What do you know about Gandhi?

How do I react (on the eve of the Independence Day)
when a girl who is just my sister's age, comes and tells me,
Nathuram Godse was a great man, and when I asked why,
she says, because he killed Gandhi. I asked her what does
she know about Gandhi, she just said that whatever she
read in school books never made her love Gandhi
(in other words, it made her hate him). I was speechless,
I just thought for some time and asked,
did you read any of Gandhi's books? She said,
I must be aware by now, that she hardly reads.
Then I asked, how can you make an opinion
about a person, whom you don't even know and
she just said, "I don't like him." I really didn't have
any words to say, I just thought to myself,
tomorrow, we are going to celebrate 60 years of
independence and today, here is a girl, who can't
even appreciate what Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
did for India. I don't know it is the mistake of the school,
the friends, the family or somethings else,
which made her hate Gandhi without knowing
facts about him.

This episode only made me reiterate one thing
about todays youth, that they all live in a farce reality.
I wanted to wish her "Happy Independence Day" but
I couldn't, thinking she might feel that it is farce too.

We Are Free; Are We?

Tonight we will complete 60 years of a transition that started in 1947. We must have a reason to celebrate 60 years of our freedom. Freedom is important it gives us opportunity to do the things what one wants to do in life. What matters is what we want to do. In addition to the celebration of freedom, I would like to add that It is just a phase of transition- from one mode of slavery to the other.

We are more American today than Indian, even the language we are using to congratulate each other is a sign of indirect slavery. We are enslaved to the commoditization of American goods, value systems.

We may live in an illusion that Indian civilization is developing, it’s not. ‘swant sukhay’ is everyone’s prerogative. When I see the crown of BPO employees coming out of companies at odd hours, I wonder what kind of skilled labors we are. We are slaves coming out of factories set up by Americas.

I do not feel proud to be a slave. I thank some of the great leaders who brought the dawn of freedom onto us and gave us the freedom to send and share this message. But I will not celebrate; I will sit in a dark room and morn the death of a civilization which is inevitable, sooner or later.

But, as a tradition: happy Independence Day!

~swapnil