Jai Hind: Proud to be an Indian

Freedom is something that most of us has taken for granted. Most of us reading this have born in free India and had all the comforts and privileges offered by freedom. And we were thus shielded from an era where even things as personal as thoughts were controlled.

I was talking to few college students in Mumbai and I realized that most of us are disconnected with reality. Most of them think that its ok to accept western culture and leave our heritage behind. And then there are some who had their feet firmly planted in ground and want to first understand the past and want to plant careful steps in future.

I was wondering, is there a way to find out what everyone thinks about India as a country and what is their big idea of freedom and independence? For a lot of people freedom is an oppurtunity to pursue their dreams. For some it is their second nature. They look at it as a way of life. For some it is something insignificant for which all the freedom fighters lost their lives. Some are indifferent and haven’t really thought about freedom at all.

Which category do you fall under?

The Idea
This brings me to the idea. The Freedom Blog. What if Indians all over the world submitted one piece of work that they think symbolizes freedom? This could be an original thought, a blog post that you have written, an original composition, a link to a website, a photograph, a picture, a video, a music piece, an incident, a mashup or any other way that you think expresses your idea of freedom.

Post this submissions stage, all these submissions would be put on the Freedom Blog in context and publish them on a website or a blog on 15th August 2008 for everyone to scrutinize.

The result will give us a fairly good indication of what people really think of Freedom. How they perceive it and what it actually means to them.

Interested?

Few ground rules

• Deadline for submission: 5th August 2008
• How to submit: Email your ideas to saurabh.garg@gmail.com.
• Ownership: You retain the ownership of your work. I will just re-publish them on the Freedom Blog with due credits.
• Terms and Conditions: None.

How can you help?

• Obviously you can help by submitting your work.
• You can also help by spreading word about the Freedom Blog. You can post on your blogs, in your twitter streams, email to friends, share on social networks, call up people etc.
• And finally if people do submit their work, you can help in filtering and putting things in context.

How did I stumble on this?
I happen to be a huge fan of collaborative experiments on the Internet. I have participated in quite a few myself and its about time I did something of my own. I was working on some other idea when I stumbled on this. Obviously serendipity plays a huge role in my life and it so happened that Independence Day is around the corner. And I thought If I started acceptance of media from 5th of July, people will have a month to ideate and create their work, I will have time to collect it and then I will be left with some time (9 days) to actually collate and make some sense out of it and finally release it on 15th August 2008.

What do I get out of this?

• Satisfaction of actually being able to unite Indians into thinking like a group.
• Understanding of the way people think.
• Answer to the question “if people actually cherish freedom and independence”. Every submission would mean that entrant has indeed thought about freedom at some point in time and is aware of the comfort (and challenges) that freedom brings. Every person who spreads the world is an Indian at heart and is also seeking answers to these questions. Every person who reads is concerned and wants to enrich his/her understanding of Indians.
• UPDATE: Someone has already asked if this is a commercial project. NO this is not commercial. This is not sponsored by anyone. There is no media coverage happening.

Obviously none of this is possible without help from you guys. Please let me know if this makes sense. Thanks for your time.

I also blog at http://saurabhgarg.com/thoughts/