71st Independence Day| The seven glorious decades of Freedom |

Dear Readers, here we are again all united in a uniform spirit to celebrate our 71st Independence day. Although it seems a bit odd that we need specific days to motivate us to get our spirits in sync. But nevertheless, it’s never too late to wake up to a new morning that comes with new hopes for a better & peaceful future.

This journey of seven decades of independent India is full of crests & troughs. We will today embark on a journey of our glorious past, struggle to free our mother India from the claws of foreign powers & the emergence of India as one of the superpowers, deep-rooted social-evils in our society etc through this piece. To start with, we need to first understand what India is all about. India is not merely a nation of a certain race or tribe or religion but a ‘Sangam’ of cultures, religions, languages, faiths, rituals, races, ethnicities that are in cohesion with one another.

India has a past that is full of rich heritage. We were the world leaders in terms of medicine, spirituality, education, politics & literature in the ancient past. This is the land which was gifted by the likes of Sushrut, Charak, Ramanujan, Aryabhatta, Panini, Kalidasa, Vikramaditya, the great Ashoka, Tulsidasa, Valmiki, Kabir and the list is endless. We enjoy the pleasure to be born in a country that gifted ‘Zero’ to the world. Had it not been there, imagine how tough it would have been to be a millionaire. On a serious note, India is undoubtedly one of the greatest countries of this world. India was home to one of the most ancient civilizations. This, in itself, gives evidence of our rich ancient past. But as all great things have to face adversities & India was not the exception; India also faced many brutal attacks on it’s soil. She saw some cruelest rulers of the world ruining her dignity. A nation that was once called ‘GOLDEN SPARROW’ now struggles to get good positions in Global poverty index & Hunger index etc. This becomes necessary to know to realise the harm caused by foreign attackers to India & to understand the India’s freedom struggle & sacrifices made in the struggle. Although the drain of the Indian wealth had already started back in the times of invaders like Mahmud Gaznavi & Nadirshah but the real wealth & resources drain started in British rule. They sucked it gradually but made sure that India is left with nothing. Some people might argue that the British were the ones because of whom we are able to impart modern day education system to our kids & enjoy raliway journeys but interestingly they forget that in the long run all of it has come at a very huge cost. Our wealth drained by the British is way more than the virtues they gave to our Indian society. We Indians were always fooled by the British on the pretext of money, power etc. We failed to realise that we allowed them to snatch away our most precious thing i.e freedom. Finally, the day came when Indians realised it and that later came to be known as “The Revolt of 1857” or “The Sepoy Mutiny”. With this revolt started the century long freedom struggle which saw numerous tales of Godly valour, courage, sacrifices of sons by mothers, husbands by wives, daughters by fathers, brothers by sisters & vice versa. But as they say that you can fight with anything in this world but not with a spirited Indian, so the British also eventually kneeled down in front of the great Indian courage & determination to get freedom.

To attain freedom we lost many great sons & daughters of this country. But when I see today’s India somewhere deep in my heart I feel hopeful that maybe, not today we are a perfect & ideal country but at least after seeing so many daunting adversities in the last 7 decades we reached upto this level which is commendable. The day is not far when we will be proudly saying to our martyrs that this is the country you sacrificed your lives for. If Bhagat Singh, Aazad ji, Ashfaqulla Khan, Batukeshwar Dutt, the legendary Subhash Chandra, Rani Lakshmi Bai etc would someday sit in heaven to have a look over their motherland, they would certainly feel, at least, partially happy about the nation’s growth. But now the biggest question arises that are we really free. What freedom means for an individual common man of this nation. For most of them it’s a national holiday. For some it’s a day when we got Independence although it’s literally true. But do we ever realise that still we are tied with some social evils deeply rooted in our society? No, we fail to realise the meaning of absolute freedom. What we celebrate is merely partial freedom but we should strive for absolute freedom.

Freedom from social evils like crimes against women, corruption & caste politics is the need of the hour. In the past 3 or 4 years as the nation has tried hard to break out of inertia & despondency. The thought of relief is that there is awareness among the youth about the new challenges. India is a nation with ample of opportunities & off late the world has realised this. We are a nation that has ‘Youth Potential’ in it. We have 65% of young guns out of our total population to lead the nation’s story of growth from the front. This is a huge number as we know that in most of the developed nations like Japan this % is of the old aged persons. So, this is a golden chance for the Indian Youth to write India’s growth story in golden words. The youth at present is not burdened with the bagage of deadwood. These children of digital age are not averse to risk taking & are fiercely independent. This number is referred to as favoured demographic dividend & hopefully would give India an edge over others in the upcoming years. We should consider ourselves lucky as we have the golden opportunity to witness the transformation of a developing economy to a developed one.

Moreover, on this 71st Independence Day we need to take a pledge to make this nation a great place to live. Be it littering, be it corruption, be it other social evils we need to flush them out & make our nation clean. The heritage of resplendant pluralism that has enriched our culture for ages should be kept intact by us. Not just flag hoisting ceremonies would suffice for Independence day celebrations but feeding a poor, planting a sapling, cleaning a dirty spot in your locality are some of the best & innovative ways by which you can make this nations free from other evils. British were sent out of this country by some fierce, valour-filled young guns. Can’t you send corruption, injustice, inequality, terrorism outside this nation? Remember we are surrounded by highly hostile neighbourhoods. We can’t afford communal tensions among us over issues like religion, caste or race. At present we need to show our strength by being One India. There are dacoits like Pakistan & bullies like China in our neighbourhood. We need to double our efforts & triple our courage to be clash ready in case of any breach of our international borders. However, more than international threats India’s challenges range from naxalism to regional divides. These are the ultimate challenges that we have to fight within at top priority.

We urge all of you to take a pledge to work for a better India on this Independence day, so that in the 75th year of our independence day we could proudly say that our efforts have paid off. In the end we would like to conclude with few awesome lines written by one of our disqus student PC < Daddy’s Little Daughter>.

यूं तो लिखा कई बार है मैंने ,

पर आज कलम उठाने की वजह ही कुछ और है,

यूं तो आंख नम हुई कई बार है,

पर आज रोने की वजह कुछ और है..

यूं तो सुर झुका मंदिर मस्जिद कई बार है,

पर आज नमन धरती के वीरो के नाम है,

ऐसे तो हैं कई अलफ़ाज़ कहने को

पर आज निकलता एक ही शब्द,

सलाम ! सलाम ! सलाम है !!!

Jai Hind, Jai Bharat..!!!

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