Last night, I was watching the movie ‘Wapas Aaunga’. Naseeruddin Shah plays a 95-year-old man on his deathbed, still carrying within him the pain and memories of Partition.
It stayed with me.
The movie was a reminder that our Independence did not arrive without enormous human pain.
The Radcliffe Line suddenly divided lands, villages, communities and families. Extremely poor planning – an example of complete design and planning failure.
Millions of people found themselves on the wrong side of a newly drawn border and had to leave behind homes, livelihoods, relationships and memories built over generations.
And yet, from that extraordinary pain emerged an extraordinary gift to our generation — Freedom.
Most of us were not born in 1947. Perhaps we can never fully understand what Independence meant to those who had lived without it.
For us, freedom has become almost invisible.
We wake up with the freedom to dream. We have the freedom to choose our education, profession and enterprise. We have the freedom to design our future. We have the freedom to disagree, experiment, fail, rebuild and choose again.
But as social impact leaders associated with Mission Samriddhi or otherwise, perhaps Independence Day should provoke a different question:
Have all the Radcliffe Lines really disappeared?
Today, nobody is drawing a physical line through our villages.But millions of invisible lines still divide community, society and opportunity.
These lines are not drawn on maps.
They are drawn by unequal access to knowledge, opportunity, confidence, institutions and economic capability.
Perhaps this is the unfinished journey of Independence.
79 years later, Independence leaves us with a more personal question:
Which invisible lines still determine who gets to dream, who gets to choose, and who gets to design their own future?
That question stayed with me after the movie ended last night. I hope it stays with us a little longer.
Happy Independence Day.
