By Bharat Dogra The Independence Day is always a proud day for all citizens of India. This year it is all the more so as this is the 75th Independence Day. However at the same time there is growing concern about the increasing erosion of some essential precepts of the freedom movement during the last eight years or so of the NDA/BJP regime. The freedom movement was all about ensuring liberty, equality, justice, dignity and social harmony for all, but in recent years these precepts have been increasingly violated in several important contexts. Hardly any effective action is taken against those who appear to be a threat to the safety and dignity of minorities particularly the Muslim community. Our freedom movement involving many struggles and sacrifices is one of the proudest chapters of world history. In the course of these various struggles the common people—farmers and workers, adivasis and dalits, students and teachers, women and men, youth and elders—made big contributions, while
By Harsh Thakor The British left us 75 years ago, with India now self-governed and politically independent. However it was not a triumph of people’s liberation, with transfer of power not accomplished as a result of an anti-feudal and anti-imperialist revolution. The Congress then made all the oppressed classes subservient to their dictates proscribing “Non-Violence.’ Even after independence there was inadequate space to democratically organise and imperialist capital continued to penetrate India. We can rekindle memories before 1947 of peasants creating a sea of turbulent strikes all over the nation challenging landlordism, Industrial workers threatening the social base of capitalism in many an industrial area and revolts in the ranks of the army. In the garb of non-violence the Congress literally shut the lid on such resistance capitalising at many junctures. No doubt we must give Gandhi credit for reaching out to the most backward Indian masses to integrate them within the fold