Jan 26th. Happy Independence Day !!

Today is Jan 26th. And I take this opportunity to wish everybody a Happy Independence Day !! Yes, today is India’s Independence Day. Wait, before you brand me ‘An Ignorant’, please read the below lines.
Let’s travel back in time for a while. It was back on Jan 26th,1930 Lahore session that the then Congress president, Nehru unfurled the tricolor and declared India as a ‘Poorna Swaraj’. It was also decided that Jan 26th would be celebrated as India’s Independence Day. Indians celebrated 26th Jan as the Independence Day every year with great pride and nationalism until 1947 arrived.
When the British agreed to free India to keep their promise made to India as Indian troops had represented England in the Second World War. Every Indian leader wanted India to be given independence on Jan 26th(of may be 1948). But British chose August 15th to commemorate the second anniversary of the end of Second World War. This upset Indians though. For three years 1947,1948 and 1949 India celebrated both August 15th and Jan 26th as two Independence days. It was in 1950 Jan26th, that Indian union was declared a republic and rest, as they say is history.
Let’s discuss an interesting topic here. When India got independence, 99% of western scholars, journalists, intellectuals predicted that India would divide into pieces within few years. It was quite logical as well. India had such diverse population (even more diverse than the entire Europe put together). As far as I know, there is no country in the world which has more than one official language. But India has whopping 22. Let me tell you something
When I was in Atlanta, the US, I was working as a consultant for ING through our company. We were 40 plus Indians in that project. Among them we had a group of 10 friends. We always hanged out together, whether it’s for lunch, or movies or Saturday booze sessions (I mostly drank orange juice then).
We all used to wait restlessly for Saturday evenings and used to have a blast. I never thought about our origins then. But when I realize now, it makes me proud. Let me mention our gang’s diversity. I and Santhosh were kannadigas. Ramnathan and Karthik were Tamilians. Suresh was Andhra. Shanky was a Mumbaikar. Ghanshyam(my roomy) was Sindhi. Ayan was a Bihari. Varun Pratap singh was from UP and Sourav Ghosh, a Bengali. Sadly we didn’t have any maliyali. Yeah, Eldho(a maliyali) always helped us get our booze. We spoke in Hindi and the thought of we hailing from different states never crossed our minds. We always spoke about India as a nation and not different states. We referred ourselves as ‘Desis’. I miss them all now.
This is India after 60 years of being made a republic. It stands strong as a democratic secular nation (of course there are hiccups). The entire credit should go to Nehru mainly and Vallabbhai Patel and VP Menon. Else India would have become yet another Europe with many small nations. It’s not over yet. We need to carry India to a position as developed as Europe for sure. Insha allah ! If Gandhi were alive he would be proud to see our ING gang but he would have loathed our boozing activity for sure. Anyway, I again wish, a very Happy Independence Day ;-) See you soon, till then Chill Maadi ;-)