India is My Country

The other day, I was talking to some friends about the movie, Rang de Basanti, and as I was talking about it, I realized that it was path-breaking movie in terms of the subject matter, and the way in which the subject matter was dealt with. I remembered this one dialogue from the movie, which had stayed with me, much after the movie had ended: "Koi bhi desh perfect nahin hota... Use perfect banana padta hai", meaning, no country is perfect, it has to be made perfect. The dialogue echoes of the famous words of John F. Kennedy: "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." It set me thinking...

Do you remember The Indian Pledge, the one which we used to recite in school, too young to understand its significance? Let me jog your memory.

"India is my country, and all Indians are my brothers and sisters.
I love my country, and I am proud of its rich and varied heritage.
I shall always strive to be worthy of it.
I shall give my parents, teachers and all elders, respect,
And treat everyone with courtesy.
To my country and my people, I pledge my devotion.
In their well being and prosperity alone, lies my happiness."

I didn't even remember the pledge completely. As bad as it may sound, I had to Google it! I didn't even remember the last time I had thought about it! But, as I read it today, my heart is filled with a strange sense of heaviness. Have we stood by our oath or have we buried it along with a host of other things we prefer to forget? Has it become just another inconvenient truth for us? What happened to us? We have forgotten how much our freedom fighters have struggled to give us our freedom, which we not only take for granted, but abuse, today. When did we become what we have become - selfish, self-centered, self-serving, uncaring... How did we get here? When our forefathers handed our country over to us, they must have had such hopes and dreams for our country, for us. They had given us the most precious gift of all - our freedom. Freedom to spread our wings, to grow, to prosper... And what did we do? We curtailed our own freedom, we set boundaries, we divided ourselves into regions, we segregated ourselves with our castes, creeds, and religions. "With freedom comes great responsibility" said Jawaharlal Nehru in his historical Independence speech. Here are some excerpts from that speech.

"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."

"We have to labor, and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart. Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments."

"To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill-will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell."

"The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavor? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman."

Tears come to my eyes. How could we do what we have done to our country? We have exploited it, abused it, and stripped it of all its dignity. The country that we love so much is crying out to us for justice. It is crying out to us to care. It is crying out to be cherished and nurtured. "As you sow, so shall you reap" says the Bible. And that is exactly what has happened to us. We have to undo the damage. We have to wake up and fight like we have never done before, to make our country into what it deserves to be. We owe it to our country... we owe it to our freedom fighters, who fought with their lives to give it to us. We have to stop cursing. We have to stop blaming. We have to stop deceiving ourselves. We have to accept the truth of who we are, and what we have done. And we have to change, ourselves and our nation, into what it deserves to be, and what it can be. Only we can do it. Only WE.