India completed 76 years as an independent country three days ago. India wrested independence from the yoke of British occupation through nonviolent ways, captained by Mahatma Gandhi. It remains a benchmark historical milestone largely admired by a peace-loving world community, than Gandhi’s countrymen.

The disruptive functioning of the current Indian ruling disposition has Indians wonder ‘if they are indeed really free yet’. The answer seems to be a disheartening and affirmative ‘NO’!

History taught us that India won independence from the British colonizers in 1947. In the midnight of August 15 of that year, India kept her tryst with destiny without pulling a trigger. Thanks to a simple man called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. That was the history that was taught to us before 2014. The Englishmen had no choice but to leave Indian shores clueless before an obstinately nonviolent man and likeminded band of committed men and women.  History taught to children after 2014 tends to take the credit of Indian independence away from Gandhi. Children are taught that Men like K.B.Hedgewar, M.S. Golwalkar and V.D. Sarvarkar captained the Indian freedom struggle. Sarvarkar is only an inch away from substituting Gandhi as ‘Father of the nation’.

How can different historical perspectives describe a single milestone incident like wresting independence from an empire over which the Sun once feared to set?

That is very much possible when moves to create a Hindu Rastra out of India are afoot.  Modern-day nationalists claim if Gandhi could cry out ‘he Ram’, when Godse’s bullets felled him on that fateful evening of January 30 1948 at the Birla House gardens, so can they! Gandhi, a practicing Hindu called out to his God when he painfully met his bloody end. But nationalists of today take to lord Ram to win them votes to enthrone them on power’s lap. The very same people are building a temple for Lord Ram by tearing down a mosque claiming to set right a historical ‘wrong’ committed years ago by Babar.

Jawaharlal Nehru, arguably one of world’s most respected visionary to have a toddling nation make first bold and sure steps to liberty, is anathema to these modern-day self-proclaimed  Indian ‘patriots’. Try they might as hard as they can to wish him away from Indian history and history textbooks, Nehru will remain etched to modern India as her architect, whether they like it or. They have to learn to live with that reality somehow.

 It was Nehru and his lineage-the ‘dynasty’, which Modi refers to angstfully, with his every breath who passed on the baton of governance to Modi and his assorted gang of pseudo-nationalists. This is Indian history. Like it or not. After all, Modi was only 3 years old as India watched the last Englishman leave the country.

Once Modi occupied the chair which was first occupied by Nehru and later by members of his family, he created a gang of lampoons who were asked to peep into Indian kitchens. They were authorized to lynch people who dared cook beef.

Recently, Manipur burnt. Nobody knows why. Nobody will. Nobody is supposed to, as Manipur is one among many Indian states run by a ‘double-engine’ government. As the government refused to tell us what created an Auschwitz out of Manipur, the country looked up to Parliament for answers. The current Minister of Women and Child Development, at  loss of words to answer a nation which questioned the government she is part of, about women raped and brutalized in Manipur shrieked at the opposition why they weren’t bothered about women raped in the states they governed. According to her superior wisdom, and responsibility as minister, she seemed to be okay with women in states governed by BJP being gang raped and then paraded naked as long as women in states governed by the opposition were subjected to similar atrocity.  So much so for women Parliamentarians of today. To them it only mattered who governed the state in which women were meted out raw deal.

Modern India has practically every institution infiltrated by rightwing terrorists. Beginning with the Judiciary and law enforcing agencies to universities. Any citizen who dares express dissent or disagreement with the government will have the entire government agencies like the Enforcement Directorate, National Investigation Agency, income tax officials and customs queue up to ring his or her doorbell the very next day.

The central government is attempting to wrest control over libraries. To shift libraries from the state list to concurrent list. The Union Ministry of Culture is likely to introduce a bill in this regard soon. To indoctrinate thought of supposedly free Indians with violent, divisive and antinational rightwing ideology.  Well-meaning and progressive states like Kerala have already decided to oppose the move meant to pollute national fabric with an extremely dangerous ideology. 

The Modi surname is so sacrosanct that anybody daring to slight it would be put through severest of punishment, even if it is a prominent opposition politician, or a MP, while another MP, belonging to the BJP charged of sexually molesting Indian women wrestlers who brought glory to India in sporting arena worldwide is all set to contest the next general election to retain his Kaiserganj seat.

The Union Minister whose son mowed down farmers agitating against unfavorable laws in Lakhimpur Kheri with his car continues to occupy office, when the son of a prominent Bollywood star who happens to be Muslim is ostracized by having him falsely implicated in possession of drugs at a rave party in Mumbai.

Hindu nationalism doesn’t permit a public person in power to advise students pursue science, instead of myth and mythology.

Bilkis Bano was only 21, and 5 months pregnant when she was gang raped while fleeing the 2002 Gujarat riots. Her 3-year old daughter was one among seven killed as she was being violated. I1 sentenced to life imprisonment for the diabolic act were freed to give them a chance at ‘reformation’. The freed were welcomed outside the jail by rightwing elements with laddus. What about numerous people imprisoned by the centre for flimsy reasons? Don’t they deserve reformation too?

The Britishers ransacked India on a divide-and-rule methodology. Modi’s government too operates on the same principle. Every attempt is made to divide alliances that rule states governed by the opposition. Maharashtra’s Maha Vikas Aghadi that was divided using third-degree political horse-trading that ultimately had a BJP-controlled government installed in its place is perfect example. 

These rotten apples that represent a country on fast-rewind mode to damnation instead of progress to better times have Indians ask ‘are we free yet?’

More rotten and worm-eaten apples lie about unpicked. The already picked ones are bad enough to render the hands that picked them reek of a dead and decaying nation.

What are we free from?

If we shooed away the white man from Indian shores 76 years ago, new grotesque gremlins have invaded India’s soul from within. Gremlins of communal division, minority oppression, extreme Islamophobia, hatemongering, megalomania and skewed nationalism. These have enslaved us. We are their captives. We aren’t free yet.

Rabindranath Tagore’s iconic poem, ‘where the mind is without fear’ remains a distant and unfulfilled dream, lost in the desert wasteland of an ideology that has entrapped Modern India.