P. A. Chacko
The day reminding us of our independence from the foreign occupier! The day we became a free nation after ousting the white sahibs!
The day we gratefully remember the sweat and blood of our fathers and forefathers, men and women, who fought shoulder to shoulder, and won us free air, free space, free movement and all!
Today, after almost eight decades, we are still groping in the dark for our genuine freedom. Not the type of freedom the creams and super-creams like the Ambanis and Adanis of our society enjoy!
Not the freedom of those who have stacked their unearned black money in foreign banks, in offshore companies, or in the gambling dens of manipulated stock markets. They include film stars, politicians, legislators, bureaucrats, business men and women, or contractors whose monumental erections like the new Parliament House leak or whose bridges collapse a dime a dozen!
Those groping in the dark are the slum dwellers, living nestled in hovels, beside Ambani’s 27 storey luxury Antilia apartment.
Those who struggle in the dark are the Adivasis and the Dalits who still look for breathing space in this so-called Independent India. People who suffocate under those who pamper a Brahmanical mindset and control the levers of all the four pillars of our democratic setup.
Those who grope in the dark are those subdued and silenced with subsidized ration and such other lollipops by the brown sahibs who capture political power and play with the economy and the resources of the nation and pilfer them for their advantage.
Where is our freedom? It is indeed confined to the sacred book our Constitution. Freedom of life, freedom to speak and organize, freedom to use our resources for our own good towards an egalitarian society, freedom from caste-class terror, freedom to worship, freedom to marry, freedom to conduct minority institutions, freedom to realize and enjoy our human and fundamental rights.
But our brown sahibs are sitting on our freedoms and rights. They make us kings and kingmakers at election time. Thereafter, they are the kings and treat us as their vassals.
Where is freedom, my Bharat Mata?
We intone ‘Vande Mataram’ even with spear in our hands. Just two words with swords and spears in our hands. But the lynching mobs, the terrorist outfits don’t go beyond these two words, because they are ignorant of the rest of Vande Mataram.
Freedom, my beloved country, is still to arrive for you, for the vast numbers of your children.
Into that heaven of genuine freedom, my Mother, let my country awake!
