Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Are Indians God Fearing?

Vasu Reddy From Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

All through this year the news from India has been scam after scam, and accusation after accusation, and negativity and negativity, and every elected and unelected person in power simply blames one or other for every reason that a human being can think of.  We are looking at most of the politicians who belong to the post-independence era, and may not share the camaraderie with each other as the India’s pre-independence folks did.

The generation of freedom fighters had a common purpose of achieving independence from the British as a common goal, while their individual aspirations were kept in check.  They focused on one and only one thing; freedom.  From the father of the nation to the foot soldiers of India, all of them wanted freedom from oppression and the only and only thing that was their lifelong goal.  When you read of the stories of the sacrifices of countless Indians to achieve freedom, they will forever be our pre-independence leaders and people who have given their all to the cycle of life and time, and those who remain now must be wondering what has come of the nation they wanted to be free.

Bapu’s “Raghupathi Raghava Rajaram” in the recent years has been delegated to just a prayer, and “Mere Bharat Mahan” has just become a slogan.  We have many places of worship, probably in every corner of India, and every once in a while we are reminded of God in one form or the other, and with one miracle or the other.  We as people in general are god fearing, when it comes time to think of the almighty, but quickly seem to forget about this power upstairs, and go on about our business every minute.

No one person in power seems to be using it for the benefit of the people.  It seems like a routine thing to get into power and abuse it as much of it as possible and people seem oblivious to the gross misuse of the power given to individuals by the population.  Everyone who acquires power is using it for self-benefit rather than to the benefit of the people.

Is this a nation of god fearing people, who think of the almighty every second?  Is this a nation of people who fought so hard for generations on against foreign invaders in obtaining the freedom of forming their own constitution?  Is this the nation of more than a billion people who are in pockets very smart and globe trotters?  Is this the nation of NRI’s who have achieved global success yet attached to their motherland?  So many questions that have answers but doesn’t seem to add-up to the reality of what is really happening in the country.

There is so much indiscipline with managing the national resources, which equates to a greater evil than any external threat to the nation.  There is so much hoarding of national wealth, so that none is being directed to the needy and the young for their future development.  So much abuse of power that anyone who is not on the side of the party in power or doesn’t want to follow the orders of the party in power gets the boot.  So much so that every politician that gets elected is preplanning to improve one’s bank account rather than developing the constituency that has sent him or her to the seat of power.

For a bunch of god fearing people we don’t really seem to worry about the consequences of hoarding national wealth.  The country has developed the attitude that each person to his/her own in grabbing whatever of available and nothing stopping from taking-in as much as possible, whenever possible.  If we fear god it doesn’t seem to show in our way of life, rather we seem so self-centered that it is a nation of individual profit and acclaim.  God is simply a way of trying to cover the massive self-centered life we live, irrespective of how rich or poor we might be.

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