India proudly celebrated its 79th Independence Day on 15 August 2025. It is a sovereign nation, but its strength, pride and sovereignty are being tested by the current alarming global events and the script writers of evil designs. As it experiences significant geopolitical pulls and pushes, both from within and without, India must find its own way. Its geographical location and topography make it quite vulnerable to potential alien aggressions, from land, sea and air, much like its interesting history.
Seventy-eight (78) years ago, India raised and unfurled its beautiful Tricolour, declaring Independence from the British after a 90-yearlong freedom struggle, which began in 1857, with India’s first War for Independence, also called ‘The Great Mutiny’ by the British East India Company (the ‘Company’). The Company took exactly 100 years to fully subjugate India (now the Indian Subcontinent), starting with their unlikely win in the (infamous) Battle of Plassey, in 1757, thanks to insidious betrayal of an Indian king by some greedy and corrupt Indian merchants.
Insidious betrayals by one’s very own trusted individuals continued during the Company’s prosperous growth in India and even characterised how the Lahore Durbar lost the second Anglo-Sikh War to the British East India Company, in March 1846, which had to cede the territory of Kashmir to the Company in lieu of cash. A week later, the Company sold / gifted Kashmir to the Raja of Jammu for a relatively petty sum. The famous Kohinoor diamond was also lost by the Lahore Durbar to the British as a consequence of the defeat. Similar betrayals also characterised the loss of the 1857 War of Independence, following which the British Crown formally took over India (now the Indian Subcontinent) till vacating it in August 1947.
Throughout its history, at least since the 1757 Battle of Plassey, India has paid a heavy price, in one form or the other, for insatiable material greed and lust for power of a few Indians, and betrayals by some of its very own. History is testing it again.
India has to work extremely hard to preserve its sovereignty. The trading British East India Company may have long gone but much stronger, surreptitious and silently aggressive offshoots of the Company have resurfaced across the globe, including within India. In a seemingly polarised world, between the West and East, India has and will always struggle to be aligned to one. No surprise, therefore, independent India’s legendary first prime minister, Pandit Nehru, chose to be nonaligned, as he had the wisdom and the vision to gauge the issues with choosing one over the other.
Logically, India can’t afford to alienate the East, as it forms the core of the East, but India’s wealthy and the influential, especially those living and prospering in the capitalistic West, tend to exert both covert and overt pressures on the politicians in their mission to pull this massive nation of 1.43 billion people towards the West, thereby, disadvantaging and marginalising around 95% of India’s population.
Save the naive and the uneducated (individuals / groups / communities), to the educated and the informed, there is no significant difference these days between the West and the East, all are doused with toxicity of capitalism, albeit in varying degrees.
So, in conclusion, India must find its own way. It has the strength and the capability to do so and lead the world.
Warm greetings, India, on celebrating your 79th Independence Day!
Bill K Koul (Perth, Western Australia), 16 August 2025
Copyright Bill K Koul
Brilliant piece