to be free

India celebrates it's independence from the British yet fails to see that it's still trapped in it's own cage.

Every August, India wraps itself in the tricolour. Streets bloom with saffron and schoolchildren sing the anthem with their eyes wide open. But after the parades, if we really listen, we can still hear the clink of shackles, only, they aren't British anymore. They are ours.

Caste, for example, is not a relic of the past. it is alive and breathing.

And killing. 

Between 2019 and 2023, at least 377 people died cleaning sewers and septic tanks. These are not “accidents”; these are deaths in jobs our laws have banned for decades. 77% of those who do this work are Dalit. They are not born to it; they are pushed into it. Every time we look away, the bars of the cage grow thicker.

For women, too, freedom has limits. The outrage after the 2012 Delhi gang rape was supposed to be a turning point. Yet in 2022, India recorded over 31,000 rapes. Eighty-five every single day. Conviction rates hover around 27 to 28 percent. We built “fast-track” courts, but justice still limps while violence runs. 

Religion tells a similar story. We pride ourselves on tolerance, but research shows we prefer to live apart. In Delhi, many Muslims cluster in certain neighbourhoods not for comfort but for safety. This is not coexistence, it is segregation. In 2022 alone, there were 272 recorded riots. The bombs may not always explode, but the fuse is always lit.

Even the voiceless suffer under our watch. India’s main anti-cruelty law still imposes fines of just ₹10 to ₹50 for first-time offenders, rates unchanged since 1960. We click “like” on animal rescue videos while laws let abusers walk away for the price of a bus ticket.

This is the uncomfortable truth: we are not held back by foreign rulers anymore. We are held back by our own indifference. 

Independence was never supposed to end at the removal of the Union Jack. It was supposed to be the start of something better.

A country where caste cannot dictate your life, where women walk without fear, where religion is not a boundary line, where animals are not tortured without consequence, where no one dies under the fists of a mob.

If we really want to celebrate freedom, we cannot do it only with parades and songs. We must do it by tearing down the cages we keep building for ourselves. That is the work of this generation. That is the independence we still have to win.

So wave the flag today, let the colours flutter against the August sky. Sing the anthem, let your voice tremble with pride. But when the crowds thin and the last fireworks fade into smoke, remember this: a nation is not truly free if its people still live in fear and silence. The British left in 1947. The question that should haunt us is, when will we?