this Independence Day..

Like all others who are not in school or college, for me too it was a holiday. For years now Independence Day has become only an opportunity to drop some messages to our dear ones, suddenly we all start loving, of course just for a day, those three colours. 

Sixty seven year has passed celebrating it and i am sure many more years we will be celebrating it. I have seen many intellectual and well educated people complaining about it, not the celebration but the situation. They say people screaming and shouting about independence are just living in fairy tale, they are just one day wonders and in reality they are totally unaware of the current grave situation through which our country is passing. They think wearing tri colours, putting small plastic flags on their scooter, decorating their shops with white, green and orange coloured balloons will not make a difference in the economy.

It would not happen that suddenly all the corruption from India will vanish, all black money from Swiss banks will get deposited to RBI and all the politicians who for a day, today are sitting on a stage watching small children dancing on some patriotic song, will suddenly start thinking about how to raise the standard of living in India and will start treating everyone equally irrespective of their cast, religion, statehood. No, its not going to happen. I am in agreement of those intellectual individuals who think just by celebrating a day; it is not going to make any deference apart from some alert issued by our intelligence agencies regarding possibilities of terror attacks.

But this agreement is just partial, because there is a complete different side of it. Its called unity. For years now i have been at different places on Independence Day but when you see the spirit of people on this particular day, its no different. There is a sense of pride in everyone of them, from a person pulling a cart to an auto driver, for a day, they all connect to each other by those tri colours. I have seen people telling their children to respect the flag and not to put it on the ground. All these incidences create a love towards their country. For a day they all feel an Indian-ness into them, they forget that they are Marathi, Kannadiga, Tamil, Gujrati, Punjabi, Bengali, Kashmiri or of any other statehood, they become Indians.

A day will come when everyone will understand the vote politics, they will know who is using them to get benefit out of it to fill their own bank accounts, they will know that reservation if getting should be based on financial conditions not on account of religion and casts, they will know that a person who talks most about the secularism is the most communal, they will know that the most secular is one who not even thinks about religion, he thinks only about humanity. There will be one day, when every day we will celebrate like Independence Day. There will be one day when all will know that progress is only in peace and it will make difference only when we take everyone together. Unity is what we need; division will always lead to weakness.

So this Independence Day lets we all treat all Indians as Indians and feel pride. Wish you all a very happy Sixty Seventh Independence day.