It Is Time We Change Our National Vocabulary
Love Letter to India, on the 75th Anniversary of her sovereignty
Dear Mother India,
Happy 75th India Day!
Today marks the 75th anniversary of our people winning back the governance of their nation from the British Raj. I wonder why, in all these decades, we have not questioned the semantics of such an important national festival. Wouldn’t it be appropriate to call it “India Day” instead of “Independence Day”?
Words matter
You began to derive your national identity in the modern world through your brave and spectacular fight for freedom. As a diaspora Indian, this chapter of our collective past is so close to my heart that I can no longer relate to the title “Independence Day”. In Hindi, we call 15th August “Swatantrata Divas”, which translates to self-reliance day.
Kindly allow me to share why the subtlety is pertinent. The words “self-reliance” and “independence” strike very different chords. Self-reliance focuses on the nation that won, whereas independence forever begs the question, “independent of what or whom?”
Your “Independence” is grounded in the Indian Independence Act passed in the British Parliament in 1947. With the very title of the Act, our departing British administrators left a sneaky annual reminder of who ruled. As if the Republic of India should forever commemorate their short Raj by carrying a national identity that includes the tagline “no longer British”. The English language is self-serving in a funny way, isn’t it?
When two new dominions emerged out of unified India in August 1947, evidently, it was imagined that they would put their dark night of the British Raj behind them and march on towards a perhaps, tricky but eventually glorious future. Viceroy Mountbatten’s speech on the creation of the dominion of India began by acknowledging,
“Tomorrow, two new sovereign states will take their place in the Commonwealth: not young nations, but the heirs of old and proud civilisations: fully independent States whose leaders and statesmen are already well known and respected throughout the world, whose poets and philosophers, scientists and warriors, have made their imperishable contribution to the service of mankind: not immature Governments or weak, but fit to carry their great share of responsibility for the peace and progress of the world.” ~ Lord Mountbatten, 15th August 1947
However, words matter. With the nomenclature “Independence Day”, how would we ever cast off the psychological identity of “subjects”? Unless we change our national vocabulary, how would we ever see ourselves as self-reliant?
What exactly were we fighting?
Let us not forget what our struggle was truly against. I recall a quote by Mahatma Gandhi —
“The fight is not against the British; the fight is against injustice.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
The British administration of India was unjust. Deeply unjust, as institutions corrupted by power inevitably become. Yet, what 200 years of ruling the world did to the British, is their story, not ours. The bitter truth is that their injustices, as serious as they were, still did less harm to our country than the deeper problems of our divided national self-image. When they arrived, the East India Company quickly recognised and exploited this divided self-image to uncover deeper cracks of servitude running in our collective psyche.
In 1947, our nation won her independence from the British administration but did not get rid of these fault lines. That we lived, suppressed under home-grown corrupt leaders who followed in the decades post-1947 is a tell-tale sign of our national acceptance of victimhood. To make matters worse, minds reeling in this state self-preserve by constantly seeking a new “oppressor”. It is no wonder that our national consciousness is still steeped in that servitude but to different oppressors, be it corrupt institutions, profiteering corporations, divisive ideologies, the label of an “emerging country”, and so on.
I respect the nostalgia and pride that the word “Independence” evokes for how our people united against the British colonial empire and what we sacrificed to establish our secular, democratic nation. It was a dream of epic proportions brought true through sheer force of will and grit and awakening that we deserved to govern. I also understand how our nation derived her initial pride and place in the world from our exemplary victory against an oppressive colonial power. However, it has been 75 years since, and it is high time we craft our historical identity from something exclusively Indian. Our independence story, unfortunately, still remains as British as it is Indian, just as the Ramayana is as much about the defeat of Ravana as it is about the victory of Rama.
Celebrating India
When we celebrate Independence Day, inadvertently, we still acknowledge the “ruling” position of the British Raj. It is time to let it go — not just from our country but from our psyche too — the collective Indian psyche of the citizens and the diaspora.
The collective Indian consciousness begs to evolve and come into her own, with no emphasis whatsoever spared for anyone who sought to exploit, suppress or overpower her. It is time to celebrate India, on her own.
During my recent visit to the London Library, I opened up an archived issue of “The Times”, published on 15th August 1947. The front page carried the title “Partition of India” (note, not independence, freedom or another more respectable word). The features, opinion pieces, and other articles within this issue ring of hurt British pride and insecurity over the financial assets of British nationals in India. That is not surprising. The colony of India was the crown jewel of the British empire. Yet, the British era was only the most recent and shortest-lived of foreign invasions in India’s ten thousand-year (probably, longer) history. Three hundred years is a mere blink in a long existence of ten millennia.
Let us stop emphasising this blink, let us start honouring India’s self-reliance instead. Using the right words to do so would be a terrific start.
With love and pride for the country that remains the land of my heritage,
Prajakta
