INDIA's STRUGGLE FOR HER SECOND INDEPENDENCE

Hello friends,

Welcome again to yet another interesting feature on India's Independence. You must be wondering what's wrong with me today! Independence Day is gone and why am I discussing it yet again....but if you have carefully read my previous week's posting reminiscing the times when our forefathers gave a clarion call for our Independence to the present day where the communal divide was breaking our country, you'd realize that the culminating factor which is likely to emerge out of it in the near future would be INDIA's STRUGGLE FOR HER SECOND INDEPENDENCE!

Yes, my dear friends, and that's precisely what Mr. Pannu would be discussing today. He weighs the pros and cons of the leadership in our country, the havoc makers disrupting peace and harmony and the divide taking place in the psyche of the people, but ....at the same time he assures us that there is still a ray of hope provided we wake up NOW!!

If you have enjoyed reading this article and believe that it provided you some invaluable insights, then do not forget to share with us your views and opinions given at the end of the posting.

Jai Hind!

Love Sonyaa

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Recently India celebrated her 61st Independence Day. It’s about time to ponder over the fact where we stand in the third millennium. Honestly I find, to get our Independence on 15th August 1947 we had a galaxy of stalwarts like Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose to name a handful of them along with many other luminaries to lead us.

However, the situation today appears to be very grim where there is a leadership vacuum which is never easy to fill up in a hurry. But we can just thank providence for the benefit of the leadership of scholars and economists like Dr APJ Abdul Kalam and Dr Manmohan Singh, persons of unimpeachable integrity. But the disturbing part is that they were never chosen by the popular ballot but became president and prime minister more due to fortuitous circumstances rather than any action on part of the electorate. That’s fine and therefore we have some semblance of some order and harmony in an otherwise highly volatile and anarchy like situation seems to prevail in our country today.

In the words of a distinguished editor of Tribune Mr HK Dua whose recent editorial “India cannot be at war with itself” very aptly put it - “Politicians, like children, cannot be allowed to play with fire. Both at times can take an emotional view of a situation and do things without thinking a wee bit about the consequences of what they are doing.” But the irony of the situation is that what’s happening in Jammu in the name of the allotment of land to Amarnath Shrine Board right now leads us to believe that once again competitive fundamentalism is reaching its peak with Amarnath Sangarsh Samiti Vs Hurriyat and its associated outfits trying their utmost to vitiate the atmosphere in the sensitive state of J&K. To the naked eye it appears that various proxy organisations of Sangh Parivar have suddenly woken up to a fantastic opportunity to rehabilitate themselves and create a plank for electoral gains the party could make in the forthcoming state elections by using the Amarnath land issue! And why not use it as an issue for parliamentary polls never mind how many people loose their lives in the bargain!!

Hence some fascist parties bereft of any real issues can only gloat over this great opportunity to make political capital out of it and perhaps at the end of it gain an electoral edge in the parliamentary elections. After all for some people becoming prime minister takes precedence over whether India lives or bleeds!!!

Now take a look at the way an explosive situation has been created in Kandhamal wherein for the murder of a VHP leader Laxmanananda Saraswati has been attributed to the Christian community which is being persecuted. Saffron outfits and its proxies are busy torching large number of churches, houses, and vehicles of Christian schools, orphanages and old age homes maintained and run by the good Samaritans from various denominations of Christian faith. Thousands of people, most of them Christians, have sought shelter in makeshift government camps in eastern India, driven from their homes by religious violence which has killed several people this week. The situation is being described by a number of responsible commentators as nothing short of ethnic cleansing. When the Christian clergy and the other prominent citizens met the prime minister on this issue he rightly called this carnage as “a national shame”. Above all the silence of communal outfits on this issue has been deafening to say the least!

Just consider the no-confidence motion which attracted a lot of attention all over the country for all the wrong reasons. But nothing to beat the way left parties conducted themselves with a vengeance by aligning with most unlikely bedfellows of the political spectrum of India. And finally having lost the no-confidence motion the Politburo consisting of the likes of Karats & few others decided to expel Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee from the party exposing its deep-rooted dislike for democratic norms. The reasons touted by them are simple that the party constitution says so? Well one should ask these great guys that while constitution of India says that a speaker must be rightly so above party politics so how can their party constitution be an antithesis of our national statute. So what our honourable speaker did was in the best traditions of democracy. However in a lighter vein I was thinking while Karats and others might have been playing in their short pants when Somnath Chatterjee must have won his first election nearly 50 years back! In a nutshell who are these pipsqueaks throwing out a veteran parliamentarian of an international standing. I think this is the rock bottom of the pit where leftist could ever reach….

We, the people of India must wake up with a firm resolve and start our struggle for our Second Independence from the corrupt, morally bankrupt, inhuman and ruthless politicians hungering for power over the dead bodies of our brethren! That will be true emancipation for a nation of one billion Indians.