A Republic Day Again, India Turns 69

As the Republic day dawns there’s a gloom lingering in the teaching fraternity with the recent murder of the school Principal in Haryana. A class 12^th student had requested the Principal to accept his Economics project. The Principal of the school was also a teacher of Economics for the commerce section and had occasionally used the opportunity to belittle the student for not attending the classes in front of his fellow mates. She used the opportunity to pound values and to reprimand the student for being late in submitting his work creating a  state of despair regarding his performance. It requires great courage to meet a person after the deadline and to request an individual to accept the work. The student had been denied the opportunity to be treated as an adult. Enraged with anger, the student pumped a series of bullets into the Principal till she collapsed.  Had the Principal offered him a seat and spoken to him as an adult, she would have certainly lived to see a change in the student. As for the student, had he controlled his anger and energised himself with the intention to fair better, he would have converted his failure into success.

There were lots of Whatsapp messages supporting the teaching fraternity, and others who wished to ostracize such students from the community. How wrong was the student and how wrong was the Principal in this case? Was the student given the liberty to speak out the reason for not attending the classes? Did the Principal humiliate the student to protect herself from the student’s liberty to speak? We may never know the legitimate reason. The student is now a culprit in the remand home and is nothing more than a log of wood with a bleak future as the society may never empathize with him.

The social media depicted a ten-year-old from Kashmir with a gun guarding her father as he had his lunch. Seventeen-year-old adolescents say that they have taken up the responsibility of protecting Kashmir and lose their life in expatriation and encounters. These incidents make the youngsters vicious as they experience violence and bitterness in the society they belong to. The curb on freedom of expression begins from home when the student tries to express his views. The matter is never analysed and ends up in bloodshed that agonises and reaffirms the belief that aggression is the best form of expression.  These students though in their primary schooling find hurting, lashing out and injuring others as normal acts because they have been subjected to brutality and sadism that has hardened them into an unyielding perpetrator.

The New Year harnesses vigour from the harvest festivals celebrated all over India to rejoice the bounties of nature and the national festival, the Republic Day. The New Year brings in new resolutions, new strengths and a new meaning to life embodying the word Republic, which indicates that the people and the elected members hold a supreme power in the country. India gained its independence on the 15^th of August 1947 based on an Independence act of the parliament of the United Kingdom. Its independence kept it bound with Lord Mountbatten as the Governor General and George VI as the Head of the State. The laws in the country were based on the modified colonial Government of India Act 1935. A committee was appointed to draft the Indian constitution with B R Ambedkar as the Chairman. The constitution of India came into effect on the 26^th of January 1950, since it was a deliverance from the British rule it is also called Sampurna Swarjya.

The Preamble to the Indian Constitution declared it a Sovereign, Secular and Democratic country that follows Social Justice and Economy. Dr B R Ambedkar said that Equality, Liberty and Fraternity were interconnected as anyone of these cannot survive if it were divorced from the other.  Liberty of thought and speech has been curbed with fear. While we find fraternity greater at the Attari Wagah border, there’s a fear while moving in the protected spaces of the country where freedom of expression is curbed and mutilated. We are emotional in our speeches at the Economic Forum and the Peace treaties when we speak about our motherland and our commitments, yet we fail to protect our younger generations from the poverty of tolerance towards fellow human beings. While the practical nature of man is exasperating, it could be energising if it were directed towards a cause through a busy schedule. It becomes the moral responsibility of every Indian to bestow a society of peacefulness and consideration so that the next generation seeks peace and harmony as a secret, as a mantra to follow and live on. Let the hymn of life be deliberation rather than the accomplishment of success in the pitch of life leading to a true Republic.

“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.” ― Mahatma Gandhi