Independence Day Speech

Honorable Guests, Parents, dear students, and friends,

Today marks the 62nd year of our independence from foreign rule. The word "foreign rule" still haunts our memories; for we can't but accede that it was our own weakness that brought us under the domination of the utilitarian invaders, who came to this land just to make profit out of it. Still, our hearts are filled with gratitude for the Providence of God whereby He secured to us through these mercenary colonizers the modernization of the land. The Orientalists stirred the intellect of the nation see its own depth of grandeur, the Evangelicals awakened our conscience to humanist values and compassion, and we saw great movements birthed that justly and pacifically sought the emancipation of our great and noble nation. And, now as we celebrate another distinctive day of freedom, may this be our prayer that each passing day of this next year every little child of this nation will awake with a sense of justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity: the values that defined our struggle for independence, and the dream that captured the passion of our freedom fighters. May we be ever more provoked to be the harbingers of righteousness, peace, and joy in this nation; so, that the words of the great poet who also wrote our anthem come to final reality:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Jai Hind!