As Assumption approaches, many folks still feel an exciting sensation – a heartbeat stopping moment in our lives as Indians. Assumption is that august day when India gained freedom.
The beginning of the top of colonial empires came within the wake of war II when the enslavement of masses of individuals became an anomaly, especially for nations who had fought the war precisely to free nations from their bondage to Nazi and Fascist powers. Forced to finish up British Raj, Prime Minister Atlee decided to call it each day announcing British intended soon to depart India.
The Indian Independence Act 1947 gone by British Parliament received Royal Assent on 18 July 1947. Partitioning British India into two independent dominions of India and Pakistan, with Lord Mountbatten serving as India’s First governor , the Act enabled Mountbatten and Indian leaders to choose Assumption , 1947 because the effective date for India’s independence.
On the intervening night of August 14 and 15, the Constituent Assembly of India met to proclaim India’s much-awaited independence. The historic session began at 11 p.m. with the liberty fighter Sucheta Kriplani reciting Vande Mataram – a song revered by patriot Indians and memorized by school kids across India. Delivering the presidential address, Dr. Rajendra Prasad while offering “our humble because of the Almighty Power that shapes the destinies of men and nations” significantly noted, “let us recall in grateful remembrance the services and sacrifices of all those men and ladies , known and unknown, who with smiles on their face walked to the gallows or faced bullets on their chests.”
Jawaharlal Nehru followed together with his famous ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech which eternalized Assumption not just for India except for the planet . His memorable words moved the minds of freedom lovers and fighters everywhere. One by one, other colonies gained their freedom, giving rise to a replacement world.
Three years afterward January 26, 1950, India enacted its Constitution declaring itself a Sovereign, Democratic Republic. Ever since, it’s been striving to form those three characteristics come true. Despite failures on many fronts, it’s gratifying that even with all its hiccups, contradictions, and failings, India still stands free and democratic – a rare instance of a unbroken democracy within the times .
A nation’s freedom is supposed to be a unifier and uniter of nation , and it’s wrong to perceive it as a one-sided caste, race, or color-specific experience and sensation. Undoubtedly, not all periods in human evolution are rosy. Human history is crammed with ups and downs – periods of outstanding grace, and ghastly tragic eras when darker forces take over and blemish our lives and legacy. there’s nothing wrong with a nation acknowledging its past “sins” but there’s something unworthy about damning all its past and, worse, allowing wounds to remain open and still bleed, enabling those that feel disenfranchised to cast the state itself as unworthy and expendable.
The fight for freedom has never been a brief haul. Waves upon waves of freedom fighters must rise and fall before eventually alien rule and empires collapse, and a rustic , newly born, discovers its destiny. Independent India likewise emerged from many thousands of Indians rising to challenge foreign rule, refusing any more to endure the dehumanization that accompanied India’s subordination. If we stand free today, it’s because we stand on the proud unbending shoulders of these brave warriors – women, men and youngsters – who gave up their lives to light liberty’s torch.
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This year’s Independence Day , sadly, comes at a grim moment when life as we knew it’s changed globally, not only for India. the planet is encountering exceptional challenges linked not only to the devastating Corona pandemic, but also to a growing disenchantment with democracy itself. India’s persistent poverty amidst plenty especially stands in strong contrast to China’s spectacular achievement in uplifting its much larger number of poor out of abysmal poverty. Alas, it’s very easy to overlook the big cost – of a much more debilitating kind than economic deprivation – to human dignity that accompanies the Chinese way of governance, and its freakish control over its citizenry.
The socioeconomic disparity that continues to plague India and to divide the planet is ugly and rampant. But both countries, like societies everywhere , are making an attempt to level the playfield. While there’s no such thing as absolute equality, it’s equally insane to suggest there’s absolute inequality intentionally and maliciously sustained by whites in America or brahmins and upper castes in India. Yet, in these highly charged WOKE times, patience and customary sense are hard to return by as political and intellectual class, assisted by the media and company entities, are able to play the race or caste card, and to revisit and rewrite American and Indian history from the lens solely of victims and oppressors.
It is easy to run down America and India as failed democracies and fascist societies by those raised within the lap of freedom with unfettered right to talk their mind, to hate and tar others as oppressors and uphold themselves as oppressed, to enjoy free speech and use it to denigrate all who still believe the courageous democratic dream that’s India or the empowering vision that’s America.
Swayed less by the charm and promise of communism but more by mistrust and hatred of America and capitalism, the self-loathing and nation-shaming young Americans or Indians are moving towards a utopian world where there’s no individuality, no family, no property, and amazingly no whiteness. Blacks here or the Outcaste and Dalits in India alone matter. Perceived as oppressors, we must all now surrender our will, brain, and ‘being’ to the desire of an abstraction called “WOKE”.
Along with zealot Twitter and Facebook users, these “WOKE” entities have morphed into almighty gods who control what we common folk are allowed to think, feel, say or do. Luckily, the angry self-flagellating segment has set itself to fail. The more they deny patriotism, the greater the increase of patriotic fervor.
As Assumption nears, we are quite eager and prepared to celebrate it without worrying of being called fascists, Saffronites, RSS-ites and Modi-ists. Importantly, we are able to wholeheartedly honor the cherished memory of these that gave their all to secure our nation’s independence.
