As I sit here in my room, I cannot stop but think why most of us suddenly tend to feel so patriotic on the eve of the Independence day (knowing that most of us are still fretting why 15th August fell on a Sunday this year) and cannot help feel a sense of guilt at not being able to feel that sudden surge of patriotism inside me. In an attempt to diverge my mind from the labyrinth of these convoluted thoughts of “what’s wrong with me?”, I turn on the Television and realize in a couple of minutes that all the channels are riding on this very surge of patriotism. So I see channels screening the academy award winner Gandhi, Lagaan, Sarfarosh, The legend of Bhagat Singh and so on (to my surprise there is a channel showing K3G)!!! So I turn the television off and power on my laptop, open Facebook, only to find that its inundated with patriotic posts ranging from a cute “Happy Birthday India” to an ostentatious “Shaheedon ki mazaaron pe lagenge har baras mele…..”. All these reasons have finally forced me to write this up.
I am now trying to diagnose my problem and deep down I know that I’ll be neither able to find a solution to it, nor even list down the reasons for feeling so. I will not be able to give a holistic diagnosis but I still wanna try.
I start by trying to think of some recent incidents on the national or international canvas which have made me feel happy, but I can’t really come up with even half a dozen of them (some of them range from some recent sporting achievements to the amendment in article 377 to India’s space odyssey). I tell myself that I am a pessimist by nature and I just can’t help but see the world from a concocted world view. But I am sure some of you would empathise with me.
I know the loss of others' lives is nothing but a statistic, till it affects us directly. I know that we all count the impact of a calamity by counting the number of casualties. So here are some statistics for you.
According to a report approximately 65,000 to 1,00,000 civilians have been killed by the security forces since 1988 in J&K under the shade of the draconian AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act). And this probably does not include the number of women raped and sexually assaulted by the forces. Reeling under the same draconian law are the surrogates of the “nobody gives a flying fuck for us” North East India. It requires a ‘building of a road’ or ‘not even asking for a visa’ tactics by China to wake the politicos from their slumber who are busy cooling their heels off in Luyten’s Delhi.
Approximately 10,000 civilians and security personnel have been butchered by the supposed ‘enemies of the state’ maoists in the last 5 years alone. Over 3,000 individuals get killed in different cases of honour killings in India every year. Over 30 million cases are pending in India’s high courts. More than 17,500 farmers a year killed themselves between 2002 and 2006.
I know that the erudite would try to stave off such thoughts in my mind by calling these incidents mere aberrations in a great nation. I know that they would try to sell jargons like population, illiteracy, poverty, terrorism etc to me and tell me that these are the real evils hindering the growth of my country. But I am sorry, I choose to disagree.
Right from the day I developed some understanding of the world around me, a vast number of incidents have been etched in my memory which constantly come back to haunt me. But I know WE, the people, the proverbial common man has a very short lived memory. So let me ask you some questions.
Shall I take pride in seeing a man like MF Hussain having been made to flee his motherland by hooligans of self proclaimed keepers of culture like VHP, RSS, Bajrang dal and all? Shall I take pride in knowing that people like Salman Rusidie and Tasleema Nasreen have been made to flee the country so that some people can safeguard their vote bank? Shall I take pride in knowing that you could meet the fate of a certain Jessica Lal in broad day light, that your sister could get raped someday and the ministers could say that she should not have been wearing such enticing clothes? Shall I feel free when I see the state sponsored pogroms in Delhi and Gujarat, when I see the Babri Masjid being stoned down, when I see that there are such bum lickers in the government which would escort Mr. Anderson to safety knowing that Dow Chemicals should be held directly accountable for inflicting such pain and misery on the people affected by the world’s worst chemical disaster? Shall I feel free when I see the lack of a constructive opposition in the house, when I see horse-trading taken to new extremes each election year (can’t help but curse the multi party system)? Shall I feel free to see that money has to exchange hands in buying coffins for soldiers or hosting Commonwealth games? Shall I feel free when I see the numerous inter-state disputes and mushrooming demands for new states?
I am so so sorry to let you down again but I can’t turn a nelson’s eye to these 'aberrations'. I guess I can’t fake it to myself and that’s my problem.
Of course, I salute the freedom fighters who laid their lives for us so that we can breathe in a free country. But I can no longer feel joyous for an event that happened 63 years ago (knowing that I didn’t contribute one single bit in it), knowing that the battles that we need to fight today would require much more patriotism, enthusiasm and dedication.
They say you can never revenge yourself upon history for history is its own revenge. But I hope that there will be one day in my lifetime wherein I’ll look back in time and say that yes I have been the change that I wanted to see, I have helped eradicate some of these ills plaguing my society that disturb me the most. I guess that day I’ll feel what people felt on 15th August 1947, that day will be my Independence day, the day I’ll feel free from my sense of guilt.
