Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Incredible-What?

I have always been intrigued by the promotion of India as Incredible India. Being a regular traveller across different places (contrary to popular belief that Travel expands your knowledge horizons, I personally think that it actually makes you realize that all people are the same-emotionally and underlying culturally. We meet about 1% bad people (on unlucky days..this concentration varies by continents), 1% extremely nice people but 98% normal people who want to be undisturbed but don't disturb others too) I dare to compare.(sorry again for making a long sentence...but this time I have the right punctuations hopefully).
Culturally diverse, plenty of languages, noisy, less concern for privacy etc make India a unique place. But they all cling to a Nationhood which is a concept than a reality. The concept will live long as it is from a free mind as regional, local aspirations are never given up when taking this concept as part of life. This makes India incredible. When I was young I was almost converted to communism by a good friend of mine. One day I saw him dejected and when probed he told me that Communism does not promote free expressions and he cannot imagine how he can cope with this. Strange but true-freedom of expression is a right which when curbed can never survive as a philosophy in India. The fact that there have been several religions, cultures imported into India but still the originality of Indian culture remains despite so much disparities of wealth is an indication that this freedom is the lifeline of Indian thinking. Bollywood will continue to the biggest Industry in world despite the best efforts as India is Incredible. I remember reading a statement by Taliban" Democracy is Anti islamic". This is a sufficient reason why a true Indian will not accept Taliban or any other extreme right parties. If freedom of expression(in its extremes sometimes) is curbed then Indianness is touched in a wrong way and people will conspire to make it fail. There can be several reasons why the seemingly lazy, socially less conscious majority citizens will take a long time to change-but it is the diversity that gives the lessons to modern democracies. Maybe it is not a necessary condition that equality should be there to having thriving democracies. There should be the mind set of society that wants to be heard with full freedom. Freedom is the foundation of democracy and we have that in India though in varying scales. Maoists and other terrorist organizations can strive hard but they cannot take this DNA out of the Indians. That is India is Incredible and no other country is. May sound bombastic but most facts sound this way initially.

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Gothenburg, Sweden
Still finding introspecting to find who am I? Waiting for a Guru!