English
“The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?” said independent India’s first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru while addressing citizens of India with his ‘Tryst with Destiny’.
What Nehru asked then, those questions still seek their answers. What he said then, are still relevant to every citizen of India. The 70-year-old achievement we have been celebrating every year, still remains an opportunity. 69 years have completed since the first time Indian citizens called themselves independent, but how many of us can really identify ourselves as independent.
We surely have a come a long way from an oppressed nation to a potential superpower country in the world out there, but where we are on inside. Have we moved away from our biases, our prejudice, our mentality then and our mentality now.
This is not about writing a long piece on what all is wrong, because there are plenty. This is a reminder, that independence then came to us at a cost and it will come to all everytime at a cost only. Because honestly, lunch never comes for free.
The cost we paid then was ‘change’ and the cost we will keep paying is ‘change’ until we are truly ready to have a tryst with destiny. We can’t predict what destiny holds, because there is no need to. Whatever we do as a nation today and wherever we move as a nation today will decide the destiny. (ALSO READ: This short film is here to remind us on 70th Independence Day, that freedom came to all of us at a price)
Freedom and Power, came with a responsibility, which many of us understood and many let it be. A plenty wrong with a nation cannot be corrected in a whip of a magic wand. But it can also not be corrected by thinking that someone else will. It was not only those leaders and freedom fighters who brought home independence in 1947, who dreamt of a nation where everyone will live in peace, everyone had the same dream then. From where I see, everyone still dreams the same. Each one of us are on same page, just different novels.
We still want freedom, just oppressors are different. Women want to roam around freely, Men want to stop being the “man” society want them too. Streets, sea, air are looking for freedom from pollution, where poverty is looking for freedom from population. Education looks for freedom from illiteracy, where crops are looking for freedom from droughts. God needs freedom from religion and class needs freedom from divide.
A lot is still left and we have only walked a handful. Like said in the begining ”Tryst with Destiny” still holds relevance.
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