Last week India celebrated its 77th Republic Day. The Gods had been kind as the day was sunny, the sky blue and the wind chilly. I have always made it a point to watch the parade on TV though there was time when I braved all odds and went to see the parade in situ. And each and every time, with obsessive regularity I am moved beyond words. my eyes often moist, my throat constricted. It was the same yesterday. I guess my patriotism and love for India is deep seated and part of my DNA thanks to my amazing parents.
‘Don’t lose faith in India’ were the dying words of my father when he breathed his last thirty five years ago. He was 80+. He was the descendant of an indentured labourer who had left his home land in the late XIX century. The reasons for his departure are as picturesque as your imagination would let you believe.We were told he was part of the 1857 war of freedom. Whatever they be, they compelled a man to leave everything and accept being enslaved and bear a number. His was 354495. He managed to secure his freedom and build life once again with determination and success. I am proof of that. Forgive this aside but it needed to be said.
Had I remained ensconced in my comfortable, ordinary and insipid life, it perhaps would have been easier to hold on to that faith, but I chose to walk the untrodden path that questioned that faith far too many times and needed me to hold on to it drawing on shreds of logic and passion. But hold on I did as I could not forget the sacrifices my parents made for the country they loved unquestionably. My mom was even willing to sacrifice motherhood to the alter of freedom. She chose to give me life in a free India thus making its freedom sine qua non to my very essence.
I grew up on foreign shores but the love for India was lovingly woven into the fabric of my heart and soul by my two love stricken parents. The image of India that is seared in my heart is one of a land of tolerance, understanding and humanity. My parents never failed to teach me to respect the culture and values of the countries I grew up in and to me Indianness meant all embracing faith. I was proud of my heritage.
For the past years I have slowly had my faith put to the test. I held on to it. When the going was too tough I shut my eyes and remembered my parents or looked deep into the eyes of a very deprived kid and knew I had to carry on just for that child.
We humans are strange bods! We have the capability of getting inured to things and even stop seeing them. I guess that happened to me too as I saw a beggar child, read about a rape or a killing and turned to my fragile coping strategies.
Today children still die every day of malnutrition related disease. I have been going through my blogs which pan over two decades. I have written on this issue many times over the years and was shocked to see that the statistic remained the same: 5000 children every day. As I had not blogged for a few years courtesy my health, I decided to check on the figures again today and to my utmost dismay found out that the figure varied from 2000 to 5000 death a day. Though there is some improvement, 2000 death is still too much. Is 77 years not enough to stop malnutrition? How des one keep the faith.
The other issue that appears as a let motif in my blogs is rape and child abuse. It is relentless @92 rapes a day notwithstanding child abuse. And these are government statistics. The latest rape of a 11 year old happened in Delhi last week. Things have not changed and you wonder why? Is it lack of political will? Is it our social fabric? Is it gender inequality? Maybe all of the above. It is not the death penalty we often clamour for that will change things. What will change matters is social change when every family accepts that boys and girls are equal and should be treated so. But that is long haul in a country where patriarchy still loams large.
The other startling fact is the ever growing gap between rich and poor. Here again one wonders why and above all what can one do?
So where to you go to keep the wavering flame of your faith alive? The usual coping strategies seem to be floundering. New ones need to be sought if you do not want to live your life in fear. One option is to be fatalist and we Indians are privileged as we have karma to explain what cannot be. But what is the karma of a two year old that is brutally gang raped? Another option is to hope that someone among those who steer the country will intervene and say: ENOUGH but sadly that too seems to be a chimera.
After seven decades of Independence there are still 5000 children who die every day for want of clean water and adequate food, child labour and abuse flourishes, women are still second class citizens and millions are deprived of basic dignity.
But what I would want to say to those who hold us to ransom today is that you cannot kill the spirit of India. What your aberrations are doing is waking up the deadened consciences of far too many who cannot keep mute anymore. There is an anger slowly brewing, an anger that is breaking the seemingly impregnable walls of comfort and finding its voice.
India is a blessed land. Let us not for get that, and yes Papa, I for one will not lose faith in India till my last breath.