Today is the 65th Indian Independence Day. The day that reminds the spirit and feel of 'freedom'. As I try to learn what this means for each and every person and country - I realize one ugly truth - most of the countries today have been colonies! The unending hunger of power, quest and conquer! Wow.
Even though colonization was a concept for a long time, the recent most in familiarity or in relevance to the Indian Independence is the Colonial Era, which the Spanish, French and the British dominated. I started to wonder if there were any countries today that did not share a saga of fight or struggle for independence and who did not celebrate their 'liberation'.
Japan, China, England, Germany, Russia, France, Sweden - probably(within my research limit) they are the only ones that do not have an independence day. Some of them have a National Day, which is not exactly Independence Day.
I wonder how it feels to live in those countries or be from those lands, where people have not struggled or fought to be recognized and liberated; where people just lived their lives without a strive; where people never knew how much it costed to held their head up and stroll down their own streets of motherland, without worrying about a foreigner knocking them down; where people did not know the value of silencing speech or thoughts and that uttering what one thought or writing what one felt would be punishment; and much much more - all simple attributes of a free life.
And I think of Rabindranath Tagore's poem:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where the knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where the words come from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake!
This short poem from Gitanjali reflects such a powerful force, with each word and sentence defining independence. How many of us today really appreciate or use it like our forefathers dreamt of or fought for?!
Even though colonization was a concept for a long time, the recent most in familiarity or in relevance to the Indian Independence is the Colonial Era, which the Spanish, French and the British dominated. I started to wonder if there were any countries today that did not share a saga of fight or struggle for independence and who did not celebrate their 'liberation'.
Japan, China, England, Germany, Russia, France, Sweden - probably(within my research limit) they are the only ones that do not have an independence day. Some of them have a National Day, which is not exactly Independence Day.
I wonder how it feels to live in those countries or be from those lands, where people have not struggled or fought to be recognized and liberated; where people just lived their lives without a strive; where people never knew how much it costed to held their head up and stroll down their own streets of motherland, without worrying about a foreigner knocking them down; where people did not know the value of silencing speech or thoughts and that uttering what one thought or writing what one felt would be punishment; and much much more - all simple attributes of a free life.
And I think of Rabindranath Tagore's poem:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where the knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where the words come from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake!
This short poem from Gitanjali reflects such a powerful force, with each word and sentence defining independence. How many of us today really appreciate or use it like our forefathers dreamt of or fought for?!