India Empowered

Indian Express is currently running a campaign called ‘India explained i.e India empowered’ where they get well known and established entities in their respective field to put in words their idea of what an empowered India means to them. I couldn’t help writing down what India empowered means to me.

To me an empowered India means a country that ceases to live in the shadow of its past or hold on to its past glory. Able to take stock of its present condition and come to terms with the truth it discovers and make efforts to bring the grandeur back to this ancient land of spiritualism and philosophy. The question that arises is who will do that, who has the time, everybody is busy with their individual lives, some will say it is the Governments responsibility what can I do, I am just an individual and I have my own responsibilities. It’s all about a mindset and the need of the time is for individuals to think and act and not follow crowd mentality. Just think for a moment doesn’t a backward India only make you backward and in the process stop you from growing as an individual.

This paradox of billion peoples that is India - our beliefs and our actions are always in contradiction. The philosophy that a soul is immortal, death is not the end, and each life is just a phase that we go through is the essence on which the Indian culture and civilisation is based. Yet we have a history of being a discriminating race, we are guilty of discriminating against other on the basis of caste, gender, region, and languages. The most evil practise being the caste distinction, which no matter how much we deny is still prevalent and practised by even the educated populace. Outside India we are the Indian community or Indian Diaspora, but in India we are never Indian but only a Marathi or a Punjabi or Bengali or Tamilian or a Hindu, or a Muslim, or a christian anything but an Indian. Our identity is always limited to the language we speak or the region we originate from or the religion we follow. The day we divest ourselves from such shackles and accept our identity as just an Indian, that is the day when India will be truly empowered.

The world is now waking up to the idea of a divine feminine power, whereas in India the feminine power was always prayed to in the form of Shakti. But on the other hand the women where and in some parts still are treated as inferior. This has to change and this change can be brought about only by a change in attitude in women. Fighting for equality is not the cue, fighting for the right to independence, the right to education, the right to decide, the right to respect is needed. This can be achieved only on an individual level and not by reserving seats for women in the parliament or state buses. Women of India should realize that in the bargain to achieve these goals they should not lose touch with the essence that makes a woman, or else they will be only emulating the behaviour they have been fighting all along.

It’s time for a change in attitude with regards to education. It’s not just about a means to earning a livelihood and raising your standard of living. The conventional light in which education is seen has to be changed. Education is about learning, exploring, discovering and inventing all of which is curbed by the current approach to teaching and learning. Everybody agrees that education is the only way to lift the people out of poverty and ambiguity. Here too it is up to an individual to make a difference, toddlers are sent to expensive play schools so that they learn at a very early age to be part of the rat race and they are not left behind. If only each one of us who can afford such expensive education for our own kids would take responsibility of one poor child’s education it will make all the difference.

The need is to accept what we are with dignity and work towards achieving the pride this nation deserves and not bow out to inverted nationalism that is sold out to us in the name of patriotism.

These lines from the song in the movie Pyasaa though 5 decades old still stands true.
“zaraa is mulk ke rahabaron ko bulaao
ye kuuche ye galiyaan ye manzar dikhaao
jinhen naaz hai hind par unako laao
jinhe naaz hai hind par vo kahaan hain
kahaan hain, kahaan hain, kahaan hain”

There is a hope in my heart that someday we will sing Jinhe naaz hai hind par woh yahaan hai, yahaan hai, yahaaon hai, yahaaon hai.