ASK MAULANA

ASK MAULANA Your Questions Answered India got its freedom in the year 1947 and on 15th August 2017, we are stepping into the 71st year of the Independence. Kindly share with us your experience of August 15, 1947. Born in 1925, I grew up in a family where active interest was taken in national affairs, and there was much talk of independence. The whole atmosphere outside the house was likewise emotionally charged with the urge to be free. All this led me to believe that slavery was the worst of conditions and independence the very best. Like many others I formed an innocent conception of the independence movement as being designed to bring the country straight out of hell and into heaven. With all those impressions I waited for the day of Independence in a state of high expectation. It came finally on August 15, 1947. I was then 22 years of age and living in the UP city of Azamgarh. I still remember going out at night and seeing all the shops and houses illuminated. The new sense of freedom made me feel elated and as I walked along in a state of jubilation, I felt my feet were barely touching the ground. This was a state of happiness I had only so far read about. Now I was having my first real experience of it on August 15, 1947. Unfortunately, it was also my last. Why do you say that the feeling of happiness was your last? When the dawn appeared after the night of August 15, all the lights had gone out, and never again did they shine with the same brilliance. Never again in our state of freedom, did we experience the same euphoria as we did when we were as yet on the brink of being independent. We now had our freedom realized. The happiness we had expected had failed to materialize. This tragedy is attributable not so much to the British as to the Indians themselves. There had indeed been a problem between the British and the Indians prior to 1947, but the only solution offered was an intensification of the loathing the Indians felt for the British in the hopes that the latter would begin to feel themselves so alienated from the country that they would become unable to rule it. It was in this atmosphere of antagonism that the journey towards freedom was made. The period prior to 1947 was marked by destructiveness; the policy of animosity and opposition proved