Celebrating Freedom and How

Today marks the 68th anniversary of India's independance. Naturally, we are celebrating it with a fervour seen in our most important of festivals. Somebody has painted his face with the tricolor, someone has decided to wear ethnic for a change and someone else is playing

Hai Preet Jahan Ki Reet Sada

from the film, 'Poorab aur Paschim'. And it is all very heartening. In the morning, I saw people from the neighborhood assembled in the park for a flag hoisting cermony. Before the ceremony began, an old gentleman was singing praises of the greatness of our culture. He was describing how some traits make us unique as Indians. Our tradition of sacrifice, civility and peace loving nature were all glorified by him through different songs that he sung rather well (for his age).
It is true that we are one of the most patriotic nations in the world. We love our country. We love our past. We love our leaders from the past. We love the fact that we have been the birthplace of so many religions like Jainism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism. We are amazed to see the unity that we manage to keep despite such a diversity in our population. We are grateful for the fact that we are so many. There are about 1,267,401,849 of us as per the latest 2015 count. More people means more workforce. And our workforce is not a workforce like China's or Japan's which is growing older and older but a workforce that is dynamic and young. We produce a record number of graduates though not all are fit to hire. We have a tea seller who has become our Prime Minister, a newspaper seller who became our President and so on.
So, we have many reasons to be happy. But then there are those of us who are not so proud. They are not so delighted with the culture that pervades through this nation. They see some sort of plague in it that has taken root.
These people point out how we have, throughout our history, largely been a submissive civilization. We have survived over the course of 5,000 years beginning with the Harappans as our most ancient forefathers. But we have survived by allowing everyone who has ever come to our shores to conquer us. Whether it was the race of the Mughals or the Mongols, the French or the British. They have all come and easily laid their domination upon us. We remained slaves to foreign rule for over a thousand years because as a nation we lacked something. We never fought to claim for what was rightfully ours in the right way. Nehru, after the China's subjugation of our notheastern borders, said that it was not a big deal. That part of the country's land didn't have much in it anyways.
So, like him we have learned to console ourselves with defeats.
We seem to make religion the biggest phenomenon in this country. In the name of religion, the kawariyas recently held Delhi to ransom, brought all traffic to a halt and caused disruption to the ordinary way of life. But we are okay with that. We understand. It is, after all, for religion. And this religion which has bound us with one senseless ritual after another in this country runs in our DNA. We are blinded by it. We take pride in the fact that we make gods out of ordinary stones. And perhaps, we have found many other ways to keep ourself busy in this world which our priests have so cleverly called 'Maya', i.e., illusion. So, let others conquer us, let things be as they are. Stay happy with the way you are. Get settled with your fate. Because it is all Maya. There is no point trying.
Even today, our dwarf-sized neighbours like Pakistan, Bangladesh and even Nepal launch proxy attacks on our borders. Pakistan, of course, is the lead in this league and freely sends terrorists to kill and be killed. It knows that the maximum we can do in response is to stop the distribution of sweets at the Wagah Border on the Independance day or cancel the next cricket match with them. And, it seems like they don't seem to mind either of those things.
So, on this Independance day when I heard our Prime Minister talk from the ramparts of the red fort, I was glad to hear him talk about the plans he has to spread power across the remotest regions of our country by 2018. I was happy to hear his plans to launch 'Start up and Stand up India'. But I would have liked him to also say something about the recent terror attacks in Punjab. And maybe start a new movement which would be aimed at getting rid of religious idiosyncracies which disease this nation.

Hoping for the best to come!