Today on the eve of 73rd anniversary of our independence, I have been given the honour to address you all. I was also given a theme around which accretion of my words will build.
India is a great country, some might agree, and some might disagree. But what makes a country a great nation? Literacy? Democracy? Freedom of speech? The truth is these all are attributes to high society. However, they are not binary, they are grey. They got gradients and have different shades which colour every country differently. But if you have to point out one single thing to look into and say if the country is great or not. People may have different opinions, but for me, its the resilience of people on the face of adversity. Its the optimism of people, the faith in themselves and the authority that everything will turn out to be great is what created happiness. It’s not about how much you have, it is about how much you could have, it is about the journey and constant movement even in an abject crisis. Human is an adaptable species, they could adapt to extraordinary situations. A situation which they thought was never possible they could overcome. I met a girl who completed a marathon, who started with running 50 meters. It’s not unique to India, every human has that capability to be pushed beyond their limit in their wildest dreams. But the only thing unique to us is that we were forced to live such a way. We didn’t have a choice. But is been going on for so long that its a part of us now. We Indians could struggle hard and strive. The only problem is that we don’t have much confidence and hence we are often clueless. We need both direction and magnitude to take huge endeavours. We are Atamanirbhar in a sense were are capable of finding our own way in the world. We have the necessary skill and energy to do things, but we lacking the drive and sense of direction.
Few things that we have to stop doing as a culture to achieve the atmnirbharta that we are talking about. We need to stop eating and getting intoxicated by our history. Our history is great but is in no sense unique. We need to get away from quoting how great we are based on how great we were, what our forefathers did should only inspire us to outdo them. Building legacy takes time and work, and so does continuing it. Getting stuck in the past means refusing to plan for the future. Be proud of who you are but be more honourable about who you could become.
There are a few things we need to start doing as a culture. The most important thing that I could think of is developing Scientific thinking in our culture. Try logic and understanding in your life, make rational decisions, it is hard, but it is worth it. The second thing that we should do is try to get inspiration from other cultures. Everybody, who is either successful or otherwise achieved their position after stumbling countless times, and we need to respect that. There is no shame in admitting that we are not perfect in all aspects of life, and I think it stupid to think so. Taking inspiration is not always copying but integrating that with our own culture.
In the end, I would like to quote the Mahatma by saying “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” And that is something that we could do at the individual level to make ourselves atmanirbhar, and by extension, we will make an atmanirbhar Bharat.
Thank you.