By Cedric Prakash
Ahmedabad, August 11, 2026: It is August 2026! The anniversary of India’s freedom from colonial rule in 1947! The sad reality is that the struggle for freedom in India continues today!
First: let’s go back to history! About 84 years ago. Mahatma Gandhi and several of our freedom fighters had assembled in Bombay.
They had just one goal in mind: Freedom! India had been enslaved under colonial rule since 1757, and it was high time to break free! Gandhi’s call was clear, loud, determined and unequivocal.
On August 8, 1942, at the Bombay session of the All India Congress Committee, he introduced the resolution to start a ‘Quit India Movement’. The resolution was unanimously passed at that historic meeting.
Later, he delivered a fiery speech at Gowalia Tank Maidan (now known as ‘August Kranti Maidan’), which marked the launch of the Quit India Movement.
He said, “There is a mantra, a short one that I give you. You imprint it in your heart and let every breath of yours give an expression to it.
The mantra is ‘do or die’. We shall either be free or die in the attempt.” The next day, on August 9, the ‘kranti’ had begun; thousands were out on the streets vociferously demanding that the British should leave India immediately and unconditionally!
Most of the leaders, belonging to every strata of society, were arrested. They were fearless! Their struggle, with immense sacrifices, continued till India attained her freedom on 15 August 1947! Today, however, it is freedom struggle @ 2026!
Then to that important night! India was ‘to awake to freedom’, with the clock striking the midnight hour on August 14-15 , 1947. The Constituent Assembly to whom power was to be transferred began its session at 11 pm on August 14.
After an address by the President, Jawaharlal Nehru, our first Prime Minister, made his now immortal ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech. He called upon the members to take a solemn pledge to serve India and her people.
“Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.”
Powerful, meaningful words from a visionary statesman! The reality today is a freedom struggle @ 2026!
In the latest 2026 Environmental Performance Index, India is ranked 176 out of 177 countries! What a terrible shame. The effects of climate change have wreaked havoc on the country.
At the receiving end are the poor and the marginalised who suffer very much. Government projects favour their crony capitalist friends, providing them with a license to loot, plunder and rape the environment; the continued use of fossil fuels is a case in point.
The Environment is in a shambles! The destruction of precious forest lands and biodiversity, to cater to so-called ‘development’ projects, contributes immensely to the climatic changes one experiences today.
Sections of the corporate sector and particularly the mining mafia have no qualms of conscience in depleting precious natural resources, with the sole desire of profiteering.
The Adani Group-owned ‘Greater Nicobar Project’ is a terrible disaster in the making. Adani is also planning the takeover of Mumbai’s salt pans. For those who care for our common home, it is a freedom struggle @ 2026!
In the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2026, India is ranked 102 out of 123 countries, with a level of hunger classified as “serious”.
Millions in our country still live below the poverty line and suffer from want, hunger, deprivation and without daily access to roti, kapda aur makaan. The country still does not have any official relevant, reliable, updated data with regard to poverty.
Millions want to break away from the shackles of poverty. It is for them, the freedom struggle @ 2026!
India today yearns for freedom! For every citizen to live in dignity and equity, in harmony and in peace, in truth and in justice, in acceptance of the other and in the celebration of pluralism.
To preserve, protect and promote Constitutional values, the democratic ethos, the right to dissent, freedom of speech and the secular fabric of the nation.
Freedom from untruth, deceit, lies and ‘feku-isms’. Freedom from manipulated, selective and biased history. Freedom from hate and violence, from rape and killing, from extortion and corruption, from uniformity and monoculturalism, from authoritarianism and subjugation.
The cry is: freedom for all! The Adivasis, Dalits and Other Backward Classes, for the minorities and the marginalised, for women and the other Genders, for the small farmers and the indigenous coastal people, for the casual labourers and the migrant workers, for the excluded and the exploited, the human rights defenders and the truthful, objective INDIA’S media.
They all demand the freedom to be fearless and transparent citizens! As India yearns for that total freedom, we pray in the words of Tagore, from his ‘Gitanjali’, “into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. For all: freedom struggle @ 2026!
How true of India today! Hope, however, never dies for we, the people of India, it is ‘freedom struggle @ 2026!’
(Jesuit Cedric Prakash is a human rights, justice, reconciliation and peace activist/writer. Contact: cedricprakash@gmail.com)