“With the dawn of a new
day, came a new stage,
With determined
agitation, we broke a white cage,
India rose to freedom,
when the world was asleep,
The jailor had to back
off, before our leap.”
At the dawn
of history, India started on her quest, and trackless centuries are filled with
her striving, and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good
and ill fortune alike, she has never lost her sight of that quest, or forgotten
the ideals, which gave her the strength. The achievement which we celebrate
today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and
achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this
opportunity and accept the challenge of the future? What exactly does ‘Freedom’
mean to us?
Freedom does
not merely mean breaking the bondage of the oppressor by the oppressed. But it
has a rather significant appeal to break off the internal bondages, of thought,
knowledge, customs and traditions. The greatest freedom, is the freedom from
all prejudices, preconceived notions, conditioning, ideologies, conflicting
desires, hatred & anger- until you have achieved awareness of pure
consciousness- you cannot call yourself free, you are not independent. Once you
have that awareness, you realize what freedom is…what Independence means‼ The road to freedom is not strewn
with roses. It is a path covered with thorns, but at the end of it, there is
the full blown rose of liberty, awaiting the tired pilgrim. We have gained
freedom when we had paid the full price for our right to live. Freedom is to
live one’s life, with the window of the soul open to new thoughts, new ideas,
new aspirations. In 1947, Winston Churchill laughed at the idea of India as a
Democracy. Today, it is the world’s largest‼
