“You can have peace the next second”, said Ronald Reagan. “You just have to surrender. We will not surrender”, he continued. The current US President is no Reagan.
As Western leaders gathered in the White House to negotiate the surrender of Ukrainian land to Russia, and after Pakistani ruler Munir’s exercise in boot polishing and the surrender of Balochistan to America this past week, all people of Indian origin gathered not to simply to remember a date in 1947, but to honour a state of mind — an Indian state of mind — that refuses to bend the knee or bow the head to any power that would claim mastery over us.
For centuries, the coloniser came with one hand full of ledgers and the other full of chains. They took our wealth, our industry, our grain — and told us to be grateful for the railways and the Queen’s English. And yet, despite the famines, the massacres, the theft of trillions, they could not take from us the one thing they truly wanted — our submission.
We paid the price for our defiance. Oh yes, we remained poorer for longer. We rebuilt from rubble while others feasted on what had been ours. But dignity has no price tag. History teaches that nations that trade dignity for comfort end up with neither.
Independence Day is not just for those who marched with Gandhi, who fought with Bose, or who argued for our cause in the halls of Westminster. It is for all of us who, in every era, choose the hard road of self-determination over the velvet trap of dependency. It is for every farmer who would rather till their own stubborn soil than work as a serf on someone else’s fertile field. It is for every student who refuses to believe that the West holds a monopoly on wisdom. It is for every entrepreneur who dares to build without asking for permission from those who once ruled us.
And if anyone doubts what this mindset means, they need only ask the British. Ask them about the Indians — the ones who starved but did not surrender; who were jailed but not broken; who could be conquered by armies but never owned by them. They will tell you — perhaps grudgingly, perhaps with a flicker of respect — that India is not a land you tame. It is a civilisation that endures.
So, we do not celebrate charity. We do not celebrate favours bestowed by an empire in retreat. We celebrate the unbroken will of a people who knew that to be free is to walk taller, even if you walk with less in your pocket.
We stand here as heirs to that stubbornness, that refusal, that pride. And we say to the world: we will deal, we will trade, we will partner — but we will never bow. If you have the Indian state of mind, you are an Indian regardless of the passport you hold.
That is why Independence Day is not a relic of the past. It is a living reminder that dignity is worth more than comfort, that freedom is worth more than gold, and that the Indian mind — once awakened — cannot be subdued.
Jai Hind.
