Today is India’s Independence day. A nation with 29 states replete with tremendous cultural vastness and intellectual depth is marching toward celebrating its grand national day.
It is a day that calls for great celebrations keeping in mind our resurgence as a truly national Bharat Gantantra, an India that is a composite of its vastly abundant resources, its democratic might, a land where the rich and poor march with great aplomb whilst facing everyday unavoidable challenges and conquering meaningful goals and, ultimately embarking toward the collective national consciousness that is seeped deep inside the human consciousness that unifies us as one India.
It is quite heartening and disheartening at the same time to reflect on the many accomplishments that we, as one India have accomplished since our independence and those achievements that went unachieved. But, we must draw huge satisfaction if not absolute contentment from the many milestones that we have come to shape our national consciousness in our pursuit of true greatness. Among the cacophony and confusing deliriums of being called a truly great economic power, a giant Asian economy , a roaring tiger and at times, being painted with the tag of being a sleeping giant, which once awake in its entirety will shake up the world economy- there lies a canvass painted by remarkable progress.
The good everyone knows about India
Source: indiatoday.in
Being a truly developing economy often basking under glory in contention with some economic supremo’s of the world including China, Germany and Japan, we are now basking under the glory of “Make in India”. Home to some of the largest resources of aluminium, copper, bauxite and steel, our cosmological definitions that triumph our national identity in shores away from India proudly indicate us as still being a largely agrarian economy.
Source: hindustantimes.com
The Kissan bhai who painstakingly toils under brutally heavy labor might not be captured on front page headlines for it is his effort that fetches us rice and bread on our plates, but the very fact that he exists, is regarded and his efforts, whether recognized or chastised continue to hail India as a largely agrarian economy, with 65% attribution toward our overall national and geographical spread being under the tutelage of agriculture.
Source: soundbox.co.in
On one hand the number of investments in Healthcare, Textile, I.T. and importantly, Education are increasing and reaching sky rocketing figures, our combined progress in sports, cinema, popular culture and art are captured by promising fonts around the world media where our successes are painted with beautiful metaphors that seem even godlike. National award winning films and movies shortlisted for the most celebrated film festivals around the world paint India with joyous colors of moving magic, spirited creativity and sublime artistry. Even in music, our Rehmans’, Pandit Ravi Shankars’, Zaakir Hussains’ mesmeric legacy is blending fine tunes with world’s greatest artists.
Source: indiamicrofinance.com
Even our access to media and means of consuming it has greatly improved indicating of an India that has undergone sea-change in the way it collects, analyses, utilizes and disseminates information from all walks of life. Beyond the sweat toiled ink of the print medium that continues to serve us well every day in the morning and the television that makes breaking announcements all day long inside the confines of our beautiful households, a new India is rising from the construct of a globalized economy. The new digital India is focused on presenting skillfully and magnanimously information and its accessibility on the internet medium, whilst not only making great waves in Advertising, Media and Marketing Communications but also generating employment through the newly formed trajectory of offerings as presented by Digital India.
Yoga, Ayurveda, the glorious tales of our Maharajas and Sadhus, Princes and Princesses, our mighty kingdoms and spiritual pilgrimages constitute an India that is reckoned by foreign nationals as a heavy deity blossoming under the timeless fragrance of charm and splendor. Ever welcoming in its welcome of those who seek to find themselves while finding India and those who make India their home away from home.
An India that we all ignore
The world is full of ignorance and in some ways ignorant(s) continue to make rising waves in every aspect of the world. What truly defines an ignorant is someone who lives and breathes in wishful thinking and chooses to live a life of prejudice and one sided faulty assumptions that frivolously contain an assessment seeing just the lop-sided view of a situation, conveniently looking away from the glaring truth.
Source: commons.wikimedia.org
68 great and equally tumultuous years as a singular, cohesive, united India have taught us many lessons and reminded us time and again of the idea of Independence, a reality in whose constant shadow we live, die, are born again and rise, fall and rise again as one India. Truth be told the idea of independence is quite distinctly clear and separate from how all of us wish to see India, everyday in its small and simple reminders of Indian’ness’.
Source: theanalystworld.com
Must we ask ourselves what truly makes an accomplished idea of an Idea! Will it be completely fair and just to peek through a prism that only shows us a lop-sided version of our beloved motherland? In fact, is it fair enough to reduce India as being just a motherland of vibrant positivity and where we never attempt to even conceive the idea from the lens of a fatherland? After all, we ourselves have anointed Mahatma Gandhi, for many the greatest Indian to have ever walked on earth as the national fatherly figure for the whole of India!
Time has come to perhaps undergo a process of immense self-prognosis, which if not fairly sans bias and attended to with patience and care may help us view an India that lies outside its lofty adjectives that half-heartedly paint an incomplete picture of this wonderful country.
The ugly India
If you are to truly understand the condition of your heart, they say measure the pulse.
Source: goddiscussion.com
Similarly, if you are an Indian and wish to understand the meaning of India and if it has truly paid homage to what we term as ‘the better sex’, then ask any woman today- “do you feel safe in India”. There are other ways of peeking into an India that lies buried under heaps of ignorance and falsely painted portraits.
Source: indiatoday.indiatoday.in
Has anyone ever cared to ask the war widows about their living conditions? Have we ourselves ever randomly visited households where aggrieved parents who lost their only son to the mindlessly pungent battles of protecting the falsehood of national pride feel when they aren’t helped by the very nation that their sons and daughters died fighting for? Moreover, have we ever questioned our own choices of electing national and state leaders who in front of our naked eyes come and blatantly misuse and molest the very country that they swear to serve in best national interest?
False legal cases and overcrowded prisons, lack of apathy for the poor and merciless treatment meted to women and children trafficked every year under the very eyes that took oath to protect them call for far more severe treatment of India and the way we mock our false pride associated in the name of national uprising and point toward taking self-evasive action that for some reason we are just not comfortable in taking.
Source: thehillscenter.com
Gays, lesbians , transgenders and eunuchs are also a part of our national identity, just as the proud sons and daughters of those fathers and mothers who have been born to and live under the patina of nationalistic fervor. But, do we accept each other without any biases? We have got to address our shortcomings in the light of decorating an India that can be far greater a nation that it is today and whose destiny lies in the hands of the very youth that doesn’t bat an eyelid before condemning a Gandhi, in its total disregard for understanding the lives of an Azad, Bhagat Singh and Bose.
What can the youth do for India
Source: thehindu.com
What the entire country is perhaps missing is the central nerve that functions as India’s heart-line: the youth that drives and shall drive the change that we all want to see in our India.
That education here is just as strong as in any ivy-league college is not further away from truth. That jobs will be created, sooner than any later isn’t a dreamy footnote from a cursive writing competition. That there is no loss of pride in understanding that those who work for us, in our offices, college campuses and domestic households should be seen as possessing the same dignity of labor as we come to laud an America for demonstrating while we address them as “servants” is central to understanding, respecting and upholding the dignity of the lesser fortunate. That our grades in schools and colleges aren’t a true reflection of what we are and are capable of should not be used as a means of insulting those who aren’t perhaps as gifted in matters of the mind. That every dog has its day shouldn’t compel us to treat dogs with any less humility while brandishing the existence of the most faithful friend that man has come to possess in justifying our statements that carry less weight and more falsehood.
Source: network54.com
That the youth is the heart of India and comes to represent over 60 percent of our nationalistic boundary scavenged by varying degrees of indifference, rich and poor divide, corruption, intolerance, baseless battles fought on ego’s that dwell in religious fervor- holds the true destiny that has come to define India.
India is not what you or I think of it to be.
India is a grand paradox of laughter, tears, smiles, jubilation and a hurt that is central to us in defeating it by our own misdeeds and one that still hopes for us in tending it politely where it bleeds.
Featured Image Source: techicy.com