Question

500 words Essay on ‘Independence can be meaningful only if it becomes instrument for expression of our culture’, said Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya. To me, it means…

Answer 1

    Before independence of India, all nationalist political parties and freedom fighters had only one aim, to get independence and to drive the British away.  But once, India gets independence, then what?  Thus what independence means and how we are going to develop our country and people, are important issues.  In this light, during a series of speeches, Deendayal U. made this famous quote.

        A nation creates for itself some social systems (associated cultures).  How we want to live socially is our social culture.   Some of these social systems later become a hindrance to prosperity of the country.  Then we must give up those systems.  As time progresses, those systems may again be useful for us in our future.  Certain cultural practices may not be useful in later phases of a country.  Forcing to stick to the old culture and not being adaptive is a loss of cultural independence.

     Independence can be summarized as the combination of all elements that create what we are at a particular point in time.   Then we change continuously as the time progresses.  Our culture also changes accordingly.  Not being able to adapt ourselves like this is a loss of cultural independence.  (In Pakistan there is no cultural independence.)

    Bharatiya culture has diversity and plurality.  Indians have time and again tried discovering scientifically the unity that puts them together.  Chemists found that there are different chemical elements in the world.   Physicists proved that all elements only consist of energy.  So entire Universe consists of forms of energy.  Similarly, India consists of only Bharatiya culture among all diversity and plurality.

   If we can reconcile the ideals of western political systems, with the help of our culture than it can benefit us.  There should be cultural independence when we say we are free citizens of the country.  However that should be constructive to the individual, family, society and the nation.  It should not be deteriorating and degrading any of the other.