Well, It is the month of August and as is true for any Indian 15th August is engrained in my mind too as India's Independence day…. !!
I have never been much of a believer in ceremonies and functions and each year the Independence and the Republic days are spent just as any other day. Mind you, It is not because I don’t value them, It is just that I don’t see any point in valuing them only for a day. Well, staying on the campus of one of the premier research institutes in the country, one does have the special functions, meetings and speeches on such occasions of national importance. I, however, choose not to attend them. Coincidentally, however, in the same month as when the World's largest democracy gained its independence, I happened to come across a poem by its pioneering thinkers, Rabindranath Tagore.
Where the mind is wihout fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow 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.
As I read this poem on one hand and the newspaper on the other, I was enveloped by a helpless feeling. Something written nearly a century ago was yet to materialize !!!
How is it that the nation of Aryabhatta and Sushruta, Ramanujam and Raman, Tagore and Teresa, and Of Gandhi and Nehru is reduced to a land with daily reports of homicide, rape, communal violence and bomb blasts. Why is that Tagore 's prayer, written nearly a century ago still embodies the prayer of most indians….. Why are we happy to be attending the flag hoisting ceremonies and the speeches and not look at the plight of the country. The situation in Kashmir, West Bengal, Calcutta and Rajasthan …. Why is it that we conveniently gloss over these realities and look at the Shining India. Why are the newspapers projecting an India different from what it is …. ???? Why ? Why and Why ???? Too many questions and the answers probably lie with us… the people of this country. Why is it that we don’t value life the way the Americans do ?? Why is it that we are used to blasts everyday…. A bomb blast only translates into an additional figure for people to remember - how many blasts and how many killed ??? Is that how much we value human life now ??? How do we manage to take life and death so very lightly ??? Must be because of our cultural tenets which say that all life is temporary …. We are all born to die and so we shall !!!! Is this what makes the Indians immune to their own misery??
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