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The freedom we got & The freedom we need


You know the history. 

So there will be no cheesy high school speech from my side. Let's talk something concrete & practical. Shall we ? 

You know what happened & what we went through to finally cherish what we call our independence.  

Now I want you to take 30 second to look at the time before 1947. What exactly we did ?   

Back then it was a different kind of India. A fragmented India. Over time we realised the only way we can truly be free is not by being a separate state, but by uniting into a singular nation. And we did that boldly.

But we didn't say forget about Odisha, forget about Uttar Pradesh, forget about Karnataka. We said "although we will bear a collective identity of India, we will still cherish our identity as an individual state".  

Then time passed. 

Just like the British, new forces entered the national space. Forces that have gotten so subtle that it's hard to put a sticker on them.  

One burning example is a virus called Covid-19. 

By the way, am I saying something out of context here ? 

I don't think so. 

Like the british shook the nerve of our fragmented nation, Covid-19 shook our nerve in similar fashion. The only difference is that the first ruler is a group of people, the latter is a group of virus. 

Fortunately we were able to deal with Covid-19 through a missile that our ancestors has offered us. It's called INDIA. Instead of dealing with it as separate states, we tapped into that force we call INDIA. As a result, there has been terrific cooperation between different states to contain the virus through vaccination. 

Now you might be thinking what exactly I am trying to say for so long. 

Here it goes : I am trying to hint at the next Independence we all need.  

Okay, I will explain that through your cooperation.

Ready ? 

Let's get into it. 

On a scale of 0 to 10, pick a number that represents the overall pain of our nation during Covid-19. 

Yes, please pick a number.

Now let me guess what you picked. 

3 or 4, if you consider the quarantine phase. 

6 or 7, if you consider the phase where people were dying in thousands. 

Now imagine a hypothetical situation where the pain hits around 9 or 9.5.

People are dying in lakhs. Everyday. All the hospitals are filled. People are killing each other for a bed. There is no vaccine available in India. Everything is going out of hand. The nation is on the brink of extinction.

So what do we do now ? 

Wait for everyone to die or do something about it ?  

Ofcourse, we will do exactly what our ancestors did before 1947, when the pain quotient was hitting around 8.  

We will cooperate : this time not nationally, but globally. We will adhere to our 3rd identity : Not a member of a state, not a member of a nation but a member of a species we all know as HOMOSAPIENS.  

No matter the degree of emergency, we will need to resort to this last fortress called HUMANITY. We will need to cooperate with other nations to solve issues at the same time retaining our other 2 identities.  

But you know the problem ?  

That's NOT how we are raised to think (like a species). We are raised to think like a member of a religious community, member of a caste, member of a district, member of a state & member of a nation. 

But we are not raised to think like a species. A kind of thinking that stems from an all-encompassing sense of wholesomeness. 

And if you take a closer look at the current state of the world whether in India, USA, Israel or Ukraine, I hope you will agree that, this lack of higher thinking is causing all kinds of trouble beyond measure. 

So today, on this auspicious day of INDEPENDENCE I will leave you with one final thought : 

Love your country ? Then earn your biggest freedom from that voice in your head that tells you that you are limited to a small & confined space of race or ideology or nation. Because the truth is that although we are confined in number but we are not small. All we need to find is a way to access this massive dimension of humanity. And that revolution starts right in our head.

Jai Hind !  🇮🇳

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