“If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India”

Quoting such, French author and historian Romain Rolland uplifts India as the cultural Capitol of the human civilisation. For more than a centenary after the fall of the Mughal Empire, this sumptuous Capitol, with all its farragoed inhabitants, went under domination by the British rule, a rapacious domination by a salacious empire that deprived India of its very existence.

Today, on the 74th occasion of the Indian Independence, such memoirs of the prolonged British bondage forge blood to gush down our spine.

Independence is a world in itself, big enough to be stuffed into a single page of a centenarian Encyclopaedia. So what exactly is Independence?

Is it just the separation of a united subcontinent into a grotesque imperialistic bastion, as per the letters inscribed on an epistle, something that caused the greatest translocation in the history of the world, relics of which are seen till date, or is it also the freedom of speech, expression, thoughts and desires of the 1.3 billion people residing within the territorial boundaries? The answer remains debated!

Retreating back to the leitmotif of the Indian freedom, Gandhi quotes, “Independence means voluntary restraints and discipline, voluntary acceptance of the rule of law.”

History has witnessed that the nation unfurled its Tiranga on the 15th of August, 1947, at the Lal Qila, the disbanded imperial turret of the waned Mughals. But, does this incidence embody a jovial Independence that requires a celebration? How can the annals of Hindustan be unaware of the bloodshed that led to this ebullience?

Praises are definitely to be hauled at the men who fought till the moment they were slain on the deathbed, only for the sake of the motherland! But, did they ever dream of a ‘divided’ India?

Did they know how their map would be metamorphosed after what they contemplated would be an ‘independence’? Did Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev, our own Kshudiram Bose, Matangini Hazra and all those brave men and women who defaced the imperial prowess ever realise that what they were fighting for, would never ever really exist?!

Oral Historian and Author, Anam Zakaria, in her article for the Scroll, rightly states, “By rewriting history, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh are threatening the very identity of their people.” 

She quotes an incident once faced, at a school in Pakistan, where teachers had been found putting ludicrous questions before the students at a cross cultural assembly, questions that included, ““Pakistan ka matlab kya?”, to which the enthusiastic young people responded the answer they’d been bestowed with, “La Ilaha Illallah!” 

Ever since Independence, the nemeses have been better regarded as ‘Muslim Pakistan’ and ‘Hindu India’, rather than an only ‘Pakistan’ and ‘India’. To be honest, Pakistan is originally entitled, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. They segregated themselves from the Indian landmass, not because the Muslims felt insecure in the mainland but because of some petty demands put forward by the Muslim League, that would enable them to take the reins of an independent nation! 

But what about the Republic of India? 

It is, as its constitution proclaims, a secular nation! Then where does this ‘Hindu’ come from? 

Before delving into my opinion on where it actually came from, let’s talk about media. Revenues matter to them and so does visitors on a daily basis. And what brings a confab of both? Stories!

How can you afford to write about an ‘Islamic’ Pakistan warring against a ‘secular’ India? 

How does the distortion even matter? We’ve had partition, communal riots, mass slaughter, forced conversions, public infidel floggings and so on, hadn’t we?

I can strongly say today that it is due to certain erroneous interpretations by misleading scholars and media houses that Anam finds India treading in the steps, its neighbours had, decades ago!

India has always had a multicultural past. Although there are certain prevalent notions that refer to India trying to sempiternally revive itself into a Hindu nation, they can be adjudged to be entirely baseless, at least in a country that had faced the Mughal domination and the Islamic influence in its art and architecture for almost some four hundred years! Perhaps, it could be ascertained that there isn’t, in the world, a country that has been ruled by the Hindus, the Islamic and the Christians in succession! What is a bigger testament to India being multicultural?

Conclusively, now, that is, seventy four years since the Indian independence (one that brought along with itself a partitioned bloodshed, questions of whether the country could rest on its own people firmly and aggressions from its divided neighbours ), as India stands tall in international affairs, it is right to recall India’s first prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who, in his popular midnight address called “Tryst with Destiny”, rightly questions, “Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future? Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom, we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.”