Seventy-five years in realising the ‘heaven of freedom’

The country is agog with completing 75 years of journeying as an independent country. We have truly excelled in many spheres despite several odds of evolving and struggling to grow out of a colonial mindset of ‘ruling over subjects’.

We as a people have demonstrated from time to time that the People prevail before power and that power devolves from People.

We celebrate the huge strides we have achieved in the field of science and technology, education and culture, infrastructural development, growing in self-sufficiency in food production and several other sectors.

We celebrate the resilience that we have shown in existing and living in a market driven world with the preeminence of capital and devaluing labour as a means of production.

We celebrate resistance that challenges us to learn from dissent and to carry on together as a People ‘leaving no one behind’.

We celebrate the richness of living with natureevidenced in every ethnic sociological group and tribe that live as human libraries even while moving to live in the ‘cloud’ which for now has become the space in which we live and have our being.

And, as we move on . . .

We need to celebrate living traditions amidst us, particularly in the distressed and suppressed dalit, tribal and adivasi communities, as a source of internal and abiding strength and spirituality for peace and security vis a vis valorizing weaponsand militarization based on perceived threats that stem from othering.

We need to celebrate and hold high the democratic-secular traditions as well as the ideals of participationwhich are now presupposed as people’s mandate in a continuing colonial and totalitarian mindset.

We need to, as conscientious peoples of all faiths, ideologies, ethnicities, varying physical and mental abilities, different generations, gender identities and sexual orientations, celebrate and continue singing the ‘songs of deliverance’- while seeking out and affirming the deliverance of every person, group and community who feel estranged in their own lands and contexts(a suggested deconstructed reading of a possible zionist presupposition of Psalm 137 in The Bible).

We continue to celebrate all thesedaily so that everyone and all of creation will in their ‘very own and this’ lifetime awaken into that ‘heaven of freedom’.

God bless India

Rev. Asir Ebenezer
General Secretary
National Council of Churches in India

(National Council of Churches in India is the ecumenical expression of 14 million Christians of the Protestant and Orthodox Church traditions. The council is a coming together of 76 nationally networked entities including historical Church traditions, Regional Christian Councils, All India Christian Organisations and specialized professional Agencies of Christian ministry in the world, having its presence in all districts of the country in every state)