My fallen country! One kind wish from thee!

We are all gearing up for Independence Day on August 15 and there will no doubt be fireworks and celebrations throughout the country. But is this the country our martyrs bled for? What have we made of our motherland in the past six decades? Do we ever take a minute out to think of the dire state that prevails in India? You don’t have to toil hard to get a glimpse of the abyss into which we have pushed our hapless and beloved country- just open the news papers and the bestiality hits you in the face.

A seventeen year old tribal girl was stripped and forced to walk naked for 8 kms through 3 villages being molested all the way through by a mob of men and onlookers videotaping this “free show” in Birbhum in Bengal. The video is being circulated publicly under the provocative caption adivasi girl and there are hundreds of takers to enjoy the plight of this defenceless minor girl. The atrocities were carried out by a band of adivasi men from the same tribe to punish the girl for having an “affair” with a boy from a different community with the cognizance of the village panchayat and other civic bodies- this is the reality of India in 2010!

Five people have been arrested in this connection and what will we do with them? What are we doing with Ajmal Kasab? Hanging these men is being too kind to them- it’s a pity that days of Sher Shah Suri are over- chopping off limbs and making an example of these vile creatures is what is needed. All the pretty talk of human-rights and rehabilitation is nice when you are engaging in “intellectual” tittle-tattle, it is not enough to bring justice to the victims, who too come under the ‘human rights’ purview, by the way!

We are tearing our hair over the irregularities and corruption behind the Commonwealth Games to be hosted in New Delhi in a couple of months. “Heads are rolling” apparently- but the irony is that the person who is ordering all these ‘head rolling’ is the one head that needs to be chopped off right-away, but of course how can our nice and subtle CEO of the country order that? Please don't ask him to assert himself- he is too nice, too decent for that!

It is sad that through the past six decades and even at present a country as huge as ours cannot find but morons to run it- not just morons, but corrupt immoral morons at that!

It brings tears to my eyes to think that an Anglo-Indian of Portuguese descent, a young poet who lived for a mere 22 years, Henry Derozio, felt so strongly for our country that he wrote these lines two hundred years ago-

To India – My Native land

My country! In thy day of glory past
A beauteous halo circled round thy brow,
And worshipped as a deity thou wast.
Where is that glory, where that reverence now?
Thy eagle pinion is chained down at last,
And groveling in the lowly dust art thou:
Thy minstrel hath no wreath to weave for thee
Save the sad story of thy misery!
Well let me dive into the depths of time,
And bring from out the ages that have rolled
A few small fragments of those wrecks sublime,
Which human eyes may never more behold;
And let the guerdon of my labour be
My fallen country! One kind wish from thee!

And we? What are we doing?

My dear friends, come August 15, please do something- introspect and find a way forward! Live life as it should be lived- in peace and harmony. Do what you should do- listen to your inner voice- have pride in yourself. Be the human being you are! Let not bestiality of this kind blacken the face of our motherland anymore.

Jai Hind!