Independence Day Rant

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

15 August 1947 . At the stroke of midnight India became free . And at the stroke of midnight 15 August 2014 , the internet was flooded with sarcastic , pessimistic and depressing memes , status updates which ridculed and mocked our Independence . From Poverty to Illiteracy , from misgovernance to corruption everything was brought up . In fact it came to the point that those celebarting Independence day were mocked as disillusioned fools . Coming from a bunch of jumped up urban pseudo-intellectual snobs who consider themselves the guiding lights of our society .

Its frightening to see the amount of pessimism that weighs down India today . Its frightening to see that everyone seems to have realized today , on India’s independence day that everyone else is in fact a hypocrite for celebrating something which we seem to have taken for granted . Yes , we are not perfect as a nation . Yes we have our flaws . But freedom we must realize is not a byword for security or justice . Economic or Social . Gandhi had once said

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” .

As much as i disagree with him on pretty much everything else , he had hit the nail on this one . We have fumbled and fallen . We have risen and soared . Because we are free . Its time we acknowledged why that matters and why Freedom in itself is an abstraction, a concept that matters only when we contribute to it . Utilise it . Enrich it . Fight for it .

In the words of Gilles Deleuze

“A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.”

Don’t throw the brick out of the window . Use it to build a nation like no other .

And never ever trade in your freedom for safety .Never barter it away for Security . This is for those millions who naively give up their dreams to go into fields like engineering for the sake of economic safety . The moment you do that you have squandered away the only abstraction worth fighting for . Remember the words of Benjamin Franklin —

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Remember what our country stands for . Remember what our Freedom Fighters stood for .Celebrate your Independence . Acknowledge what you have . And for the rest , the million problems we face ? Don’t Forget what Philiph Ranodolph had said

“Freedom is never given; it is won”

Win your Freedom , clinch it with pride and help others in their crusade for the same .
Think we live in a terribly unequal world ? Think the time is ripe for Change ? Then join hands in the everyday rebellions that makes may of us a temporal outlaw. After all aren’t we from the land of a million mutinies ?

Jai Hind