By Daud Arif for TwoCircles.net,
It is of immense sorrow that today in our country, the legacy and sacrifices of our freedom fighters is reduced to just some mean politics by few brutal politicians.
In the past few days, there has been certainly a lot of coverage on the controversial birthday celebrations of Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) campus.
Indeed no doubt, what Raja Mahendra Pratap did for the nation can never be forgotten, his sacrifices, his contributions be it through his pen, which shook the heads when words written by him dawned upon the evil or be his ideas that demanded a secular India.
His birthday is no doubt a moment of pride for every Indian.But what worries me and deeply saddens every Indian today is that today’s politicians are doing the best they can to transform these issues into sparks that would serve their interests at the cost of communal tensions.
One needs to analyze the situation more carefully. Earlier the target of communal tensions used to be a different social group, but today the educational institutions are being dragged into this fire. Therefore the target is clear cut – The Youth of the Nation.
But I am confident, and I say this with due respect to those who want to divide today’s youth on religious marks, we have gone beyond it. The previous generation has suffered enough on the communal tensions over the Babri Masjid Ram Mandir type issues, which indeed curbed or in other words, crippled the nation.
India today faces issue of poverty so much so that its poverty numbers might outnumber the total population of many nations. India faces the issue of inflation so much so that the normal middle class man every month expects to manage some savings with which he would be able to get himself a vehicle to drive on, or perhaps a gift for his family. India faces the issue of unemployment so much so that a large population of Indian minds, be it IT professionals, doctors, scientists or engineers, are forced to move out to some other country as there is not enough at home to absorb what they can offer. Still, majority of government schools are functioning in an ill manner and little is being done to put things right.
A question becomes pertinent to be asked to the authorities, and I hope every Indian youth would echo it: “What should be the top most priority of our governments?”
To address these issues which need utmost attention? Or, to prepare for a hot communal soup, which can be poured in the form of bloodshed to gain maximum polarization in the upcoming elections?
The government needs to answer: Are you really engineering a land where the mind would be free and the head held high and the society has not been fragmented?
Your aim, your target is surely to fail as we today dream of our nation which best could be summarized in the words of Sir Rabindranath Tagore:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, Father, let my country awake
( Daud Arif is a student of Jamia Millia Islamia, currently in USA under an Exchange programme.)