The following is for your enjoyment [You wrote: I wonder if others feel this way about their country and would enjoy hearing from them.]
**
1--It is a nice piece, full of patriotism, written on the occasion of the national day of Independence. It should do proud to any citizen of the country.
2--I feel this way about my country, too, with the difference that I am proud of the fact that what India has given to the world, as a CONTINUING culture over 13000 years, is a sound base of knowledge, logic, science, philosophy, ethics and morality. It has by and large practiced the last two, history being witness that India has never committed aggression upon other lands for the sake of either propagating its religion or political-economical philosophy or beliefs. When others were persecuted or otherwise, India was the country that gave love and asylum to others, be they Jews; Zoroastrians, Christians or Sufis.
3--I am also proud of the fact that women have, over the millennia, enjoyed an exalted place in Indian society, barring some stray incidents and periods in a long history of currently 1.2 billion people, such deviation and variance being statistically unavoidable. Women of the Vedic period (circa 1500-1200 BCE), were epitomes of intellectual and spiritual attainments. The Vedas have volumes to say about these women, who both complemented and supplemented their male partners. When it comes to talking about significant female figures of the Vedic period, four names - Ghosha, Lopamudra, Sulabha Maitreyi, and Gargi - come to mind.--- http://hinduism.about.com/od/history/a/ghosha_lopa...
The names of Gargi and Maitreyi were among great scholars who engaged and even defeated men in Shastraatrtha (serious arguments of logic and knowledge). Even the wife of Kalidasa (probably 370-450 AD) was a great scholar and had declared that she would marry only him who could defeat her in Shastraartha.
4—I am also proud of a free press / media in this country (as per some international experts, even more free than in the USA, where, around the time of the the Iraq war, the “Embedded” journalists and the major national dailies in USA made a pretty sorry spectacle distorting news.
5—I am also proud of the Indian judicial system which is largely free and robust, as acknowledged by the international jurists, the hiccups that happen frequently being attributable to the law makers who are unable to find time to devote to the urgent task of making or amending laws.
6—Now, some comments on what you wrote:
If any of you reading this piece live in this country, you should understand you have the right to disagree with your lawmakers because of those people. If you live outside of the U.S.A., I hope your government gives you the same freedom we have here.
>>That's great, but nothing unique to the USA. There are other democracies where this applies, too.
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This last, in part, is due to my country’s determination to bring our ideal of freedom to those less fortunate around the world. I can’t remember a time when we weren’t fighting somewhere, and I can only hope the politicians and military people know what they’re doing.
>>> Therein lies the rub. The USA has, unilaterally, chosen itself to be the grand Messiah of the world. The only difference is that while the real Messiah preached and practised love, the present day Messiah maneuvers and practices war, with the result that you cannot "can’t remember a time when we weren’t fighting somewhere". Nor can I. Sometimes these wars were engineered by imagining and falsely creating and propagating the vile WMD, which never existed, as a grand excuse to "protect" itself and the world from the WMD and to "save" the people from their only elected president in the whole of the Arab world!
***
God Bless America and all who believe in freedom!
>>> I whole heartedly agree with that. I would only like to add: "God smite those who kill others' freedom".
M C Gupta
5 July 2010 |
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