Today our nation has entered 66th year of independence. On the stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru made his famous “Tryst with Destiny” speech in which he announced the freedom of the country from alien rule. Ever since, we are celebrating the day with renewed fervour. Let me remind our youngsters that when for the first time masses of people in our country exercised franchise, village folks, men and women, showed reverence to the ballot boxes with folded hands as if they were standing before a deity in the temple. That was the culture which had emanated from the ethics of independence struggle pioneered by the Father of the Nation. He had a team of dedicated and patriotic colleagues to carry forward the freedom struggle without rancour and without self-aggrandizement. They were all men of steel, singularly devoted to the cause for which they had galvanized millions of people into action. We cannot forget their role and we cannot forget the path they showed us.
Sixty-six years of our march along the path of freedom has been a remarkable journey. We chose democracy, secularism and egalitarianism as the political arrangement for our nation. Our freedom fighters and constitution framers were wise men with great foresight. India is a mosaic of humanity, a multi-religious, multi-lingual and multi-cultural nation, unique in history and unique in its composition. Such a heterogeneous population mostly steeped in tradition and taboos at that time could not be governed justly by any system other than democracy and secularism. The same holds true for this society today sixty-six years later.
But the path our leaders chose was not easy to go along. There were obstacles created by miscreants within the country as well as outside the country. There were elements that would not like India to remain united as one nation; that would not like India to become a powerful country. They created many hurdles for us; they misled some of our unsuspecting people who live close on the border; they tried at subversion. Four wars and an on-going proxy war were imposed on us. The nation motivated by patriotism faced these challenges and emerged victorious from them.
Independence liberated us from foreign yoke but it also placed a heavy burden on our shoulders. We joined the comity of free nations of the world, and we had to keep pace with the world that was steadily stepping into the age of unsurpassed scientific and technological advancement. We could not lag behind. But our speed of development had to be slow and steady because we could not jump away from our tradition-ridden civilization in one go and take to modern life abandoning our heritage. Even today when India is a nuclear power and is planning to land on other planets, the bullock driven cart and the posh Maruti Suzuki have still to ply along our highways for many more years. The wisdom of our political leadership has made transition from traditionalism to modernity smooth and hassle free.
Today we are counted among fast developing countries of the world with immense potential for becoming a leading industrialized country in the world. With our vast natural and our incredible human resources, we are on the threshold of greatness not only in terms of military power but essentially in terms of utilization of enormous human potential. Nearly one half of India’s 1.10 billion populations comprise the youth below the age slab of 35. This tremendous manpower has the potential of changing the destiny of the country and the world. India is in making and everything she is making is big literally.
For more than two decades in the past, we have been forced to fight a proxy war. This is against our wishes and against the fundamental philosophy of the Indian nation. But we are not living in a Utopia and we cannot just wish away the enemy. Yet in fighting terrorism and religious extremism aiming at destabilizing the country, its polity and economy, India has shown exemplary patience and statesmanship which the world now would like to emulate. In dealing with insurgency, the Indian Government never lost sight of the fact that those lured to insurgency are our own citizens and our youth and we need to win them over by persuasion and not coercion. That is what great statesmanship demands from a matured nation like ours. We are confident that the nation will overcome this menace and the youth led astray by false propaganda will return to the fold. This process has already begun in the case of Punjab, J&K, and the eastern states. That is precisely because of our adherence to democratic dispensation.
Of course some aberrations have appeared in our polity. Unfortunately, some of us have lost the sense of patriotism and have succumbed to the greed and avarice of material wealth. Corruption has seethed into our society and in an act of anti-nationalism a large amount of our national wealth has been stashed in foreign banks. This is not acceptable to the nation. There is public resentment against it; even there is a movement among the civil society against it. Nevertheless, political parties, NGOs, civil society and the Government all agree that the issue has to be tackled through the instrumentality of the law of the land. Nothing can be done arbitrarily. We have the mechanism to deal with such problems, and at the same time, if we are deficient in legal and constitutional terms to handle such issues including those of corruption effectively, we can bring in new legislation. The process is already in motion.
There are many complaints about the conduct of our elected representatives. These complaints are of various hues, from turpitude and immorality to dereliction of duty. It may be so but to generalize it will be a mistake. Indian democracy, too, is going through evolution. We need to bear with it because democracy as a form of political arrangement is complex, taxing and time consuming. But ultimately the structure that will come up will be the one that suits us. Let us remember that India is making unique and unprecedented experiment in harmonizing conservative and retrograde symptoms of a traditional society with a progressive and forward looking civilization of contemporary world. We salute our countrymen on this great day and in particular we salute our soldiers who guard our borders day and night so that we carry forward our effort of development.
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