On one hand we celebrated Gandhi jayanti, remembering the man who fought against the atrocities of an empire and helped us run them off; on the other we open our arms to welcome the heir of the same heinous empire, which has never ever apologized for its sins of 200 odd years in the past 60 years. Is this our forgiveness or is it our submissiveness? Imagine the same treatment being given to the German head of state in Israel had Germany not officially apologized for the sins of one of their fellow citizens! Or have you ever heard of China giving a warm reception to the Japanese head of state? We seem so good at forgiving and forgetting that it feels we all have the DNA of Buddha! Or do we simply lack self respect?
Chauvinism and xenophobia have been the vilest of vices that humankind has carried from the very beginning of humanity. They have been the prime reason for wars and genocides for time immemorial. Chauvinism of any and every form needs to be shunned away if we aim for a just society and harmony. The prime reason for xenophobia, according to me, has been the sheer ignorance about the organisms of the same species living across lands separated by boundaries natural or man-made. And no one can deny the fact that man is mystified by boundaries he cannot very easily transcend and has created gods and demons in the process. Let us forgive our fore-fathers for the ignorance they had to suffer from. But can we afford to ignore; with all the information available to us? No we can’t. And I m proud that we’ve never done that. We have never ever considered any race or religion or color inferior to us in our entire history as a country, let alone in the age of information. But neither do we deserve to be treated as inferiors and nor should we accept it.
There is a thin line between chauvinism and self-respect. Loving your country or society or culture doesn’t mean hating or despising others, similarly, giving respect to others can never justify denigrating your own. It is rightly said that you should forgive your enemies but never forget them. And the British Empire had been once our enemy and has plundered us for centuries. Our fathers had to give their bloods for years to get us to the position of self-sufficiency and international acknowledgement which are into right now.
Let’s not let their bloods go in drain .So, people of the village of Rajasthan (read people of India) stop dancing with the charming Prince Charles of Wales unless his mother, her highness, comes up with a formal apology, for the plunder and the sins that they have bestowed upon us for not in distant past but just until 60 years ago.
