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the nation, who taught us that strength dark despair. As India and Pakistan were
and violence were not the same thing, and pulled asunder by the very movements
taught us the need to live in harmony with that sought to create a nation, the forging of
one another. our identity became stained with blood. My
As I delve further and deeper into the eyes moisten as the memory of hearing the
influences on being Indian, I find myself horrific stories of partition comes rushing
sharing my own memories of the events back. I stop short of telling these to my
that have shaped our history. granddaughter.
I must not let my memory taint her
innocence – at least not today. If she is
seeking an answer to the question: “What
is an Indian?” then I think my answer
should be this: an Indian is Marathi,
Gujarati, Punjabi, Bihari and Tamil; he is
Hindu, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Christian and
Buddhist. We are all Indian and together
we are India.
If the hope and despair of 1947 taught me
something, it is that the Indian identity is
all-encompassing, and that when we allow
our differences to become prejudices, to
become walls that divide us, distrust and
I recall the feelings of oppression violence accumulate and we undermine the
and exploitation that many felt under very idea of India.
the Britishers, and then the relief at After all this talking-talking, I ask her,
independence. Then it was Prime Minister gently: “So, now, beti – what do you think
Pandit Nehru that gave voice to these Indian is?” And she answered: “Dada, it is
feelings in his declaration on 14th August us and everyone else.”
1947:
“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when
the world sleeps, India will awake to life
and freedom. A moment 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.”
I remember feeling overwhelming Share stories of the Independence
emotion – we all did. It was a time of struggle, with your grandchildren… let
complete change. Together, we swept away them become aware that another world
British rule and ushered in a birth of the existed…not just the DIGITAL and AI
Indian nation. world that they live in presently!!
But I shall forever remember this time in Reference: https://www.dishoom.com/
history for its lurches between hope and journal/a-story-of-independence/
SENIORS TODAY | ISSUE #62 | AUGUST 2024 35
