CELEBRATING PARTITION'S PLATINUM JUBILEE IN 2022 ?
In 2022 India ought to be mourning the 75th year of her Partition. Instead the Vice President declared in the Joint Session of Parliament that in 2022 we will be celebrating the 75th anniversary of our independence. Strange it is that there is as yet no clarity on behalf of the government as to the real date of independence which patently ought to be 21 October, 1943 when Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had declared India free by formally establishing his Provisional Government of Free India. Keeping that date as the reference point, 2018, the 75th year of India's independence has gone by without a whimper.
Now it may be argued that 21 October, 1943 was but the day of the establishment of the Provisional Government of Free India and not really the date when India became actually free. Following up on that line of argument it may easily be pointed out that 15 August, 1947 was the Dominion Day for India and not Independence Day, for, on that day, India became a Dominion of the British Empire and did not achieve full independence. On 26 January, 1950 India finally became a sovereign republic but, strangely and paradoxically enough, chose to call it the Republic Day instead of calling it the Independence Day. And why did she choose to call her Dominion Day as Independence Day? Baffling !
Now, as regards the veracity of calling 21 October the Independence Day. Why not call it so? History bears the best testimony of affirming the validity of such a call in the United States of America doing it when it declared its independence from British rule on the 4th of July, 1776 even before it had actually managed to vacate its entire landmass of the British who still controlled large parts of it. America was in a titanic armed struggle then with the British and it was only seven years later in 1783 that she gained total sovereignty over her territory and population. Yet, through it all, America continued to celebrate its declared day of independence each year and that remained its official day of independence, too, when eventually, the British had left for good its prized possession.
But this has not been the case with its India. There has been treachery right through with the Nehruvian dispensation collaborating with the British to buy India some sort of a quasi-independent status, which, in other words, would imply a quasi-dependent status. Otherwise, why are we are part of the British Commonwealth of Nations and why on earth do we celebrate Dominion Day as Independence Day? Are we truly in legal terms completely independent or do we have the Empire's strings attached to us still in some carefully crafted Constitutional way? After all, the Document of Independence is queerly called the Document of the Transfer of Power ! Does it then imply that we are self-governing British subjects in some sense who since 15 August, 1947 enjoy the 'privilege' of no more being directly governed by the Crown but are in effect still bound to it by certain legal stringency? In which case it is a worse lie to call ourselves independent so long as we do not break free of the Commonwealth and an absolute falsification of history to celebrate the 75th anniversary of independence in 2022.
Is this then the reason why the Government of India, despite recent statements by the Prime Minister of his intention to recognise Netaji as India's first Prime Minister, cannot in real take any effective steps to carrying out this measure in practice? What binds it into it submitting to such strange anomalies?
Whatever it may be, independent or dominion, the stark historical fact is that our motherland was officially dismembered on 14 August, 1947 and in no way may we celebrate the ghastly episode's platinum jubilee in 2022. Did the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic celebrate the silver jubilee of their Partition in 1970? Did Vietnam celebrate Partition or did they fight it out to the reunification of its partitioned sections? Does the People's Republic of China accept Partition and celebrate it annually to give Taiwan, now Chinese Taipei, its cause for equal rejoicing in freedom? Then why does India engage in this strange celebration of the most gruesome day in its history? Where lies the true answer to this?
Written by Sugata Bose
In 2022 India ought to be mourning the 75th year of her Partition. Instead the Vice President declared in the Joint Session of Parliament that in 2022 we will be celebrating the 75th anniversary of our independence. Strange it is that there is as yet no clarity on behalf of the government as to the real date of independence which patently ought to be 21 October, 1943 when Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had declared India free by formally establishing his Provisional Government of Free India. Keeping that date as the reference point, 2018, the 75th year of India's independence has gone by without a whimper.
Now it may be argued that 21 October, 1943 was but the day of the establishment of the Provisional Government of Free India and not really the date when India became actually free. Following up on that line of argument it may easily be pointed out that 15 August, 1947 was the Dominion Day for India and not Independence Day, for, on that day, India became a Dominion of the British Empire and did not achieve full independence. On 26 January, 1950 India finally became a sovereign republic but, strangely and paradoxically enough, chose to call it the Republic Day instead of calling it the Independence Day. And why did she choose to call her Dominion Day as Independence Day? Baffling !
Now, as regards the veracity of calling 21 October the Independence Day. Why not call it so? History bears the best testimony of affirming the validity of such a call in the United States of America doing it when it declared its independence from British rule on the 4th of July, 1776 even before it had actually managed to vacate its entire landmass of the British who still controlled large parts of it. America was in a titanic armed struggle then with the British and it was only seven years later in 1783 that she gained total sovereignty over her territory and population. Yet, through it all, America continued to celebrate its declared day of independence each year and that remained its official day of independence, too, when eventually, the British had left for good its prized possession.
But this has not been the case with its India. There has been treachery right through with the Nehruvian dispensation collaborating with the British to buy India some sort of a quasi-independent status, which, in other words, would imply a quasi-dependent status. Otherwise, why are we are part of the British Commonwealth of Nations and why on earth do we celebrate Dominion Day as Independence Day? Are we truly in legal terms completely independent or do we have the Empire's strings attached to us still in some carefully crafted Constitutional way? After all, the Document of Independence is queerly called the Document of the Transfer of Power ! Does it then imply that we are self-governing British subjects in some sense who since 15 August, 1947 enjoy the 'privilege' of no more being directly governed by the Crown but are in effect still bound to it by certain legal stringency? In which case it is a worse lie to call ourselves independent so long as we do not break free of the Commonwealth and an absolute falsification of history to celebrate the 75th anniversary of independence in 2022.
Is this then the reason why the Government of India, despite recent statements by the Prime Minister of his intention to recognise Netaji as India's first Prime Minister, cannot in real take any effective steps to carrying out this measure in practice? What binds it into it submitting to such strange anomalies?
Whatever it may be, independent or dominion, the stark historical fact is that our motherland was officially dismembered on 14 August, 1947 and in no way may we celebrate the ghastly episode's platinum jubilee in 2022. Did the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic celebrate the silver jubilee of their Partition in 1970? Did Vietnam celebrate Partition or did they fight it out to the reunification of its partitioned sections? Does the People's Republic of China accept Partition and celebrate it annually to give Taiwan, now Chinese Taipei, its cause for equal rejoicing in freedom? Then why does India engage in this strange celebration of the most gruesome day in its history? Where lies the true answer to this?
Written by Sugata Bose
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