A Promise Betrayed

THE 70TH INDEPENDENCE DAY SHOULD REMIND US OF OUR DEPARTURE AS A FREE NATION FROM OUR OWN CIVILISATIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS, IDEALS AND THE FALTERING ON OUR PATH.

- Bharat Gupt

IN INDIA, IT is often taken for granted that political independence from British rule also ushered in an era of cultural and social freedom. It is further imagined that in spite of its poverty, India is admired by the richer nations of the West as a culturally evolved nation. This self-congratulation, lingering from the euphoric days of the freedom struggle, so beautifully recorded in the literatures of more than two dozen languages, now sounds like thunder on distant mountains, but sheds not a glimmer of hope in our homes darkened by casteiest politics, unresponsive bureaucracy, linguistic regionalism, and a huge class of politicians who have garnered entitlements for themselves little known to monarchs of yore.

Looking back on the seven decades, I see a cultural decline that set in barely two decades after Freedom. I write to counter the smug belief, still fostered in schools and political speeches, about the superiority of our culture, once voiced in Muhammad Iqbal’s song, “Saare jahaan se acchaa hindostaan hamaaraa.” Very insidiously, this rhyme nurses the conviction that while many other ancient civilisations were wiped out in time, India alone is indestructible (Yunaan-o-Misr-o-Romaa sab mit gaye jahaan se/Ab tak magar hai baaqi naamo-nishaan hamaara!/Kuchh baat hai ki hastii mitati nahiin hamaarii/Sadiyon rahaa hai dushman daur-i-zamaan hamaaraa). It boasts that while the Greek and Roman civilisations, the so-called predecessors of the West, lost to the ravages of time, India alone is immortal.

Such headiness was excusable during the struggle for Freedom, but not after more than half a century of self-misrule.