasion, but one can’t turn one’s face from the truth.
How is it that India, the birthplace of so many religions, a land of saints and seers has been reduced to this hapless state? Centuries of spirituality are ingrained within us; integrity and righteousness should have been our strength.
We usually blame our leaders and politicians; it is true that there is nothing worthwhile to be said about the virtue and competence of our politicians. However, we can’t place all the problems of our country at their door. Didn’t we elect them? Aren’t they our representatives? After all, we get the leaders we deserve!
It is very easy from the outside to hold politicians responsible for every conceivable ill. We take the moral high ground when there are instances of corruption in the government and bureaucracy but what would we have done in their place? Probably the same. So you see, the malaise runs very deep. This state of affairs strikes a jarring note when we talk about the greatness of our country. Of what use is our freedom, when it has not made us a better people?
We were a rich country till we let foreigners rule over us and strip our land of its riches. But, 60 odd years after achieving independence, there are still millions living below the poverty line, unable to get a square meal a day, while the rich wallow in the lap of luxury. It is evident that self-governance has not ensured equitable distribution of wealth and has not guaranteed equal growth opportunities for all.
Today, secularism in India is in reality just vote-bank politics; our rich natural resources are looted by a few ; our politics makes crooks of even honest persons; our democracy is actually a gross exhibition of money power where groups of elected representatives can be bought by any political party at a price. This is the agony which Mother India is going through. Only you and I can better her condition by doing our bit. The Ocean is after all made up of little drops of water.
Let us pray, nay work towards building a country like the one envisaged by the great poet Rabindranath Tagore in his Nobel winning work ‘Gitanjali’-
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action- Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.
Author: Pratibha Shenoy (Bangalore)
quite good comments but we would have to do this in veer savarkar style to make this country awake.