Tomorrow, 15th August, will be celebrated in India as Independence Day, with great fanfare, pageantry, and razzmatazz. The Prime Minister will hoist the national flag at the Red Fort in Delhi, in a function in which there will be a large number of dignitaries, Indian and foreign, and he will address the nation. Similar functions will be held in state capitals all over the country with the Governors hoisting the flag. Other celebrations will be held elsewhere in India.
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I regret I cannot join these celebrations, for the short and simple reason that to my mind real independence is independence from poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, lack of proper healthcare and good education, etc, and we have not achieved this real independence even 79 years after 1947, as explained in detail in the article below :
Without these socio-economic freedoms, the formal civil rights e.g. liberty, freedom of speech and expression, equality, etc. mentioned in the Fundamental Rights in the Indian Constitution are to my mind illusory and meaningless. Does a poor, unemployed or hungry man want freedom of speech and liberty, or food and a job?
https://indicanews.com/justice-markandey-katju-why-i-dont-celebrate-on-republic-day
This was realized by former US President Franklin Roosevelt, who gave a famous speech on 11th January 1944 in his State of the Union Address called ‘The Second Bill of Rights’. In this speech he said that the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution which guaranteed liberty, freedom of speech, equality, freedom of religion, etc. had clearly proved inadequate. Now the need was for a Second Bill of Rights which guaranteed to all Americans the socio-economic rights, e.g. employment with a decent income, healthcare, housing, nutritious food, etc which gave real freedom and independence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights
In this speech, President Roosevelt said :
” We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made ”.
Have poverty, unemployment, hunger, lack of proper healthcare and good education, oppression of minorities, etc. been abolished in India ? The answer is a categorical no. In fact, even today, there is massive poverty, massive unemployment, skyrocketing prices of essential commodities like food, fuel, and medicines, appalling level of child malnutrition (every second child in India is malnourished, according to Global Hunger Index), lack of proper healthcare and good education for the masses, oppression of minorities, dalits etc. So where is the ‘independence’ which will be celebrated ?
