Thoughts on breaking free

By John Cheeran
Another August 15.
India, that is Bharath, is celebrating its freedom from the British today.
Only when the last of the British left, we realized that it is a really tough job being free.
Over the last 59 years Indians have come to deal with their freedom in an admirable way. There has been considerable progress.
More schools, more buildings, more cars, more television sets, and more sorrows.
Indians have gone forth and multiplied, have done many wondrous things. We have raised the tri-colour, we have celebrated Holy, Eid and Christmas; we have rioted and killed each other; we have rescued each other during calamities and when we were overcome by a terrible wave of human kindness.
Indians have been credible, and incredible over the years.
I'm afraid that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's idea of freedom and my idea of freedom are clashing at each other now.
Gandhi wanted India for Indians; now the process of globalization has begun to chisel at the boundaries of the nation states.
Who is an Indian in 2006?
Indians are desperate to flee from the wild party at the dusty street corners to the silicon valley in San Francisco and then get tormented by nostalgia to return home. If India had been under the British rule, with voting rights in the Parliamentary system, we should have been ruling the English by the sheer strength of numbers. Biharis and Tamilians would have stormed Soho. One could have shuttled much more easily between London and Ludhiana.
But we made the British leave India to our eternal regret.
If you ask me what India gained on August 15, 1947 it is this --- freedom from our neighbours.
Partition gave us a great cricket team in Pakistan and gave world the dirtiest nation state on earth.
Thanks to Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who designed and executed (yes, executed) the idea of Pakistan, there is a fence between us and them. And it matters a lot, a lot.
When you think of India's freedom and August 15, 1947, it is tough not to think of Pakistan. Look at Pakistan.
Their bloody problem has been that they cannot accept India for what it is.
Why can't Pakistan celebrate freedom on the same day as Indians do?
Didn't the stroke of midnight bring forth twins?