On the 26th of January each year the countries of Australia and India both celebrate their national days. I’m spending this particular 26th on the subcontinent, observing Republic Day activities which will this year allow Indians to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the creation of the independent Republic of India. I’ve spent enough Australia Days at home to know what’s going on there: everyone’s chilling out in their own way, enjoying the last real fling of the summer holidays before work starts back proper; and the media’s gone into super-patriot mode, re-hashing all of the usual tired cliches about how awesome Australia is and what it means to be Australian (hint: starts with “B” and ends with “BQ”), while a significant portion of the population cringe just a little bit. In recent years, especially around Australia Day itself, there seems to have been a growing gulf between those who love Australia to death and those who the former aggressively dare to leave if they don’t love it. The latter simply want to point out that it’s possible to love your country and acknowledge its faults at the same time. It’s curious that a day intended to unite Australia tends to somewhat divide it instead.

In the ex-Portuguese territory of Goa, an opinion writer by the name of Joe D’Souza, writing in the Herald, has written an honest report card on the country he loves, and I’m wondering what the reaction might be if a similar article appeared in an Australian paper.

India has come a long way since it declared itself as a Republic. We can boast of our education, which has produced internationally recognized space scientists, software engineers and doctors renowned in every field of medicine. Slowly and steadily India is marching from being a poor developing country with a begging bowl to be a super-power of today with a global reach. India recently played an important role in the discussions regarding climate change in Copenhagen at an international summit on global warming.

Indian entrepreneurs have done wonders to establish empires in other countries, acquiring thus the status of being multinationals. But looking at the other side of the coin, we in India often wonder if the rich in own (sic) country have done enough to usher in social justice with a sense of corporate social responsibility to week out economic disparity, acute poverty and raging hunger amongst over 300 million poor people of our country. We see all around us economic disparity growing alarmingly, thus allowing 10 per cent of our population, in charge of over 70 per cent of the nation’s wealth and nearly 50 per cent of our population barely sustaining themselves on a daily basis. Though we pride ourselves on having sent an unmanned mission on the moon’s orbit, we have to hang our heads in shame that each day millions of our countrymen have to sleep without a meal and also without a roof over their heads.

Yes, we are a free country but should we not work to stop exploitation and enslavement of our fellow human beings? Or should we remain quiet, callous and unconcerned about the rampant acts of corruption, nepotism, discrimination, exploitation and goondaism growing in our society? No doubt we have a long, long way to go before actually realizing Gandhiji’s dream of a prosperous and just Indian nation.

We in India often preach high ideals and conveniently forget that it is we who have to practice what we preach. We denounce child labour but do absolutely nothing to economically empower the poor children to go to school. We condemn abortions but we do not consider it a social responsibility to take care of the children born to poor and infirm Indian parents. We want our house to remain clean yet find it appropriate that our garbage should land in our neighbour’s property or street corners.

Un-Indian!