Independence from hatred!

On the 14th of August 1947, Mahatma Gandhi was in Calcutta, where he and one of his bitterest critics, Muslim league leader Huseyn Suhrawardy, were together trying to ensure that the communal riots of 1946 would not be repeated again. 

"At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance", as the first prime minister was uttering these immortal words, a journalist thrust his mike on Gandhi. 

Do you miss being in Delhi now? he asked the great man. The man had just won over the greatest power planet earth had seen till now, without taking a gun. 

"Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth,

The Portly presence and potentates goodly in girth;

Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth! 

Theirs be the music, the colour, the glory, the gold;

Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould.

Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold - 

Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tales be told.

Gandhi quoted John Masefield's 'Consecration'! 

When yet again India wakes up to another day to remember the day of independence, I remember the words of the great man again and fashion my song on his. 

My song will be on Kashmir and its people, for their true freedom; The innumerable Dalits and the tribals and the battle for their rights; the minorities and their peace; 

For my country is maimed and halt and blind, in the rain and the cold of hatred;