Sixty-four years. Every year, on August 15th, we're taught to hoist the flag, sing our national anthem, and feel the familiar surge of patriotism, or what we think is patriotism, well up inside us and then, we pour it out, talking about how far we've come, and what a great nation we are, because it's Independence Day; we're supposed to be celebrating, not mourning.
This year, this sixty-fourth August 15th, things are different.
We're still Indians, but we're no longer the same people who stood and watched as successive governments struggled for power, leaving the nation to fend for itself.
We're Indians, but we have questions, questions that the establishment is too embarrassed to answer, questions that could topple a whole government.
We're Indians, but we're not fooled by the cash and freebies they hand out in exchange for a vote or two, we want progress on the issues that matter. We want to know how our money is being spent. We want to know why we have massive security failures time and again. We want to know what they're doing for our billion-strong nation.
We're Indians, and we no longer believe that the lines that divide us according to community, caste, race, or religion can stoke the flame of violence, and cause us to behave like five-year-olds.
We're Indians, and we believe in freedom and democracy. Not the freedoms that are supposedly guaranteed to us in the Fundamental Rights, but real freedom. We want to know how on earth could someone organizing a peaceful protest be arrested. We want to know why books and films are routinely banned, artists and writers exiled. Whatever happened to freedom of speech and expression?
We're Indians, and we're not afraid to think, to question, to take action, to speak out against the injustice we're meted out on a daily basis. We're different people now.
We're Indians, and we're going to undo all the wrong that has been done to us over the past sixty-four years.
