Three scores and three years ago, our freedom fighters bought on the Asian continent a nation conceived in liberty, but did we really prove ourselves worthy of it??
As we approach the 62nd year of our so striven for Independence, as we approach the end of the first decade of the 3rd millennium we welcomed with such galore, lets stop and think in retrospect….did we fulfill the “pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity” , the one we had made to our motherland ‘at the stroke of midnight, when the world was asleep and India awoke to life and freedom’.
“The achievement we celebrate today and every year 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?”
Did we grasp the opportunities in the past 62 years that came our way??
This independence was not given to us in charity but is soaked in blood, our forefathers have fought for it. Starting 10th May, 1857, till 15th August, 1947, the 90 years were spent by the people of the Indian subcontinent, fighting the colonial powers for the most basic right of independence. Any celebration is incomplete without remembering our Father of nation, who spearheaded our freedom movement, the numerous soldiers and army men who died so that we could live and breathe in the free India and our brethren on the other side of Indian territory with whom we are fatefully at constant war.
India has made its mark in all the domains of human activity but this is just the beginning. The true sons of the soil have won laurels for it and relegated to it, its true position on the world map, lifted it from the abyss of anonymity and restored it into the limelight.
Alas! the challenges of population, poverty, unemployment, un-equality and communalism are still plaguing our country. Its tragic that 60 years of Democracy could not eradicate them.
When chacha Nehru spoke of the our memorable tryst with destiny , he dreamt of an India
“Where the mind is without 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-”
And today I earnestly pray that
Into this heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
Jai Hind!
