COMMONWEALTH? WHOSE WEALTH IS IT AFTER ALL AND IN WHOSE POCKETS?

COMMONWEALTH? WHOSE WEALTH IS IT AFTER ALL AND IN WHOSE POCKETS?

Having looted the wealth of the colonies worldwide, impoverished flourishing economies immeasurably to fatten their own lean economic frame till obesity could contain them no more, the British had the temerity to form the hypocritical new Commonwealth of Nations to which the Dominion of India acceded to becoming a member. Whose wealth are the British calling 'common' after all? Plundered property of the member states? Why does India continue to be a member state still of this blasphemous body even after 75 years of attaining 'independence'? Are we truly independent legally and in mindset or are we being held hostage to either or both that obligate us to be so servile before our past political masters? Why this servility, this base attitude? Why this widespread Anglophilia among the English-educated Indians? Why can we not stand apart from such 'common connections in commerce' that will never serve our purpose of becoming wealthy either in body or in mind, far less in spirit? When will national self-respect be restored to its pristine glory, that which abided in the heart of every Bharatvaasi at a time when the founders of this Commonwealth of Nations lived not in cities as civilised beings but were inhabitants elsewhere from where they brought into the world their predatorial culture that ruined civilisations the world over?

India, awake! You cannot sound so pompous about your heritage and culture on the one hand and act on the other in such a slavish manner as to subordinate your status to the sovereign of Great Britain, however convoluted your arguments to the contrary as a Republic since 26 January, 1950 may be. Come off! Shake off this commercial connection and assert your true independence if there aren't legal bindings holding you still to carry out imperial orders from the Buckingham Palace.

Written by Sugata Bose