Time to ensure freedom of expression and to reclaim communal harmony

By Yaqoob Murtaza

Today, we are celebrating Independence Day of India where we remember our freedom fighters particularly their sacrifices they did. We will definitely pay our tributes to those great fighters who sacrificed their lives in order to make India a free, inclusive and equitable country. They did so, so that the generations to come can live peacefully, move fearlessly, speak freely and feel proud to be Indians and to call themselves citizens of this country freed by their ancestors.

On this historical day, we recall our history,  a history that tells us many things, teaches us many significant lessons, reminds us our days of slavery, poverty, and gives us a deep reflection of injustice and inequality done by Britishers.

Our history is more important than the history of others because it is a reminder for us not to forget “divide and rule policy”, not to forget how they colonized us? Not to forget how they destroyed our natural resources? And how they ran away with the wealth of nation? Specially not to forget how tyrannically they ruled over? Exploited our human rights and others on one hand and how unitedly our ancestors fought against injustice, inequality and exploitation and more importantly how long we struggled to redeem our pledge and to get India free ?

It is a real time to analyze what we have gained and what we have lost after Independence? We every year celebrate Independence day and proudly say and should always say that we are living in an independent country.

On this day our political leaders also remind us our history of struggle and many more.

We celebrate Independence day but stay at a point and think; do we really have freedom of speech and expression? Do we feel confident while expressing our views on social media platforms? Don’t we have threat when we write something and speak something about? What happened with those who used their fundamental right to freedom of speech? What happened with those who openly expressed their views while raising national issues? What happened with those who in good faith criticised the  policies of govt.? What happened with those who tried to fulfill their duties? And what happened with those who tried to be vocal and active citizens of this country? Then what does freedom of speech guaranteed under Constitution mean?

Our freedom is more limited to restrictions then a layman can think. The freedom of speech and expression is under attack and day by day restrictions are being increased on our freedom. This is good time to think on these aspects so that we can ensure fundamental rights particularly freedom of speech in real sense and can get the meaning of real freedom.

Another very important thing which we have lost and continuously loosing after Independence is our communal peace and harmony, “unity in diversity” our ideas regarding the importance of human life and humanity we had, our faith in others, our strength to stand unitedly for the issues of others.

Now the communal hate is continuously increasing that results in communal violence time to time and only because of that the incidents of mob lynching happened and is happening that causes the lose of many Indian citizens. There was a time when we had feeling of oneness. This was the time when we regarded others our brothers. We never thought to kill anyone rather we have sacrificed our life to save others.

The chain of our unity, love, communal harmony and Hindu Muslim brotherhood have been broken that can never be said a good and favourable sign for India. Where we have gone we never realize. Whenever any incident happens and people there play the role of unity, love and communal peace, it seems us very strange. Do we ever remember that the thing which was in our blood, which was our quality and which was our strength how it has become a strange thing for us now? We can imagine where we were in the past and where we are now?

So let’s take pledge to regain good we have lost and to remove bad we have adopted. Let’s take pledge to reform ourselves specially to reform our ideology in order to make India equitable and transformative one. Then we will be able to move forward otherwise we will go back in history.

Happy Independence Day to all.

God bless India and people.

(Yaqoob Murtaza is a student of law at Aligarh Muslim University)