Monday, October 31, 2011

The India I Inherited

By Siddarth Sehgal

Once I realized a subtle but significant understanding of freedom from a joke that goes something like this. There was an informal gathering of international students in a club meeting; the host asked his international audience a very simple question “What does freedom mean to you?” Everyone gave a different answer, the Indian mentioned freedom of expression, African said education, Mexican stated justice and so on but a shy Chinese guy was sitting quietly in the corner. When everyone looked at him for response, he smiled gently and said “a Facebook account”.

Ironically, this joke is also a bitter reality for many people and yet millions of youngsters like me simply don’t realize the value of a Facebook account while we waste hours of our time on it. When I was in India, I never realized the importance of things I enjoyed so liberally. The freedom, education, the comforts of home and so many other gifts in life seemed like entitlements until I came to Alabama, United States. Here I learned some very important lessons about the struggles of life. Here being part of the lowest rung of society I got chance to experience different aspects of human nature. I met strangers who showed kindness and became friends for life and also met those who looked down upon me because of my background. Here I came to learn about plights and sufferings of civil rights activist who sacrificed their lives to convert Bombingham to Birmingham. But you might wonder why am I telling you all this; what does this has to do with India?

There is a saying, you never miss your home until you leave it. When Indians like me come abroad and see all the good things in societies and countries across the globe, we wish if we can have them in our home. I am not talking about the fastest growing or world third largest economy stuff but the ground realities in which we live in, both good and bad. It’s not just the country but system, culture, philosophy, customs as a whole and I would like to count some of the facets of our inheritance.

Considering the philosophical, spiritual and scientific knowledge that has been passed down to us from great men of our land, we should have been leading the way in enlightening hearts and minds of the people throughout the world but instead the very definition of education & knowledge have changed in our country. Youth like me only want to collect degrees to become doctors, engineers or a graduate with an MBA. Its quiet amusing that majority of NRI kids, at least whom I met, have similar ambitions in their lives as their Indian counterpart. We have thousands of graduates from Harvard and Stanford but less than 10 Nobel laureates. This was not what Tagore had imagined in his elegies for his country.
What has always bothered me is our sense of fairness, I am not saying that all other countries or societies are impartial otherwise there would be no occupy Wall Street movement or Arab spring Revolts but still we have to clean our doorstep first. The reason I am raising this point is because in our system unfairness is legal. We have a razor smooth F-1 race track built in no time but not a single fully furnished commonwealth stadium. We toil our blood and sweat only to find out that our contribution to our country is deposited in Swiss bank accounts of our politicians. There is foolproof level Z security for VIPs & ministers but people are left alone to die in terrorist attacks and not to forget a system that considers every citizen equal but gives opportunities on the basis of their caste.

When I look across the globe, I see people going ahead with a drive, a sense of motivation and it is not limited to developed countries. Small, socialist island country Cuba whose size, manpower and wealth is nothing compared to ours but I was amazed to read their contributions in ending Apartheid in African continent; Cuban forces selflessly fought to liberate Angola, which further lead to unbanning of ANC and release of Nelson Mandela, while we still fight on divisions of Marathis, Biharis, Tamils etc. I am not saying that we are short of selfless people who want to serve India but we as a country have lost our sense of inspiration. What good is being the third largest economy where only few people benefit to make multi-million dollar homes and the masses struggle to cope with food prices? Many Indian youth today lost their promising future to political greed but I don’t wish the same for the forthcoming generations.

As always, I leave your conclusions to you and would end with a quote I read in book How Far We Slaves Have Come.

“Whoever is incapable of fighting for others will never be capable of fighting for himself.”

~Fidel Castro

Other posts by Siddarth Sehgal:

Siddarth Sehgal is a graduate student at University of Alabama at Birmingham and a columnist at the University student newspaper. He frequently writes on international issues, politics and human rights.

Print Friendly Version

(Permalink)

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.