Happy Independence Day from Halifax!

Today is August 15th. 60 years ago, in 1947, India gained independence from the British rule on this day. We certainly have come a long way since that.

 There has been a lot of changes, culturally and economically, in the last 60 years that has now promoted India as a leader among developing nations. All the right ingredients are there for the country to take off and be a leader in world trade.

This independence also marks my 10th independence day outside the country . Can’t believe it has been almost 11 years since I first left the country. These 11 years have also been a period of rapid growth for India. As an NRI, I am one among the millions of ambassadors that India has outside its outboundaries. Something that we often fail to recognize is this simple fact that every little thing, good or bad, that we do, is often added to the stereotype of ‘Indian’ . We all do our best to uphold the values of our nation and fellow Indians. At the same time, we also need to promote integration amongst ourselves. My lament has been the fact that we still fail to recognize the strength and advantages of being a single community.

Our petty egos and narrow mindedness comes in our way when we try to form a healthy organization. I recently heard that there is a move to form a separate Indo Canadian Community Association (separate from the Indo Canadian Association, INCA). Apparently, the objective of this group is to build a community centre. I am baffled why this cannot be achieved from within the existing INCA group.  There are approximately 3000 people in Nova Scotia of South Asian origin. Do we need 3000 groups to serve all their interests?

And how come there is only one Chinese association, one Lebanese group, one Greek association?

On this day of independence I cannot but help thinking that one thing that the British left for us is the concept of ‘Divide and rule’. We are somehow struck to that solution for every little problem. If we see a difference of opinion or receive opposition to an idea in a group, our easiest solution is to form a different group, with the end result that there are only a few supporters for the original idea and there are as many groups as there are ideas

I would like to say one thing to the leaders of various groups here in Halifax. There are only  a small number of us here and not enough of us to support (both time wise and money wise) all the groups. By forming many little groups, we scare away our own community members, and the result is that many fellow Indians alienate themselves from any such community activities. Think about it before forming the next group and seeking more fund raising !

Jai Hind!

Venkatesh.