Freedom is …
59 years ago, today, India became an Independent country, freed from the burden of foreign rule, free to manages its own course and destiny. I don’t quite know why, but more than any other year in the recent past, today (& in the days preceding), I have been thinking of what this means to us !
The scepter of terror that faces us today … is this a price that we are paying for being a free & democratic nation ?
The song that comes to my mind is Kris Kristofferson’s “Me & Bobby McGee‘, which says ‘Freedom is another word for nothing left to lose’ ! I do not agree ! There has been much lost in the name of freedom and most unjustifiably, most unfairly … not by design, but by utter carelessness, carelessness of people like you and me ! It is easy to blame someone else of the ills facing us, but we must also look back at the great progress we have made as free nation in the past 59 years
I am in the midst of reading ‘The Discovery of India‘ by Jawaharlal Nehru, and with amazement I read about India’s glorious past, when we perhaps were one of the few sources of Scientific thought, Artistic pursuit and Trade. Alas ! we are but a shade of that today. But the good part is that, life is afterall a sinusoidal curve … what goes up, must come down and what is down … will go up … and you know what … we are on the upward curve
To sign off … here’s an excerpt from Nehru’s famous ‘Tryst with Destiny‘ speech made to the constituent assembly on the eve of our Independence on 14th august 1947
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.It is fitting that at this solemn moment, we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.’
At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her successes, and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?
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