Every year we celebrate independence day with a lot of hype and ceremony, we stand up for the national anthem nd sing in unison jana gna mana adhinayaka jaya he…We often hear or see the words during any govt iniated campaign mera bharat mahan (My India is great) Whenever I hear or see these words I wonder what goes on in the mind of every other Indian when we utter such patriotic quotes and boastfully declare our pride in our country.
I try to think what is the basis of such vain proclamations. Are these an attempt to cover up our many shameful events and protect our image in front of the whole world? Turn a blind eye to the many problems affecting our dear country and elude ourselves with an idea of perfection or is this an attempt to evade ours and our govt. responsibility in addressing matters which have gone hopelessly wrong?
Many such questions disturb me when I hear our ministers making pathetic attempts to wriggle out of uncomfortable situations when questioned about our miserable failures by stating absolutely baseless excuses. I feel shocked when I see them speaking to the media and saying how progressive our country is and always making an attempt to project it as better than the west by pointing fingers constantly at their drawbacks while thousands of problems in our country remain unattended whether it be that of poverty, increasing crime rate, rising terrorist activities, escalating women harassment, and countless others.
While they try to convince the public that everything’s alright the people know very well that things are really not the way they appear because we unfortunately have the television and newspapers to slam the sad happenings on our face everyday. It will take a very hard-hearted and indifferent person to sit still without making a comment or 2 when shocking stories like baby girls dumped on the road or rapists getting bail after bribing the police etc.appear.
I’ld love to believe half of them to be false. But sadly our duties end there itself, confined to throwing a few bitter diatribes at the criminal and expressing few sympathetic words for the victim. Then we fold our newspapers or switch of the television and go about our day to day work and throughout the day without sparing a single thought about it.
This is an everyday matter and it has been going on like this for decades.I look around and think what should I be proud of-The alarming growth of population of our country which will soon reach an exploding point our faulty administrative system? our law and order system with such big loopholes that even big criminals also can easily slip out through it?or the fact that even in 21st century women here are considered nothing more than dispensable products?(the rampant dowry deaths, female foeticide, female infanticide, numerous rape cases, girl child trafficking being burning proof of this).
If today any foreigner criticizes India in front of an Indian he will for sure flare up and instantly start boasting of things like- we have the greatest number of newspapers and languages in the world, a huge conglomeration of different cultures and races and religion surviving on the same land peacefully, our heritage,a great sense of love and hospitality among people (though we only know how much truth are there in these words) or he will make an attempt to draw his attention to our glorious history filled with everyone starting from great religious leaders to brave freedom fighters and try to inspire a sense of awe in him. But why do we keep clutching at our history, why is everything we had to be proud of a past?why don’t we see any leaders in the present society?is the fire of patriotism that used to burn within us once,has burnt out?we have become reduced to selfish, loose-moral, cowards, why this deterioration?
I wonder how long will we be hiding our true picture in front of the whole world?We are still viewed in many countries as manner less ignorant barbaric people.When we hear this we grind our teeth in anger but isn’t burning a girl alive suspecting her to be a witch not a proof of ignorance and barbarism?SO I ASK U GUYS OUT THERE ARE YOU REALLY PROUD OF BEING INDIANS???
