Every Independence Day we ask if we’re truly free from everyone. Kids, parents, activists, political strategists, army veterans, old people. Every year on that day, we ask kids to close their eyes and voice what would make them truly free in India. There are drawings and images and cards in calligraphic writings outlining our deepest wishes on the concept of freedom. Idealized pictures of deep blue skies and happy children and smiling, joyous adults who enjoy their work instead of loathing it.
Unfortunately, we totally forgot to acknowledge the years and years of bloodshed that brought us to this point.
We think of the colonial era as something of the past. Something that perhaps, like the Greek and Indus Valley Civilizations, happened thousands of years ago.
Truth be told, it’s not even been a hundred years.
Truth be told, Eurocentric ideals brought by colonizers years ago have been rooted so deeply in place that fairness cream industries have found the largest markets here to exploit our insecurities over our natural features. How many times have kids been belittled over the darker colouring of their skin, hair or eyes? The hyperpigmentation on their bodies? The body hair and broader features, different from the sharper facial structure of the Europeans?
Truth be told, caste hierarchy, patriarchy, and xenophobia and colourism haven’t faded out of existence, as our history and political science books told us.
Case in point, our very own media engaging in brown-face, refusing to hire dark-skinned actors, casting North Indians in biopics where the heroes had belonged to South India or the north-east regions. Casting upper caste, fair-skinned people even for roles that do not require them and belong to Dalit voices.
All Kashmiris need to be saved, or they are terrorists. All South Indians have a funny accent while speaking Hindi or English. All people of north-east India live in forests, and are unnecessarily sexualized if they are women. People of Punjab speak in a twisted mix of Hindi and rudimentary Punjabi and are obsessed with parties and food.
Hollywood does a shoddy job of representing minorities, but Bollywood makes a spectacle out of it and escapes with zero consequences.
Unbalanced power dynamics between the billionaires and the general populace, religious majorities and minorities, the upper and lower ‘castes,’ parents/families and their children, heterosexual and cisgender people and the entirety of the LGBTQIA+ community have made this freedom taken on a tinge of bitterness seventy-five years later.
Rigid gender binaries remain in place in India, constricting every person’s role to archaic traditions, dictated by religions brought forth thousands of years ago—religions that we aren’t allowed to criticize despite those ideals being made by humans which guarantees flaws and inconsistencies as any other thing made by us. Men have specific roles, and women have their own work. Anyone breaking out of the binary is shunned, ostracized and mocked. Disowned not only by society, but their own parents.
Truth be told, almost half the world tends to forget how the ideas of white supremacy and colonization originated.
Children in England are spared the horrors of what their ancestors did, why their museums are filled with artifacts from countries all over the world, while here we live to see the aftermath of it every single day. And ignore it too. Perhaps out of shame? Perhaps this is why we’ve pushed our past away in a hurry to move forward, forgetting that it is just as scarring as any war.
Truth be told, we are stuck in cycles of toxicity passed down from the previous generations that grab children as young as four or five in a chokehold and never let go, leaving scars.
Mental health and therapy remain an issue. “Spare the rod, spoil the child,” was the motto of families in Victorian England, but why would you want to assert power over a human being still familiarizing themselves with the world? Years and years of accumulated abuse and belittling, and the world falling apart all-around today’s generation, and yet older people tend to think that drinking water, ignoring the problem and sleeping well is the solution for someone silently crying out for help. For support.
Burying the matter and keeping the family pride and honour intact is apparently more important than getting your loved one the help they need. “They look fine on the outside. They have all the basic necessities they need, no? Then why risk the attention?” is their reasoning.
How is a country independent when its own people stand in the way of its healing?
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