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Saturday, July 31, 2010
Monday, August 31, 2009

Hamara Bharat (Our India)

August 4, 2009
By Smriti Krishnan
Grade 10, Spain Park High School, Birmingham, AL

August 14, 1947. The clock’s minute hand ticked closer to twelve. Finally, after more than two centuries of the British Raj, India was free! The date was August 15, 1947.

 

Jawaharlal Nehru, later to be India’s first prime minister, had predicted the moment in his famous speech entitled “Tryst with Destiny”. Nehru spoke, “At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance….. We end today a period of ill fortune, and India discovers herself again.”

Along with Nehru, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore also spearheaded the Indian Independence movement.

A century before, Mangal Pandey had begun an act of rebellion that would become known as the Sepoy Mutiny. Pandey’s actions would set off a trigger of revolts within the Bengal army. Pandey shot British officer Lieutenant Baugh.

The sepoys’ musket cartridges were rumored to be greased with animal fat; mainly with pork and beef grease. Hindus consider the cow to be a sacred part of their lives, and Muslims do not consume pork. In order to use the musket, the sepoys had to bite off the end of the cartridge to use it. Although it was a long process, the Bengal army did gain the right to use cartridges greased with ghee in the future. When Pandey was questioned, he was made to admit having used opium and was led into saying that he did not know whom he wounded or why. However, after he was hung for his actions, the reason came to light.

Learning from Pandey’s mistakes, Gandhi decided to try a different kind of movement- one that would encourage nonviolence. His philosophy was later coined “Satyagraha”. Gandhi often made a point of how it took stronger men to adhere to the policies of nonviolence. For instance, he and thousands of Indians walked over 200 kilometers to the seashore in protest of British salt laws. There, Indians made their own salt by boiling salty mud in seawater. This salt was illegal, but the British salt market suffered terribly. Thousands were clubbed and arrested, but as documented by United Press correspondent Webb Miller- “Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend off the blows.”

Nehru tried a different tack. He became involved in Indian politics and advocated freedom. He prominently advocated for “civil disobedience”. Civil disobedience was an appealing philosophy as it merely encouraged the disobedience of certain laws and the commands or demands of those in power. The philosophy only promoted nonviolent civil disobedience. Nehru gave speeches to rally the people into boycotting British cloth and salt as well as other industries. His speeches allowed Indians to realize that nonviolence was the best course of action; as they would then be innocent. The British would be the ones striking first and thus, losing from the beginning.

Tagore was influential in a much more subtle way. His poetry, songs, novels, and short stories appeal to Indians’ raw emotions. Tagore’s literature compelled the people to feel their country’s sorrow, her suffering, her potential, but most of all- her joy. The joy that had been buried under her dirt fields, roads, and deep in her peoples’ hearts came flooding out all at once. This, it must be said, was Tagore’s best weapon. The British were helpless against India’s will, her courage to live and progress- but they were disarmed by her joy when it seemed that all was lost.

Our forefathers and mothers sat in jail for us. Their backs were beaten with clubs. They walked kilometers for us, their feet burning from the sun’s heat. Our great- grandmothers’ hands bled from spinning homemade cloth. The children of the past grew up too quickly in order to help free India. They did this for us. For today. For the future. They have all left this world- but yet, they live! They live on in India’s freedom- her freedom that is proclaimed to the world, to the universe.

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