For the month of April, as part of the annual A to Z Challenge, I will be endeavoring to write a short personal post every day on the subject of war and peace—short because of time, War and Peace because of the times. To make things more bearable, I will endeavor to include music in every post.
In 1960s India, the 15th of August meant a great deal to us. It was Independence Day, and it celebrated that day in 1947 when India gained its hard-won independence from British colonial rule. Our hearts thrilled as we stood tall to sing our national anthem, by Rabindranath Tagore (or Thakur), which drew us all together and simultaneously celebrated our beautiful diversity. We remembered and sought to follow in the footsteps of our national heroes, men and women who had given themselves fully to the freedom struggle, many spending years in prison yet continuing to organize. I remember the celebrations as joyful and forward-looking. We felt that there was a role for us all to play in building the newly independent nation.
Self-sufficiency was one of our national watchwords. The swadeshi (lit. of one’s own country) movement in the first decade of the 20th century, which boycotted British goods and strove to buy and sell only things that were Indian-made, became an important element in the larger movement for swaraj—self-government or self-rule. After independence, India continued to uphold the principle of swadeshi by developing its own industrial base and heavily regulating overseas imports, so as to encourage the development of the domestic market. We were aware of the trap of neo-colonialism, whereby the country would be only nominally independent, with the former colonizer or other “Western” powers remaining in control of the economy, and Indian puppets placed in top-ranking positions, as long as they played ball.
As I grew older and explored these ideas more deeply, I continued to believe in them, but my feelings became more nuanced. I came to understand that there were always different strands in the Indian independence movement, representing contending political perspectives and ideas of India. I learned that the independent nations of India and Pakistan, separated at birth by Britain’s bloody Partition, celebrated their Independence just a day apart from each other; that in this modern world no nation could be wholly self-sufficient, neither should it be; that it was not only India who could claim a song by Rabindranath Tagore as its national anthem, but also neighboring Bangladesh (see TMA #453). And I came to believe that while there was nothing wrong with loving your country, it was wrong to trumpet your own as the best country in the world.
I will never stop believing that colonialism and imperialism are bad things, that it is wrong for one nation to exploit another, whether economically or politically, and to enrich itself at another’s expense. I believe that even the smallest, least powerful nations of the world should have a place at the table and a right to control their own internal affairs. National independence remains critically important. But so does independence of thought, word, and action.
Unity in Diversity, one of India’s most quoted tenets, can in practice mean the suppression of dissenting or even different views in the face of a dominant one, with independent ideas seen as “anti-national.” And of course, no one country has the monopoly on this: countries around the world are cracking down on dissent, including the U.S. and the U.K.
I likewise believe that dependency is a dangerous condition in a rapacious world. By definition, a nation—or a region within a nation—that becomes too dependent on another nation—politically, economically, or culturally—loses its sovereignty and its self-respect, The same goes for relationships between individuals.
Instead I say, let independence continue to hold its head high, but permit interdependence to stand by its side. Unlike the state of dependency, in which a dominant party subordinates and dictates to a weaker one, interdependence is based on mutuality, and on the recognition that in this globalized world, with its limited natural resources, we need each other, but as respected equals. It is no life to be a vassal, held in thrall to a Great Power. In a world still dominated by Might is Right. the spirit of interdependence stands for mutual support. As Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, in his 1965 commencement address at Oberlin College:
All I’m saying is simply this: that all mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be – this is the interrelated structure of reality.
Two songs for today:
I Ain’t Marching Anymore, written and sung by Phil Ochs
Song of Peace/Finlandia, words by Lloyd Stone, music by Sibelius, sung by Joan Baez.
Tell Me Another 