We will be celebrating our Republic Day next week and surprisingly the youngsters of our town and had no idea what it all was about. Yes, it is a national holiday, Angad a class eleventh student said, Let me Google it on my smart phone! Give me a minute is the answer we got when youngsters were asked.
Republic Day is celebrated every year and this day is significant as the Indian Tricolor was unfurled in Jan 1930 at Lahore by Pt. JawaharLal Nehru and the declaration of Indian National Congress was made. @6th Jan.1950 was the first time when the Indian constitution came into force and in 1965 on this day Hindi was made as the official language. Since time immemorial our parents and in turn their parents would tune in their Black and white Texla tv’s to the solitary channel with one iconic tune and the swirling hypnotic orb of Doordarshan beckoning one. All eyes and ears tuned to the grandiose parade which swelled their hearts with pride. It seemed everyone was on a patriotic high, sadly which is missing in our present and the next generation.Teena dosanjh, an Nri visiting Jalandhar says,Acc. to Circuit(munna bhai) it’s a dry day..As a housewife a sunny day so loads of washing... Acc to a school student...Go to the district level celebrations to sing patriotic songs or participate in parade (compulsosry) for the young crowd...Another day for mauj mastii and gerii time! And for the so-called desh bhakts it’s a day to deliver long winding speeches and for the security forces ..Another tiring, thankless day”.
This quite sums up the present scenario. Previously the program was watched with anticipation but sadly, even if the youth does wake up at 8 am they’d rather be checking their msg’s or listening to music lost in their world.
Another shocking fact was that there was mixed reaction about whether the President presided or was it the prime minister. The republic day is of no importance to us, said Suchet Sangha an engineering student, we would rather talk about GIRLS, MOBILES or SEX.Nobody wants to hear about deshbhakti stories but if there was a story about a girl they were all ears.
Republic day for the youth of today is frankly a day which actually reaffirms the state of inept politicians and corruption which is rampant at all levels. A constitution which has been amended 94 times, what can it offer. They feel that the leaders of the country are bringing in shame at all levels and all of them are consensus in one thing that they are driven apart by politicians who play caste driven cards. Politicians surface only during election year hibernating for the 4 years and with remarkable assurance surfacing in the 5th doling out freebies and sucking us in for the next 5 years. This was felt by a group of twelfth class boys, Gurmehar Singh, Hartaaj Powar.
Democracy is a farce; politicians indulge in linguistic politics. We all get swayed by jingoism and do not care about the fellow Indian. We are the most racist people on the earth as we term fellow Indians as outsiders even while navigating the country. Republic day is just another symbolic day says, Rajan Iyer passionately.
The sign of the times is that when a survey was initiated on a popular networking site Face book, the queries drew a zilch. For the first time this had happened. The general mind set being why bother, boring debate… IF however it was a debate on the vital statistics of Sheela v?s Munni the server would have crashed!
There is hope, though one person remembered it being his wife’s birthday,one happy wife there , so why bother about the rest 1.2 billion?
Happy Republic day
Ravneet Sangha
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