On this day we the people of a truncated and bloodied India regained our freedom not only from the British but also from the 565 Maharajas, Nawabs and Princes and tens of thousands of zamindars.
Our freedom, which we so lightly take and for granted, has been obtained by the commitment, efforts, and sacrifices of our forefathers. Today is a good day to ask, 'Do we recognise their contribution and have we made ourselves worthy of so great a sacrifice?'
It appears that we have thrown off the physical chains but not our psychological chains.
India today is spiritually, socially, economically, politically, technologically and militarily a giant.
Then why do we continue to seek endorsement and approval from Europe, America, Russia and Japan for everything we believe in, say or do? Why do we seek the approval of the Arab world on how we should engage and integrate with our own fellow Indian muslims?
As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe pointed out, "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
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It is difficult for people born in a free India to even imagine being a third class citizen in one own's country, but that is the yoke our elders have been able to throw off, so that we would never be made subservient to others.
What is obtained easily is not respected and what is not respected is soon lost.
Those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.
History has always been written by rulers and never the colonised. But we are now free, free to inform and educate ourselves on our real history. Not about the bleached version of history that colonists and colonised Indian minds of the past, have taught for so long, but what is true history.
India is a great nation in the remaking, which can usher in a better world. We are at a cross road and must choose and act wisely and confidently. India is incredibly tolerant, a spiritual light that needs glow once again, it possesses a brilliant intellectual and philosophical mind just waiting to be unchained, a global granary waiting to feed billions, a scientific and technological powerhouse on the threshold of a chain reaction.
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