1909-2019: Remember ONE NEW PERSON on Independence Day

Friends,

Yesterday was a important day for all of us. Its our Independence Day!
I have a bit of different take for this year's Independence Day.

Let's pledge each one of us to the truth that our Nation attained freedom because of the tireless life of millions of people who fought for our well being, safety, peace and prosperity. And we should not merely pay homage to only one or two who has been branded mistakenly by many in the contemporary world.

So, my humble request to all of you is to remember at least ONE NEW PERSON whom you never heard till now but he or she would have given their life to our beloved country's independence.

Past one month, I have been reading the works of several people who have done great jobs securing the constitutional methods of approach to attaining freedom from evils regimes in British India.

When I say constitution, do not mistaken me only with B R Ambedkar or the galaxy of people in the drafting committee or panels. He did great works no doubt about it but who else have done equally great works is our duty to remember faithfully that they don't merely pass away from our dutiful memory.

The independent India's intellectuals have done great injustice to many great classical liberal thinkers of first half of twentieth century. These classical liberals were the main freedom fighters unbelievably working closely with British Empire before the hegemony of Gandhi and Nehru period.

Indeed, there is quite striking similarity between the current year 2019 and 1909. For first time, the Indian National Congress was split on major reform policies evolved during 1908-1909 into two groups: main leaders were called extremists vs liberals. This split in major reform policies mindset and the ideology still hunts us in today's contemporary public policy making whether it is Congress or BJP or any other family run State level parties.

So, there is a amount of rational way of bringing reforms and policies through constitutional methods instead of protests, fasts, strikes, blacking public vehicles etc. The constitutional approach to protest for policy reforms was adopted by Dadabhai, Ranade, Gokhale, VS Srinivasa Sastri, Ambedkar, etc. The fasts protests etc were adopted by Tilak, Pal, Rai, Gandhi, Nehru, etc. Is these extremists leaders who captured the mainstream political power by ignoring the voices of the liberals scholars.

But the contributions to freedom struggles by Ranade, Gokhale and Sastri, etc. were completely ignored by every section of the society. I find this as ridiculous to continue for several generations.

The entire gamut of public policy making minds in India since the independence are the second rate category with protests, strikes etc without any differences in political parties.

We need to come out of this crude mind set of wild act without any logical reasoning on subjects. There is great amount of tragedies done through the act of strikes, protests, etc. both morally and psychically in the name of one community or segments of population or particular region.

Therefore, do take few minutes to ask your parents, grandparents, friends etc to remember the freedom fighters in your locality and also try to know some of the forgotten great souls of our freedom movements. 

Jai Hind,
Chandra....