| Editor's Corner/ Over a cup of tea INDEPENDENCE |
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| Heidi M. Pascual Publisher and Editor |
| The word "independence" seems to be the sweetest word for a country that has been under foreign rule for a very long time. The Philippines, a Southeast Asian nation, was a colony of Spain for more than 300 years (1521-1898). India, another Asian country, was a colony of Britain for more than 200 years (1757-1947). While the colonizers were from two different countries, both Spain and Britain had the same motives -- primarily economic -- and both used the same violent means to subjugate the peoples of these Asian nations. The histories of India and the Philippines document similar armed struggles for independence, as well. To attain "independence," it seemed eerily natural to sacrifice the lives of hundreds, even thousands, of men, women, and children. This was so in India, from the Battle of Plassey in 1757 to the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857, and in the Philippines, from the Battle of Mactan in 1521 to the Katipunan uprising in 1896. Because of the human cost of independence, protecting a nation from foreign incursion has become the singular symbol of patriotic love. In proclaiming the Philippine Independence Day on June 12, 1962, the late President Diosdado Macapagal said: "A nation is born into freedom on the day when such a people, moulded into a nation by a process of cultural evolution and sense of oneness born of common struggle and suffering, announces to the world that it asserts its natural right to liberty and is ready to defend it with blood, life, and honor." In proclaiming independence of India from British rule on Aug. 14,1947, then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru said: "Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge ... At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of the nation, long suppressed, finds utterance." Both these leaders equated "independence" with "freedom" and similarly cited long struggles from suppression to attain it. Independence, or freedom, is truly a natural right of a group of people making up a social unit. Self-respect and dignity emanate from it, and no one group has the right to take that away from another, by whatever pretense. In today's world, unfortunately, some groups of people still struggle to win their "real" independence. The colonizers of old have been replaced by new, powerful nations. The countries are different, but the motives and the violent means to subjugate others remain the same. History is repeating itself. Lives are being sacrificed. On both sides. And both are losing. |