Young and free! Really?

This year the celebration of Independence Day doesn’t feel politically correct, literally and figuratively.
Looking at the year that passed by and the suffering that nation went through, I wonder if we’re really free.
In a secular nation, how can we still believe in communalism as a means to either choosing our leaders or getting that coveted seat in a competitive exam.

Examples of discrimination are common in our neighbourhoods or offices. Why doesn’t every one get equal opportunities? Why do we, the people of the nation, divide ourselves as Hindu-Muslim or OBC-General? Tagore in his one of the poems wished for a nation ‘Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.’ Aren’t we breaking it? What happened to the cultural legacy that we carry?

In Indian society we worship Shakti, a form of woman. Go to a temple, we’ll find many people worshiping the idols asking for their wishes. Now, look at the way women are  being treated in our country, open any newspaper and see the examples yourself. Though people get angry they protest and again forget about it in a few days as if it never happened, at least to someone they know. What people care about is their pockets, the inflation which is killing them, be it onion prices or the petrol hike. We crib and complain about all of it. But do we really do something about it? What we do is take the short cut and blame it on the government. Aren’t we enchained in our own thoughts thinking that, we cant do anything about it or what only one person can do?

On various social networking sites, the only platform for exercising our freedom of speech, we condemn, complain or abuse politicians but nobody ever suggests what can we do to change it all.
Living in the country which believes the government is ‘for the people by the people and from the people’ its our individual responsibility to bring about the change. And change begins at home, as Nehru said in his tryst with destiny speech, ‘A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.’
The questions which arises in our mind today, no politician or bureaucrat or religious leader can answer. The answers are within us, ponder for a while and think, Are you free and then what you can do?