On August 15, 1947, India gained freedom from the British Raj as a result of sacrifices made by great leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Pandit Nehru, Maulana Azad, and thousands of others who suffered grievously at the hands of Britishers. Our forefathers had a beautiful vision of a united India which was free from poverty, communal hatred, slavery to foreign habits and goods, and had also the full liberty to build its own future, which was styled by Mahatma Gandhi as the ‘Ram Rajya’. But today, when we look at the present state of our beloved country, we are unable to match it with the vision which our freedom fighters, or the father of our nation, had envisaged.
Most of us would agree on this point that what we have today is not Ram Rajya. In fact, it seems that Ram Rajya is nothing but a mere mirage, for a well-known verse about Ram Rajya says that it is a place or a period where everyone, right from the king down to the most ordinary subject, is righteous and that purity which is the essence of true religion, is visible everywhere. But one finds that in the present India, not purity but poverty, and not virtues but violence and vandalism are visible everywhere.
Under such a scenario, if we want to have real freedom, we will have to liberate ourselves from the chains of 5 vices viz: lust, anger, greed, ego, attachment. As long as we have not secured a release from these five well-known enemies, we cannot call ourselves truly independent. We should not forget t.