This
independence day I will be celebrating it with my new office colleague. Even
though we both are away from our motherland, we both share the same sense of
belongingness to our homeland. We both want a nation that is far far away from
violence, we want our kids to go to better schools, elders to get better
healthcare facilities, youths to get better employment opportunities, families
to get better environment to live in. We don’t want our future to be the prisoner
of our past. We want religion to bind us together and not be the reason for
separation.
This
independence day, we both will have our Gulab Jamun…and eat it too, although at
different times. My colleague will celebrate on 14th and me on 15th!!
India
and Pakistan, both will celebrate their 70th Independence Day in next few days.
70 years of hostilities from both governments, 70 years of family separation,
70 years of violence on both sides in the name of nationalism.
This
might be an opinion of an aam aadmi, but I think this 70 years has shown that
the Two-Nation theory was flawed. The unnatural geographic division based on
religious backgrounds has failed. Understood, the situation in British India
was hostile but a united India might have been better equipped to deal with
those problems. Partition only multiplied the problems by two. Both countries
remain crippled by the narratives built around memories of the crimes of
partition. But in spite of that, it is important to remember that the division
of what is modern day India, Pakistan and even Bangladesh, is chillingly
unnatural. Remember, the communities that were divided in 1947 had coexisted
for almost a millennium.
This
independence day, I wish we celebrate our independence from British and not
from each other.
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