Happy Independence Day!India's pledge of Allegiance
Today is the 63rd Anniversary of the Republic of India, a beacon of pluralistic democracy where every one has a right to the pursuit of happiness and his or her dreams.
We are proud of our heritage - a multi-faith, multi-cultural, multi-regional and multi-linguistic society, where we have come to accept and respect every which way people have lived their lives.
For over 5000 years, India has been a beacon of pluralism - it has embraced Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Baha’i and Zoroastrianism to include in the array of the indigenous religions; Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. It also has several hundred local traditions that people follow.
India led the way to the freedom movement, since 1947 every country has been liberated from colonialism. Indian democracy is a shining example to the world, where the people have peacefully transferred the powers and express their aspirations to be in governance through the power of ballot.
We Indians are inherently PLURALISTS and economically capitalistic. We believe in "live-and-let-live" life style, which is the essence of capitalism.
Through the years we have expressed the highest degree of maturity on handling extreme situations; the more divergent opinions we hear, the larger our heart grows, the bigger our embrace would be and we can cushion more differences.
We still have a small percentage of population clamoring to see the value of co-existence and about 1/10th of 1% of Indians are far from getting it. In my reach out to about 10,000 Indians across the world, my formula should produce about 1000 individuals to be abhorrent to the idea of peaceful co-existence. Thank God, I have found them to be less than 100 Indians among the 10,000 on my list who are obdurate to the idea of co-existence, i.e., they are less than 1/100th of 1% of Indians, regardless of what faith they follow, are they significant statistically? A majority of all of us, i.e., over 99.9% of us are good people.
On this occasion, I have included the link to our National Anthem, please play it and see the beauty of our Pluralism. I have been playing it since 5:00 AM this morning and must have played at least 20 times and I love it. It grows on me.
National Anthem: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7399792002477900458
If you are a You Tube Member, you can click the following link and play 22 patriotic Songs, I may upload another 15 later this afternoon, but you have 22. The individual songs are also listed below
http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?pi=0&ps=20&sf=&sa=0&sq=&dm=0&p=11804D049D6DA550
I am proud of my heritage and am proud to be an Indian-American. Below my signature I have included a new Pledge of Allegiance to Mother India, please take time to think about it and invite you to write comments as well.
Jai Hind.
Mike Ghouse is a thinker, writer speaker and an activist of pluralism, interfaith, co-existence, peace, Islam and India. He is a frequent guest at the TV, radio and print media offering pluralistic solutions to issues of the day. His websites and Blogs are listed on http://www.mikeghouse.net/________________________________________
INDIAN PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
Mike Ghouse
With the belief that every Indian wants justice to every human being; rich or poor, connected or not, and demands fair treatment of every one of the 1.1 Billion Indians, we must come to grips with the social and community life to create an exemplary India, that will become a model nation in the world.
We have to give room to the extremists in every section of our communities be it Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Zoroastrian or other, hoping they would recognize the God given space to each one of us and eventually see the benefits of co-existence.
I propose that the parliament of India introduce a bill for every political, cultural and religious organization in India to register with the Home Ministry, state their purpose, list their assets for public scrutiny, list the membership roster to be updated annually. Include a modified version of the 7 items into Indian Penal Code, and make it in to the law to punish the violators of the law.
Patriotism should be defined in terms of what you do to uplift the hopes of people, in terms of education to all, jobs to as many as we can in each successive year, home for every human, and a better life style to every Indian.
Every public office holder from the Peon to the President of India, and every one in between must take this pledge and live by it. Violation should disqualify him or her from holding the public office. Let it be monitored publicly.
1. I pledge allegiance to India, the nation that stands for liberty and justice for all.
2. I pledge that I honor and treat every Indian with "full" dignity.
3. I pledge that all individuals would be treated on par.
4. I pledge that I will treat all religions with equal respect, equal access and equal treatment.
5. I pledge that I will oppose any act that treats any Indian less than myself.
6. I Pledge that I will work for a India, where every individual can live with security and aspire for prosperity.
7. I pledge that I will protect, preserve and value every inch of India and every human soul in India
This would be the first step towards ensuring a Just, peaceful and prosperous India, that can sustain its progress and peace.
Jai Hind
Mike Ghouse is a thinker, writer speaker and an activist of pluralism, interfaith, co-existence, peace, Islam and India. He is a frequent guest at the TV, radio and print media offering pluralistic solutions to issues of the day. His websites and Blogs are listed on http://www.mikeghouse.net/NATIONAL SONGS ARE ON THE LEFT COLUMN OF THE BLOG http://www.mikeghouseforindia.net/
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