MY NATION TODAY: WHICH WAY DID WE CHOOSE?

I’m a 20 year old girl, I have witnessed this country go through great changes and transformations in just these two decades. We have adapted to new developments and variations and somehow managed to cope up with them.

But If you ask me, what is that one thing that we have lost on our way to becoming this country is, respect. I don’t even remember when did we last do justice to this word without adding any prefixes to it and putting it to use.

I am a girl, a daughter of an army officer, a voter and I live alone in a city. Every word that gave me an identity in the last sentence, also contained a fear of each kind attached to it.

We have come down to become a nation, where people don’t want to respect other genders. We don’t want to respect the system or the rules or regulations. We don’t want to respect the Defence forces, we don’t want to help others,  rather we want to question every person’s  position  and power. We don’t want to save or nurture the environment. We don’t want people to think and express themselves and make this country as claustrophobic as we can for them. We say we want to honor great men by making marvelous structures, but we are far from creating a nation that they once wanted to see.

But we do want to crib about everything. Because that is the easiest to do.

Every morning when I read the headlines, I feel so let down and disappointed.

Women are not safe.

Children are not safe.

Men are not safe.

Other genders are looked down upon.

Defence forces are disrespected.

Women’s rights are violated.

Crime rate has reached the sky.

Intolerance is at its peak.

Terrorism is the new religion.

Temples and mosques are no longer places of worship, rather used to show superiority.

Where are we leading to? What it the ultimate goal?

People are protesting and creating a havoc because they don’t want menstruating women to enter the temples. Army jawans are stoned to death, not once, but everyday. Every political leader is attacking the other and  misusing power. Women and rape have become synonyms. Young minds are brainwashed and put against their own nation.  Where is the peace, tolerance and respect that we write in books about?

Pollution is no longer restricted to the atmosphere but has reached the minds of the people too.

We don’t want to make this place better for the ones who gave us birth. We don’t want to respect the forces that stood by us and protected us irrespective of any political party in power. We want to put every religion against the other and gain benefits. We want to build temples and mosques not because we want to worship God, but, we want to stop the other religion from doing so.

As we say, in international relations, every nation is a threat to another. But, at present, we see no threat from any other nation but our own. Before any nation, every person has become a threat to another. We celebrate important historical dates to pay respect to our nation, its leaders and others, but we’re disappointing them in every sense.

The only religion that this world needs is Humanity. The only goal every nation should follow is peaceful coexistence. Let us  practice that. Let’s make this world a better place to be in and be proud of. Let’s first acknowledge and respect each one of us who are a part of this process and only then can the end result be achievable. It looks like we need a restart button. We need to begin from scratch, understand how everything came into existence, how female is another gender and not something inferior to men, how love is a feeling and can happen between anyone irrespective of gender, how we need to respect people who keep their lives on stake and protect us. There’s so much that we’ve lost on our way to becoming this society that we are today. Let’s correct a few things that do have a very large impact on us and everything around. Let’s begin from the start and become better humans and then someone else. Let’s follow the religion of humanity without fighting over building of temples or mosques. Let’s deal with societal problems without any political blame games. Let’s honor the ones who died for this nation not just on one particular date, but everyday.