Kalam's speech has set me thinking - a whole damn lot - those last few words - about making India like the western nations. I cannot digest it and I cannot for the life of me understand why he wants India to be like the western nations. I have but two possible explanations -
1. Maybe he worded it wrong - he probably wants India to emulate the specific things like cleanliness, order, structure, gender equality; but he did make the mistake of generalising it with those words.
2. He's never lived abroad for a long duration of time and doesn't realise India's much better off as a life.
He started off on the right note but somehow digressed into this western comparison thing. But the comparison is not valid. These are different ways of lives lived in very different geographies and climates.
He can take a personal view of things which is perfectly OK; even discussing it might be OK; but giving a speech on the topic in his capacity as president is very wrong.
For me (as for most thinking people :)), Indians and the Indian way of life rocks. And I absolutely HATE the idea of India being transformed into some western like nation. We would lose our soul. We shall no longer be India. We shall no longer be the chaos (that lovely chaos of emotions, uncertainties, inequalities, freedom, flexibility, acceptance and non-interference ) that is life as nothing else is.
p.s. Kalam also cannot be forgiven for using a modified version of JFK's speech; now JFK was probably a great guy ("probably" cause I have never bothered to go into the details of his life so I do not have a personal opinion and I really do not care) but why did he have to borrow a quote of the president of another country - that too a country whose history dates back to just a few hundred years) - when he was speaking to the people of a country with an immemorial history?
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2 comments:
i can see a lot of bitterness there....i do understand why. but i cannot be understanding :) india is doing fine, really! economically, socially, politically -- ....and we're in a very interesting point of time -- where india, the nation, discovers it's own identity.
each time anyone wants to talk about india it's the past. of how great and what not..... well come on 700 BC. tht's not even india. if we go further back, may be we get to africa -- like the theory that we all originated from one continent. so stay real shall we!!
Probably, it's kind of my drawback, but i've never really judged something because of it's demographics -- love it because it's indian, or not like it coz it's not indian, or the vice versa! the fact is comparisions, by design, is unfair. the greatest person in the world, the most beautiful(blaah), the best pancakes in the universe. I just say get me a pancake andi'll say if it's good or bad. and that is much diff than saying better or worse. think about it!!
Let's start and build a culture of appreciating things for their own intrinsic values.
india discoverin its identity? well. indians have all dual/multiple identities. but yeah. the identity of the "indian nation" is probably emerging concretely now. tho the identity of the "indian life" is from time immemorial.
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