75TH INDEPENDENCE DAY 22

 A BRIEF REFLECTION ON INDEPENDENCE DAY OF INDIA 2022

1.      We celebrate the 75^th anniversary of independent India. At the very outset, let us raise our hearts in gratitude and veneration to all the great freedom fighters. There were numerous noble leaders who led the struggle. There were also many ordinary men who joined the struggle. But their spirit was not ordinary. All of these sacrificed their comfort, their families, and their securities. They suffered and were persecuted and even killed. But undaunted was their spirit, unswerving was their focus, and unstoppable was their zeal. They shed their sweat and blood, they fought and they wrought freedom.

2.      Today we salute all of them, recognized and unrecognized. We pay tributes to them. But Not only through our bundles of praises. We need to see what we do with this freedom. How do we live, experience, and foster this freedom?

3.      No doubt that there is progress and development. We are no more under any foreign rule and subjugation. We can govern ourselves by ourselves through legitimate democracy. We can proudly say that we are free Indians. We are not slaves to anybody.

4.      But there is also the other side of reality. What an irony it is that today we have freedom but we live with fear. Many problems like corruption, injustice, human trafficking, abuses, communalism, and violence frighten us. We experience the loss of freedom whenever and wherever there is a loss of human dignity and joy of life. When selfishness increases, life becomes ugly. When unity declines, progress recedes.

5.      Let each one today ask himself and herself. Where are we leading our country to? Is it toward destruction or construction? Is it toward demolition or evolution? Is it toward true and fuller freedom or toward new forms of slavery in the name of freedom? Today, it is a clarion call for all of us to become responsible citizens of our mother India, wherever we are. Wherever we are, we can be good Indians. We can be so by being more responsible. We can be so by being more sensitive toward the poor and the needy. We can be so by being more committed to preparing ourselves to eradicate the social evils and injustices.

6.      Let us not play the blame game, one blaming the other. Let us in our own way eliminate the clutches of evil and slavery. Let us grow in the freedom of the Spirit, the freedom of heart, the freedom of love.

Let us celebrate not only the day of independence but the way of real independence!