You know generally, Nations are made because of similarity in race, religion, ethnicity, ideologies, and languages… But in that sense, India is in defiance of all those things. if you were to travel for just a couple of hundred kilometers you would see a lot to be different! But for over 10,000 years we have been a nation. Even when we were ruled by over 200 different political entities of those times, we were still called a nation; not only by ourselves but also by the world at large. Today, as an independent geographical body we have been here for 74 years but as a cultural nation, we’ve been here for thousands.

You see it is not the similarity that binds us, but the throbbing diversity that runs each of our veins that does. To a lot of the world, this diversity looks like chaos. But if you were to compare the order of a manicured garden and the order of a forest, for sure those who’ve lived in manicured gardens would feel lost in a forest, but you would know that if you left a manicured garden untended for a month, there would be no garden at all while the forest not only survives but thrives while doing so.

As we stand today, we have come a long way from where we began. This year, India  launched year-long grand celebrations from August to commemorate 75 years of Independence with a slew of programs and projects to showcase ‘development, governance, technology, reform, progress and policy’ over the years- a well deserved celebration!

But this is not all that we have achieved as a nation in this short span. Not even close. Every two seconds we build one toilet. Every second we open two bank accounts. Every fifteen minutes we build one kilometre of highway, even today! But this is not enough either, there is a lot more that is yet to be done… If in a few hundred years, we can celebrate a day when the world is free from all boundaries and distinctions, that would be a tremendous Independence Day.

Swami Vivekananda said the future India must be much greater than ancient India …. India is awakening!

Throughout most of ancient history, we have been the largest economy. As of today, the world has started its journey to truly becoming flat and with the advent of digitalization connecting us and creating global communities in ways never thought of before, I believe India will lead the world again.

Quoting Dr. Deepak Vohra an ex-Indian ambassador, “We are not Indians because we live in India. We are Indians because India lives in us.” That is who we are. And therefore, since India is awakening, all of you who were sleeping for the last 5 minutes  that I have been speaking should also now wake up now because…