Today is 15th August 2010, the 64th Independence Day of India. It is also the day on which one of India’s great freedom fighters and spiritual leaders Sri Aurobindo was born 138 years ago.
In the afternoon I was watching some patriotic songs in television. All the songs were touching and enthralling, and very rich in meaning. I also listened to the famous song, sung by the melody queen Lata Mangeskar in person in TV, ‘ye mere watan ke logo, zara yaad karo kurbani… .’ Literally it means, O’ my nation’s people, remember the sacrifice made by the martyrs... It includes in its ambit so many meanings. Among them the main is: O’ sisters and brothers of the country remember the sacrifice made by the great martyrs, and also introspect: did they sacrifice their lives for the conduct we are now displaying in free India?
It will be a meaningless exercise if we remember the day just for the namesake, and that too once a year. It is absolutely meaningless, and I will prefer not to celebrate the day at all.
Some will ask – why should we at all remember the martyrs? What is the purpose? What is the purpose of remembering the events which took place at least 64 years back or more than that? It seems the question is right in view of the fact that we are remembering our martyrs once or twice or thrice every year, and shed tears of patriotism and make grandiose resolves, and then come back to our common mundane and selfish life throughout the year. Again if that is the purpose of remembering the martyrs – just to shed few tears and express bland emotions, just to sing the songs which inspired the martyrs, or to just watch movies on their biographies, then I will prefer not to remember them at all.
In this context, I will remember the five dreams which Sri Aurobindo envisaged on the day of independence, also his birthday. Sri Aurobindo in contrast to the demand of dominion status, made by the moderate Congress leaders, had demanded Poorna Swaraj (complete independence) and advocated the methods of Swadeshi, boycott and national education to achieve the objective. A patriot to the core, he was most jubilant at the independence and observed that the appearance of both the events – his birthday and Independence Day – on the same day is not mere coincidence but the greatest gift from God for him. The five dreams which he envisaged on that day are quite emphatic. To summarize: India is not free for herself alone, though which is a precondition, but it is more than that. India is free to rise as a power to contend with. It has to be rich and prosperous both in material and spiritual wealth. She must rise for the world. She must rise to spread the message of humanity and spiritualism in the world, when there will be no exploitation of one nation by the other, but it will be cooperation in harmony and peace. But he rightly argued India must be strong and vibrant at first before playing the world role.
This Sri Aurobindonian message is closely linked to his dictum – all life is yoga. This is the central message of Sri Aurobindo’s whole philosophy. We must practice our daily life, everyday thinking and action according to some higher principles, for our nobler self, for the nation, for the mankind. Hence, when I say, why I should remember the martyrs – then the answer is this. I must remember then the martyrs – Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekhar Azad, Ramprasad Bismil, Khudiram Bose, and many others not merely because that they gave us freedom, but because they loved India, they worked for India, and they died for India. This thinking must penetrate our everyday life – not just as a ritual twice or thrice in the whole year.
That must be the message of this Independence Day.
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