India’s 75th Independence Day

 

Subject: India’s 75th Independence Day

Written By: Yogesh Gogwekar

Address : Mahim, Mumbai

Date : 15/08/2022

On 15th August 2022, India is going to celebrate 75th year of Independence. Yes, it is a great achievement. Therefore, we have to celebrate our achievements for the last seventy five years. At the time of celebration of such a great event, I am remembering the visionary speech of India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, ”A Tryst With Destiny” which was delivered on 14th August 1947, the night before India was going to be freed from British rule. This speech has been considered as one of the best speeches of the 20th Century which gives us lessons of peace, unity, perseverance and pride. In this connection, I always like the words used by him in his speech such as freedom and power bring responsibility or pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy. From this speech one can easily find his approach towards nation building. Since 15th August 1947, India has travelled long and also faced many difficulties but still India has done many developments and remained as one country. This has happened because of policies adopted by India’s First Prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru to bring freedom and opportunities to the common man through Parliamentary democracy and built up social, political and economic institutions which will ensure justice to every man and woman. He wants to make India modern by speeding the growth of industrialization and by improving the living standard of the people. He spent his life of thirty five years as a freedom fighter and seventeen years as a head of Indian Government, Nehru had taken the real burden of political and administration on his shoulders. Therefore, at any time or under any circumstances, his speech is an inspiration and stands out as a guide. Following are some parts of his speech through which we can understand his message of scientific temper and rational thinking.

“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. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfill the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and poverty and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest men of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.’

India is a democratic country but the most vibrant democracy in the world. It is an interesting political experiment in human history. It is a very difficult task for such a country which has multiple religions, multiple languages & different cultures. It is an unnatural phenomena but still this country is one nation from a political and geographical point of view. To make this country as great and modern, all credit goes to our nationalist leaders who fought to liberate India with its ethos & methods.

Sir John Strachey, a retired member of the Viceroy's council, was invited to deliver the series of lectures on India in 1884 by the University of Cambridge. At the time of delivering the lectures, he said, “There is not and never was an India. It was impossible that men from Bombay, Punjab, Bengal and Madras should ever feel that they belonged to one great Indian Nation". His remarks were intended as a historical judgment, but John Strachey and his colleagues of the British Empire failed to understand the diversity of India. They thought that India's diversity in caste, religion and languages wouldn't allow all Indians to come together. They failed to see that beneath this diversity lay the substratum of a long unbroken cultural tradition. And this common unbroken traditional culture brought all Indians together and helped to develop the spirit of nationalism which compels the British to wind up their rule by making India as an Independent and free Country.

It is true that the way we understand the spirit of Indian nationalism in today's sense, the same spirit of nationalism was not in the past i.e. before the arrival of the British. A well-known writer Carl Friedrich writes in his book Man and His Government, " the building of the state comes first and it is within the political framework that nation comes into being ". Therefore it will be proper to say that India became a nation under the British Empire. The British only strengthened Indian Nationalism in the process of consolidating their rule in India. They created all India states by bringing the entire subcontinent under their rule and this has become a base for Indian patriotism. Besides this there are four more factors which help to develop Indian Nationalism and these factors are modern system of transport and communication, Centralized Tax System, Central government and introduction of English language. In this case, Railways have played a major role in developing Indian Nationalism. Due to this  transport facilities, Indians from all states with different languages like Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Gujrati, Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali etc. have been isolated for unmeasured ages and now easily mingle and start communicating through English language. This helped them to know their common culture. Keshab Chandra Sen, a great religious leader from Bengal, who travelled many parts of India and was surprised to find that people in Bombay, Madras, and Punjab provinces were not very differently to follow the religious rituals from those in Bengal provinces. Sir Edwin Arnold,  an English Poet and Journalist, wrote in his book, “The light of Asia” that Railways may do for India what dynasties have never done –what genius Akbar could not do; they make India as a nation.

Today, at the time of celebrating the seventy five years of independence, we are proving that we never want to forget our freedom struggle and its warmth feeling helps us to link our past with present and future. This is because the major aspect of this movement was based on the social, economic and political vision of our nationalist leaders who fought for our independence. Through this movement, our leaders popularised democratic ideas and its institutions to protect the rights of all civilians. They also developed independent foreign policies through this movement. Our nationalist introduced the election of representatives in government through elections which would be based on adult franchise. For that they formed The Indian National Congress in 1885 and encouraged its functions in the style of Parliamentary democracy. Within the Congress party, our nationalist leaders allowed us to have heated debates based on free expression and put on open voting before taking any decisions. From the beginning of this movement, our nationalist leaders were fully committed to Secularism. During this movement, our leaders started asking for freedom of press and expression. They also extended their scope towards civil liberties. They have also given importance to economic development. This movement accepted the need for industrialization and the important role of the public sector for economic development. The initial stages of this movement were only focused on political independence and not about social and economic independence.  Arrival of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi brought complete change in the programme of the independent movement of India. Therefore, the radical agrarian reform programme has become a major programme of India’s freedom movement.

The British created an artificial territory of India for their benefits and made India as a nation. Still, our nationalist leaders in the beginning like Dadabhai Naoroji, Surendranath Banerjee, Lokmanya Tilak, Lalalajpat Rai, Justice Ranade, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, etc. also realised that India was not fully structured nation but the nation in the making. Therefore, they had given major importance to promote unity of Indian people through a common struggle against colonialism. Therefore, the national movement for freedom struggle became the main product towards the process of nation building and Mahatma Gandhi arrived at this juncture. An artificial territory of India created by the British has been endowed to all Indians by him. Mahatma Gandhi had his charisma; he was a thinker & man of action. He was a genius and had an organising capacity. He converted congress from a three days conference to mass movement and organised congress on linguistic basis. He promised Indians that independent India would have linguistic states where each Indian can select the language of education as per his choice. He introduced nonviolence which means issues and problems can be sorted out through discussion and debate which is nothing but Parliamentary democracy.  He tried to bring communal harmony through Hindu Muslim unity. He was a great supporter of abolition of untouchability & removal of gender inequality. He did not allow having a single language as the official language of independent India. In true sense, he was the maker of modern India.

Other than Mahatma, Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Dr.B R Ambedkar, Rajgopalcharya  & others have given their best to make India a strong and Modern nation. On 15th August 1947, British India got divided on religious basis i.e. Hindu Secular India and Muslim India which has been named as Pakistan. This bloody “partition” of Muslim Pakistan resulted in massive movements of people across the borders in both directions. Even after such incidents, these leaders   never allowed India to become a mirror image of Pakistan. Due to their vision,  India is still running democratic Government by conducting  regular elections after five years & keeping scrupulously away its arm forces from politics. British India had eleven Provinces and around 600 hundred Princely states which were being recognised as Paramount Power. The territories of these states were legally pertaining to Nawabs and Maharajas. These Nawabs and Maharajas were having the power not only to appoint the administrative ministers and also to control successions but to extract the large subsidy for the provision of administrative and military support. If they would not have joined the Indian states, it would have been problems for democratic India. Sardar Patel with the help of Mountbatten and V P Menon converted these Princely states into Indian States. This was a big achievement. Another great achievement is overcome of linguistic barriers.  Indian government has provided great help to scientist who can develop space programme by forming India Space research Programme (ISRO) and also forming the institutions like Indian Institution of Management (IIM), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Indian Statistical Institution, etc. Due to the help from the Indian Government, many scientists like Vikram Sarabhai, Prashant Chandra Mahalanobis, Dr. Homi Bhabha, M S Swaminathan, Satish Dhavan and Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam could give their contribution towards making India modern in all aspects through science. In sports, especially in Cricket , Indian Cricketers made India proud by winning the World Cup twice and producing great cricket players like Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Anil Kumbale, Saurabh Ganguly , Rahul Dravid  and Kapil Dev.  Similarly Indian Cinema, especially Hindi Cinema, has played a major role to bring all Indians together. South and east India rejected Hindi language as official language but they have accepted Hindi Cinema and its music as their entertainment.

Even after great achievements, Indian politicians failed to protect public institutions from corruptions & incompetence. Public institutions failed to show transparency & accountability. Last two generations of politicians, civil servants, and judges use the state machinery for their own ambitions & they consider their family, caste & Community above these institutions. Even social justice to depressed class & women are still discriminated against. Scholar & Historian, Ramchandra Guha said that Democracy had to be founded by visionaries, it could be in mid-career by mediocrities. He further said that forget idealism or vision, they are not even competent, being motivated rather by vanity, greed or nepotism. Even today, there is not much improvement. We need to change this situation.  We hope the existing government will do something to make India strong and Modern.

Still India is a fantastic country.  There are forces, visible and invisible, binding the people of this country together & promoting Pan India Identity. Democratic constitution gives full freedom of Cultural development, protecting fundamental rights of every citizen through competent Judiciary, Great network of Railways, television, air transport, newspapers , Cinema, administrative services, arm forces & great game of cricket and great countrywide market are binding India together. Therefore, the Republic of India will remain forever. Thanks to our visionary leaders who took pain to make this country strong and modern.

At last, I am congratulating all Indians on the occasion of 75th Independence day. By quoting the words of Robert  Blackwell who was US Ambassador to India in 2003. He said 'India is a pluralist country that creates magic with democracy, rule of law & individual Freedom, community relations & cultural diversity.  What is the place to be an intellectual!  I wouldn't mind being born ten times to rediscover India ". 

Happy Independence Day  

Thank you