India celebrates 75 years of Independence this year which is a remarkable journey altogether. On account of it, a very Happy Independence Day to all the Indians in India and across the world who would stumble by this post. But the question to ask is when we look down deep and ask ourselves are we free, what is the answer you get? Do you feel liberated in all senses about your existence or do you feel there are days when society judges you so hard that it is hard for you to even breathe?
After years of coming together and celebrating independence, listening to speeches on the main day where all the achievements are read out loud for all Indians to hear across the world, there are still so many issues to be addressed which are actually routed deep down and are not talked about frequently.
Times change and so does the generation. Back in the 1940s, people mostly cared about being free and attaining independence anyhow. They sacrificed all they had, even got hung to show this day where we most importantly have freedom of speech which was just an imagination 70-80 years from now. But now in 2022 we are celebrating independence and yet entangled in issues related to not talking enough about mental health, not ‘really’ accepting all the genders and how they want to get identified, being ignorant towards homosexual relationships, and patriarchy still playing its cards in the so many different parts of the country and the fact that these issues are boiling in the urban areas mostly is concerning. A decent technical education does not promise your thoughts to be liberated as well.
With the changing and challenging times ahead, our set of problems is also going to change time and again. To quote a recent example is how the world got hit by the biggest waves of Covid in 2020 and 2021. But we as a nation came together, forgot our differences and were citizens of this country and humans at large. We forgot our religions, our backgrounds, and our differences but did our best to put the best foot forward and help humanity in winning their battles of life. Be it in arranging cylinders, hospital beds or just getting connected to a virtual doctor. We understood we need each other in the hardest of times and the differences we think we have is just a matter of our thinking, believe me, we can all get over it.
Independence is not a mere word, our ancestors sacrificed all they had to rise to this day. And they would only expect all the differences not to come in between the relations that we build with each other to grow. A lot of such independence days would come and go and if we don’t ignite the spark within us in accepting the people as they are, we would be losing the essence of this in the years to come. So let’s pledge to make this day worthwhile and the world actually ‘independent’ in the way our ancestors dreamt it to be.
Ambalika
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