Today On this auspicious occasion of Republic day I wanted to write something good, something heartening about how we have completed 61 years of republic and our country is progressing. Sixty is the general age of retirement in this country and today our republic is one year older than that. Interestingly it seems that republic has already completed one life time, president of Indonesia was the chief-guest in first ever republic day parade in 1950 and this time again president of Indonesia is chief-guest. It seems country has actually gotten old with age rather than flourish. People are taking advantage of liberal laws, corruption is rampant, present day government is spending more time in defending the corruption rather than nabbing it, it has become fiefdom of various family based parties at regional levels and one at center (Congress), minority appeasement has become fashion of the day and being against the majority culture has become secularism, all the principles with which our founding fathers laid the foundation of this republic are more the instruments of misuse rather than instruments off good governance; and in all this we the country of great tolerant people are tolerating more and more, it seems there is no end to our tolerance, we would rather die than hurt somebody. Media that was supposed to be one of the strongest pillar of democracy has become keep of some powerful people, journalists are looking towards powerful people and politicians rather than looking towards the glories of their profession. These people are more concerned to the murder story of the daughter of a doctor (in which father itself is suspect) rather than larger issues like poverty, hunger, development and national pride. Reputed authors like Arundhati Roy are busy in attention seeking by giving anti national statements and then justifying it in the name of humanitarianism as if they only know what is free humanitarianism and free will. Hence time for introspection has come.
One thing that hurt me the most in last two three days was the unfortunate happening in state of J&K. Some people belonging to nationalist party (BJP) wanted to unfurl the national flag at Lal Chowk in Srinagar on Rebublic day and to my utter surprise ruling party and their allies denied it and said that is is political gimmick. Even if for the sake of argument we accept that it is political gimmick, it still have a lot of symbolic significance. Lal Chowk is the place which is the center of anti national protests almost every friday now and separatists believe that its their ground literally. In this scenario this flag hoisting has got a lot of significance if we want to demonstrate solidarity with the common man of state and give them confidence in the times of trial and hardships.It is very unfortunate that our political parties have started to politicize even this issue of symbolic significance for whole nation into a political issue. They crossed all the limits of decency by declaring that they will not allow it to happen. They went to the extent of arresting the people who wanted to do service to their nation. This episode remind me off two incidents in recent history. One is Dandi march taken by Mohandas Gandhi (famous as Mahatma Gandhi) and second is the conquest of Czechoslovakia by Adolf Hitler. Let me talk one by one about both the things.
Mohandas Gandhi started Dandi March to protest against the policy of Britishers (tax on salt), and it was also a symbolic march as he could not have produced sufficient salt to supply to whole nation. Such things have symbolic significance in the annals of human history. Similarly when we are facing the problem of Pak sponsored terrorism in valley and Lal Chowk is the epicenter of that, hoisting of national flag is the symbol of solidarity that country have with the people living in the state. By preventing the people from taling pride in the republic day celebration government of the day is behaving much like colonial government. It seems that even after more than 200 years of British rule and other foreign dominations (Arabs and Turks) prior to that country has not learnt the lesson, instead they have lost all the self respect that they had.
Second event that is conquest of Czechoslovakia by Hitler came to mind as I was thinking of present situation of India and happen to watch WW-II documentary on discovery. in 1938 Czechoslovakia was a powerful country with well equipped army and Europe's largest arms production industry and fortified border. Hitler got the foothold in Sudetenland in the name of autonomy of German population of the area and with this border fortifications of country came in the hands of Hitler. Like many parties in our country friends of Czechoslovakia followed the policy of appeasement for political gains making Czechoslovakia sacrificial animal. Once the defensive advantage was lost by Czechoslovakia Hitler captured the whole country in less than 8 weeks. Here again politicians (particularly from Slovak part of country) to gain power sold their country to Hitler. It is not much dissimilar than what is happening in our country where family based political parties sacrifice national interest to gain power and minority appeasement be it based on caste or religion is their method of choice. If these people keep on raping this country like this then day of doom is very near ffor this republic. It has already crossed all limits.
I simply wish that people of this country stand up against the looters who are still following the policy of divide and rule, which was followed by Britishers earlier and now followed by Congress and other family based parties.
