My Tryst with Destiny

By Raghav Kakkar ,MJMC 1

" Freedom is not even a word, its a feeling and feelings are subjective
and subjectivity is chaotic and chaos is not good"- Malay Firoze


1940's was an eventful decade. World politics was witnessing massive changes in existent social orders and 
perhaps the biggest one was to come in the 7th year of the grand 40's when geographical boundaries were
re-determined. 14th August 1947, birth of Pakistan. This also implied partition of India. This partition was 
hugely based on communal lines with both Muslim and Hindu fundamentalists harbouring their personal 
interets entrenched with an ideologue, a well structured rhetoric which made this partition  inevitable.
And it was not even remotely peaceful, over 5 million people were literally butchered. Suddenly  the animal 
instincts in human beings were clearly visible. Both countries were in a mess.


Since then India has come a long way. Its intellectual and industrial output both has created grounds for this
 nation to change gear from back seat to front seat, being the second fastest growing economy. The literary 
rate is improving, the standard living conditions of a middle class is improving even the infrastructure of U.P 
and Bihar is improving! The one thing that is not is the constant nurturing of communal ideology. 


Over the years this country has witnessed events which defy the very fundamental basis of how India works- 
DEMOCRACY. The policy of divide and rule employed by our colonial masters seems to stay here forever. Our 
neo-colonial masters, the forever corrupt netas have taken over from their political fathers to practice
the same theory-divide and rule. As opposed to Nehruian socialism, we are still stuck with Hindu vs. Muslims.
 And the biggest irony of all is that the  nurturing of such communal ideas has been purely and entirely based on political momentum. 


The Janta party, which rose as a revolutionary party against a tyrannical Indira Gandhi in 1975, was later 
destined to put some very prominent blotches on Indian democratic functioning. The demolition of Babri
 Masjid and the infamous Godhra  riots.


The second biggest and most powerful party of the largest democracy of the world models itself on the lines
 of severe communal disparity. Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Muslim fundamentalist group formed in 1994 in
Pakistan, had its main objective in separating Kashmir from India. Many such organisations like SIMI are also
 present in the country which constantly  emphasize the fact that Muslims are ill-treated and all "kaafirs" should be killed.Other Hindu fundamentalist groups (read political parties) like R.S.S, Shiv Sena, M.N.S and the 
father of all V.H.P perform similar functions against the Muslims. As a matter of fact Shiv Sena and its '
by-product' Maharashtra Navnirman Sena went a step ahead and modelled themselves on the lines of sheer
 regionalism consisting of considerable violence which further accentuated the sense of division. Ironically 
Mumbai or rather Bombay was not even a home for the marathis as late as early 19th century.


Did we really want a freedom which divides and cuts and slits through us so deeply? That is definitely not a 
dream which the constructors of freedom saw, especially not Gandhi and Nehru. And this is definitely what 
we want. One experience of division was enough to in still the sense of fear, anger,desperation and madness.
 Another communal/regional division, even if its  ideological would assassinate the original idea of freedom. 


As
Tagore had put it- where mind is without fear and the heads are held high.. where
the world has not been broken up into fragments of narrow domestic walls..