Our Tryst with Destiny

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.

The famous speech by our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru marked a new era in the history of India. India has been attacked, plundered, ravaged for centuries. Our gold stolen, our crops siphoned off to feed another nation, our men toiled for a country which was not their own. But through it all we emerged victorious and resilient. The foreign powers could not survive in the face of a nationwide agitation by the people who decided to take no more of the atrocities, the oppression. So at the stroke of midnight on the fifteenth of August 1947 we were given what was rightfully ours- India. Today as we approach our 65^th independence let’s look back to the past sixty-four years of Indian independence.

           Economically India has progressed by leaps and bounds since independence. With the growth of industry India is slowly becoming a self-sustaining economy. The infrastructure network has improved. The remotest of villages can today dream of electricity and education. All this has been made possible by the hard work and vision of the leaders of independent India. Average longevity has increased, incidences of child mortality at birth has improved, India is a super power in the making and a booming economy with economic statistics suggesting that India will be among the top five economies in another forty years. In spite of these apparent achievements there lurks a deep divide in the Indian society.  Not everybody gets a fair share of the financial windfall, not every child gets a fair opportunity at education, the public health sector is crumbling and the private sector is exploiting the situation. The truth is very different from what meets the eye.

It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.

    

 Poverty remains the biggest problem in India today. Poverty breeds illiteracy which in turn perpetuates ignorance. Thousands of children leave school and add to the burgeoning number of child labor if they are not already earning to sustain their families. Girls barely into their teens are forced into prostitution. Others are blinded or maimed and made to beg. For them it is a childhood lost. For us they are just another domestic help, or the pestering child beggar or the boy who cleans Daddy’s car on Sunday. For adults the scenario is not much different. Rural Indian people slog in the fields day and night just to earn two square meals a day. Many leave their home behind and come to the city looking for better opportunities. Our infrastructure is not adequately equipped to cushion the increasing population in urban areas. Thus slums flourish. Decaying tins roofs, open sewers, stagnant wells, and debris strewn lanes have become a ubiquitous sight in major Indian cities.

The tide of female feticide and infanticide shows no signs of ebbing. In spite of banning the corrupt practice of pre natal sex determination the government has failed to bring to an end the phenomenon of skewering sex ratio of boys and girls. As long as this dark cloud of ignorance and misinformation is not dispelled, inequality will persist. So our boys will get ahead in life. They will go places while our daughters will be confined to kitchens and the local markets. Women’s Reservation Bill can do little good to women in a society where they are regularly suppressed or where their husbands see this as an opportunity to field their wives to earn goodwill and pull the strings on the marionettes to achieve their objective.

India is experiencing an AIDS epidemic. Illiteracy, ignorance and taboo breed the endemic disease. Half of the rural population remains unaware of the basic preventive measures to be adopted. Basic healthcare facilities in rural India are missing. The few who opt for the city are thoroughly disappointed where the scenario is not much different. Making the most of this situation is the private health sector and their escalating profits. Medicine has become a sham where an unsuspecting, docile patient is manipulated by the doctors who aren’t much different from modern day butchers.

Globalization has changed the face of India. The booming economy has ensured a comfortable lifestyle for many but that’s where the deception lies. The farmers of Punjab and Haryana got richer and richer whereas the tribal of Orissa, West Bengal got poorer and poorer. One hardly is surprised to know that these tribal people have taken up guns and rifles and joined the Maoists in quest of a better life.

This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill-will or blaming others.

Isn’t that exactly what happens every time there is a terrorist attack? The BJP blames the Congress; the Congress blames the BJP while it is the common man who bears the brunt. Limbs lost, relatives killed, children orphaned, women widowed, certain religious communities face retaliatory attack. The security of the country is in an abysmal state and the leaders whether ruling or opposition lacks the sensitivity towards common people. It’s always about the power never about the nation.

We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.

MF Hussain certainly wouldn’t have been banished from the country of his birth and made to live and die in exile if the ideal behind those lines were followed.

We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good ill fortune alike.

                                                  

There is a writer named Tasleema Nasreen who came to our country seeking refuge after being exiled from her country for practicing free speech. She was our guest. We ought to have taken care of her. But what did we do to protect her from humiliation? Nothing. Instead we too asked her to leave. Another lady Aung San Suu Kyi had been urging us to let go of our commercial interests and help the people of Myanmar achieve freedom from the oppressive military junta. So far her requests had fallen on deaf ears.

                             
Interestingly we abided by those very lines when His Holiness the Dalai Lama took refuge in our country. We proved to be a wonderful host taking in more refuge Tibetans and allowing them to settle as per their convenience, helped them establish business and ultimately they were absorbed into the mainstream India. We let them voice their protest against Chinese atrocities. As Tibetan author Tenzing Tsundue writes after being arrested by the police for staging a surprise protest on the high streets of Mumbai when the then Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji visited the Indian business capital. “The police were sympathetic to the cause. More so for their benefit. They knew that once Tibet becomes Independent they needn’t bother about difficult protesters like me and the one lakh Tibetan refugees would go back to Tibet. With that, a better promise is that the Indian border along the Himalayas will be safe. It was only after the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1949 that India came to share borders with China for the first time in history.”

We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

 This has been the toughest ideal to follow so far. In recent times the Godhra, Gujrat and Kandhamal riots reminded us time and again how religiously intolerant we can be. With human rights violations in Kashmir on an all time high, repression has become the order of the day.  Through it all has emerged a new generation where religion is slowly losing its clout. Instead the Indian middle class are slowly embracing a broader outlook. Inter-caste marriages are on the rise. The popularity of our Prime Minister is soaring as he leads us to a better tomorrow.

India. Bharat. Hindustan. Whatever be the name the essence will always be the same. We will always be the people who greet their guests with folded hands and a garland. We shout and take to the streets to protest, scream to express joy. We create commotion on the streets all night when our favorite team wins a match. No police, no law can stop us from celebrating the victory of India as a team, as a nation. We are the source of intrigue for countless Westerners who came, saw and then shared with their fellow countrymen their experiences. The foreign exchange keeps pouring in the booming IT sector, Indo-US nuclear deal and countless other military pacts signals to the world that India has arrived as an economy, as a super power. The ever-increasing popularity of Indian cinema abroad particularly Bollywood announces that we are no longer a secluded part of the world. With tireless dedication the population is striving for a better India. A few hindrances removed and we are a step closer to Nehru’s dream India. Till then,

“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.”