Sovereignty; full power of a governing body over itself, without any interference from outside

On the 15th of August, 72 years ago, we received Independence as a nation. Many laid down their lives and sacrificed their luxuries to attain self-rule in India. You may have heard people say we are lucky to have been born in a free country as we do not know the cost at which it was achieved. Our sovereignty, i.e. our absolute power over our own country (as most dictionaries define it)was the motive for which a century-long struggle ensued in our country. But today the lines of sovereignty are blurrier than ever, the billiard ball model of states is held questionable by most political scientists and scholars, the extent to which IGOs or other countries influence a nation, both culturally and in terms of power, is out of control, and all this begs the question- was it all that we had hoped for seventy-two years ago? Or are we just falling into a self-deceiving trap of modern colonialism? What was the sacrifice of thousands of lives really for?

But then maybe, all along, our definition of sovereignty itself was wrong. Maybe sovereignty wasn't just about ruling a land or being able to govern a group of people and have absolute power over them. Maybe it was about being vulnerable to influences from all over and still being empowered enough to make your own decisions. Maybe we have forgotten, that swarajya, as we refer to it, isn't about controlling our own, it is about setting our own free from the iron cage they were trapped in. Maybe we have, somehow, along the way, forgotten that the people who laid their lives down did so because they wanted us to have the freedom to choose our own ideologies unlike them, and not because they wanted to enforce their own ideologies upon us.

Wishing you a Happy Independence Day! Hoping that this Independence Day, we all are open-minded enough to follow the true ideal of sovereignty-the ideal of absolute control over oneself, and are able to set everyone, including ourselves, free.

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