Sometimes I wish my life had a erase/rewind button

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Indian War of Independence - Unfinished Business

My maternal grandfather, a M.Sc in chemistry in times when someone who passed 10th class in India was considered highly educated, did not join the industry as some hotshot. While manufacturing ink and chalk to sustain family, fought the British masters for Indian independence, went to jail, hid leaders at his places during times of British crackdown and then when Independence was achieved, gave up all, not using his friends in freedom struggle now big shot in Delhi politics, back to a simple family life. The struggle he maintained was for freedom, of mind, body and soul and not for being rulers of self. So once achieved he shunned all trappings of politics, not even to the extent of registering as freedom fighter which on those state controlled times would have made government jobs for his successors easy.
Turns out he was wrong. There was a time when clubs had signs - "Dogs and Indians not allowed in". The sign are back up these days. "Dogs and North Indians not allowed" or "Dogs and (Kashmiri) Muslims not allowed" or Dogs and Northeast Indians not allowed" Or "Dogs and Kannadigas not allowed" or Dogs" and "Tamilians not allowed" depending on which part of India you are in. We have changed one set of "rulers" for another.
Did Tilak fight for Independence of Pune only? Did Gandhi gave up his lawyer practice, endure hardships for independence of Porbandar only? When Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev put the noose on their neck singing "Desire of sacrificing our lives is in our hearts, /Let us see how strong are the biceps of the murderer." Did they die just for Punjab? I guess not. We spent 1500 years in slavery because we never stood up as a nation against foes. It was either caste or region or a village which was the max we were willing to look after and paid the price.
Today when Raj Thakre and his ilk preach such narrow bigotry, they are playing the same game that rulers in India played earlier inviting foreign invaders to come in and attack the neighboring kingdom so that they can annex it once the invaders go back home. Pity they never went back home. And its not just this Thakre who is committing what for me is treason. There are many.
That Kashmiri student in train who told me that how can he think fondly of India when his classmates in the engineering college call him a Pakistani just because he is a Muslim and from Kashmir which has a separatist movement? Or Tamilians beaten in Karnataka and Kannadigas beaten in TamilNadu when Kaveri issue flares? Or the Biharis killed in Assam and the Assemese woman dragged from a train and raped in Bihar in retaliation? How can we call ourselves a nation when such brazen acts of hate crimes take place and nothing happens?
Why are leaders calling for hate crimes against fellow Indians from a different group not tried for sedition and treason with its full impact?
We need another war of independence. This time from bigotry and hate. We shed blood to get rid of British. We need to shed more blood to get rid of our prejudices

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even before anyone was arrested, whole nation knew what a formal arrest it is going to be. MAH Govt took so many days to decide, would it be the case if a petty criminal was involved. We are tolerating mobocracy. Atleast British were fair. We are tolerating a corrupt, self serving & manipulative regime. As for shedding the divides, i guess a few centuries ..
and see what it all ended in - The only casualty was a Maharashtrian.
-Addy

Sejal Kikani said...

in 1992 riots, AHD and its people had seent horrible violence..as good as post godhara..when i was travelling from ahd to my native in train..train was stopped in muslim area (ahd is completely polarised, areas are identified like this only..so dont get surprised..you will not find single hindu household in muslim area and vice e versa)..some body had burnt a man alive and thew him on tracks..police came and picked him up wiht hlep of few sticks as the body was burning ..i have never seen such thing in my life..i still remember the color of his clothes..he had his one leg burnt complete and his head burnt partially.everyone saw this sight but believe me no one wanted to griev for death of a person ..everyone was busy discussing weather that man was hindu or muslim..and 15 years down the line, state of the city has not improved at all, infact its going down the drain as far as this issue is concerned..really hope that nothing of this sort happen in other part of the country..

जयंत - समर शेष said...

Hmm... yes we are not Bhaartiy anymore... we are either Marathi, or Asami, or Kannada, or Tamil, or Punjaabi or whatever, but NOT Bhartiy.


Such a shame.

Gandhi Ji, Tilak, Bhagat, Azaad, Bose, Patel and countless others did not fight for Gujrat, Maharastr, Madhyapradesh, Bengal, Gujrat etc.... They fought for Bharat.

Maybe one day we will see another Kranti.

Jay Hind...

~Jayant