ENCHANTRESS INDIA

Mother Nature has been kind enough to gift me a birth in India-The Land of Wonders. In this entire world you will not find any other country like India and no other people like Indians. This is a land multitudinous enough to attribute itself an array of titles ranging from 'The Land of Valour' to the 'Land of Temples'. What is so special about this country is the fact that it is indeed a world in itself, you go to any corner and that corner will be famous, beautiful and entirely different in all aspects from another corner. If I talk about this country and don't talk about the people which live in it, this would be injustice to the title. Indians are jolly people. Busy in their own lives, some living a lavish life while others burning the midnight oil for mere subsistence.  An average Indian mind is capable of doing wonders but still, we are underrated and busy enough to understand our potential and exhibit it passively. The best example of this exhibition is Jugaad. While the whole world talks about sustainable development, we in India have passively adopted a rock bottom idea of sustainable development yet we do not realise this. This country is a land of diversities. It is a rare sight to see a Hindu going to Iftaar party of a Muslim and a Muslim serving langar at a Sikh Gurudwara and a Sikh playing Holi with a Hindu but here in India, you get to see all of it.

Amongst the katzenjammer of religion based, caste based politics, the common Indian person lives in peace, happy with what he gets. We are one of the youngest nations of this world with  non paraeil youth which has inexorable potential, ready to aviate into the sky of success, waiting ardently to get the right platform. India has fought her way through various impedements of religion based rifts, struggles of an infant democracy, shenanigans of political demagogues and consecrated herself as the largest secular democracy of the world. This land has witnessed the might of the ink by warriors like Tulsidasa and Kalidasa, the prowess of numbers by prodigies like Aryabhatta and Ramanujan, the valour and puissance by man-at-arms like Rana Pratap and Akbar. Whatever we do and wherever we go, one of the biggest virtues we will always possess will be that of being an Indian. This is a the land where one can witness the confluence of reality, mysticism, and wonder.

However, an agony deep rooted in my heart troubles me. With the advent of this frenzy of distributing the certificate of 'nationalism' to various Indians living in this country and imperating whom should live here and whom shouldn't creates altogether an alternate idea of the India which I described above. When the constitution prescribes me with the right to live on this land and the constitution gives me the title of being an Indian, then I don't think a need arises for my fellow citizens who too are as national as I am, to provide me with a certificate of the same. If I do something wrong, the Law of the Land is strict and stringent enough to punish me. I don't need the validation of anybody else to estimate the Indianness within me.

Let us not demean the value and prestige of being an Indian and uphold the values , charisma and pride attached to the title of being an Indian.