Let Freedom Reign

K.M. Venkat Narayan

December 23, 2007.

(Inspired by a visit to New Delhi) 

 

Crass class and caste,

Won’t you leave modern India fast?

The subservient culture of Madam and Sir,

Won’t you soon into meritocracy blur?

 

Why I ask,

That the populace still bask,

In archaic traditions

Of status, titles, and positions?

 

If you are the world’s largest democracy,

Why do you preserve a grinding bureaucracy?

Which stifles free spirit,

And breaks human grit?

 

If you are a rising power,

Why do you fret the blooming flower?

The past is but an ugly weed,

The future begs to be freed.

 

It is time to call a spade a spade,

To end the culture of servant and maid,

Of patronizing charity,

And hypocritically pious austerity.  

 

For communal harmony, as you can tell,

Your beloved Father fell.

Yet, after sixty years of strife,

Such tensions are still rife.

 

To keep you enslaved,

The colonials a civil code engraved,

Isn’t it ironic?

You have embraced this system true and demonic.

 

From your past, it is time to break out,

And to live up to your growing clout.

The world sees your growing might,

But that won’t come without a fight.

 

Wake up, and rise,

Before the window of hope dies.

Free up your people,

And let them scale the steeple.

 

Let freedom reign,

And the Sirs and Madams wane,

Let the chauffeur drive his dream,

In the land of opportunity let everyone beam. 

 

May that heaven of freedom

Hail the brave and end the chiefdom.

May ideas, merit, and self-worth rule

In an honest world that none can fool.