At the stroke of 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..."
-Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (1st Prime Minister of India)
A chill runs down my spine every time i read this speech...the first time i read the oration in full was in class 12 when i was assigned the task of making this speech at the Independence Day celebration in my school... when i made the speech that day infront of the entire school and others guests...i understood the speech in the whole...i realised the sentiments behind it....the blood shed, the love, the patriotism....the feeling of belonging...i realised what it meant to be free...i realised our Tryst with Density...
imagine the night of 14th August 1947...the anticipation...the excitement...
my late grandma was just 10 then...even after so many years she could always clearly recall the very first independent day that India lived in after 100 years of struggle... that night... "at the stoke of midnight hour"...fireworks commemorated the birth of free India...
63 years...not a short time....we've already crossed the half century mark...but have we...ever tried to realise our independence? have we really been able to be free?? r we not still bounded by imperialistic thoughts...?? we may be a secular democratic socialist republic...but are we not still dependent on the System?? ask yourself this question..."Am i free?"
thoughts are still bounded...so are visions...aspirations are confined to the Colonies of Dream...our world is still bounded by "narrow domestic walls" of communalism!! regionalistic ideas...and manipulative political schemes for the achievement of personal glorification...has still not brought us the peace and security that should come with independent existance...
why do people from developed countries call us third-world?? why are we still "developing" and not "developed"?? why do we Indians still criticise India...why are we still dissatisfied with ourselves and our country?? why do we look down upon our fellow Indians? why are we harassed in the name of religion? why do we fight over issues in the name of God and land, and make them issues of national importance? why do we not give breathing space to all cultures? why cant we be independent? where is our freedom?
That night, Nehru had said," The future beckons us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour?...... We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of india what destiny intended them to be..."
The pledge has not yet been redeemed in full...the struggle for true independence still continues...within us...from us...and by us...
Jai Hind.
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