Every year on August 15 and thereabouts, India Day is celebrated throughout the world with a taste of Indian culture, mostly in music and food.
In Madison, Wis., this special gathering led by the Association of Indians in America-Madison Chapter, was held Sept. 10 at the University of Wisconsin Library Mall on State Street -- an open, public space that allowed spectators to freely share the cultural presentations done mostly by Indian American youths.
The festive mood was a true expression of why Indians gather on this important social occasion. India Day is all about India's independence from British rule for more than a century. It is a celebration of freedom from foreign domination that practically looted the country's wealth and subjected the natives to harsh labor conditions and unbearable tax burdens.
Initially, it was economics that drove several European countries to trade with India during the middle of the second millenium. Later, in 1757, clearly it was greed that drove the British East India Company to seize Bengal, plunder its treasure, and then rule over the rest of the country. It is a historical record that more than 40 million Indians died from famine during the calamity period under the British rule, and more from other causes.
The Indian Independence Movement was spawned by the debasing conditions of the colonized. It started from the First War of Indian Independence in 1857, known in the West as "Indian Mutiny," to the military approach of Subhash Chandra Bose during World War II, and to the world's first and largest mass, nonviolent civil resistance movement led by Mahatma Gandhi. India's struggle for freedom finally ended, and full independence became a reality, on August 15, 1947.
