What does India need most today?
As we approach almost 70 years from the night we reaffirmed the pact to shape our destiny, the nation speaks to us in ways only its history can voice.
Birthed out of blood and rule; milked (robbed?) off riches and heritage, forcefully divided by diversity and united by the singular hope of agency, liberty, and happiness - the story of a people once conquered now free, once broken now joint, once silenced now heard - India needs Indians now more than ever since it awoke into life and freedom.
As Indians we find unity in nationality - not in religion, caste, or creed; as subjects of the world we find unity in humanity - not in hatred, race, or nation.
We do not let deluded ideas of nationality cloud our understanding of humanity, for while time does not ask us to agree on all things, it does demand that we agree upon one - peace.
If there's one lesson that both history and science have taught us, it is that the difference is not deviation from the norm because diversity is the norm.
Because we believe that brothers and sisters are not only those bound to us by blood at birth.
Because we believe that we are not just children of our parents, but also of our nation.
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| August 15, 1947 was not the day that the story of India began. |
Because our ancestors, whatever differences they may have borne, believed in the common cause of strength in symbiosis and of solidarity in secularity.
August 15, 1947 was not the day that the story of India began. Our story began over four millennia ago, when a river resounding with hope brought fertility to a land with civilisation at its cusp.
August 15, 1947 did not render this realm a blank canvas on which to narrate the tales of a new nation. It marked the arrival of the day, after centuries of tumult, when we once again seized the right to press pen to paper and declare this land a free nation, when we once more earned the liberty to sing praises to the land of golden birds of many tongues, when we finally clutched the charcoal of years past with which to light the fire of generations to come.
On August 15, 1947, the voice of a man told his children, the call of a nation spoke to its citizens:
"We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be.
We are citizens of a great country, on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations."
If this was the truth to which we committed ourselves to 69 years ago, then as our nation asks, this truth alone must prevail.
So when the clock struck 12, what did you vow to reaffirm?