Inquilaab Zindabad

It was the 50th anniversary, the golden anniversary of India’s Independence, when this happened, and remained perhaps one of the most memorable Independence day ever for me.

It was the night of August 14th 1997; for a change, the sky was clear instead of being the usual rainy self. We were first year engineering students then, and as a privilege and safety measure to keep us away from ragging and “seniors” we were given a separate hostel. Since the first years lived, breathed and lived together away from anybody else, there was a natural bonding and brotherhood between us. It was as if we were a different family from the others, even though we’d known each other barely for a couple of months.

We rarely ventured out at night after 10.00pm in those days. Our hostel doors would close promptly at 10.00pm (of course there were thousand other ways to get out), but generally, the bizarre rule of locking the gates was in place to save the juniors from falling into hands of a monster senior looking for some ragging merry. The fact that locking the doors had neither prevented seniors from getting to their prey or hold us inside had not worked, never seemed to bother anyone; the guards at the hostel saw this as a quick way to make money – if we returned late from a movie, and didn’t exactly want to climb half the tree, then step on slab, squeeze ourselves through the bathroom window and reach our rooms, we would bribe the guard with a 5 or 10 rupee note to let us in. The warden couldn’t care less; as long as no one died, everything was safe and sound.

Anyways, on this night however things became different. Nobody slept in hostel (well almost nobody) before 3.00 am, and the overall buzz in the hostel was about Independence Day itself. After all, it was the 50th. At around 11.00pm, a sardar friend of hours stomped into our room and declared:

“Chalo march karne!”
“March?”
“Haan march. Abbe 50 years ka celebration karenge ke nahi? Sab ke sab ikaktha ho jaao neeche”

Invitation to gather up and do something together hardly required any more explanation. In a matter of minutes, the entire hostel had assembled downstairs.

“We are going to celebrate Independence Day today” declared the sardar to a buzzing crowd. The doors of the hostel had been locked as it was 11.00 pm, but it didn’t seem to deter our sardar’s plans.

“We will march from the hostel to the college, then take the road outside of the college, go through the residential area, and come back to the hostel passing senior hostel. And everyone has to march and shout “Inquilaab Zindabad” as loud as possible”.

Anything that had the “loud shouting” factor into it was enough to get our adrenalin pushing.

“Abbe surrdarjeee, how will we march without a flag?” asked a Gult. The sardar answered without a blink of an eye.

“Don’t worry gultee, I have arranged it all. We will use a branch of a tree as our mast and this paper flag as our flag”

We were stunned – the sardar had exhibited brilliance, much unexpectedly nearing midnight. The paper flag of course was not a huge flag by any means – in fact it was about the size of 3 notebooks put-together. But what’s size of a flag or a tree branch got to do with patriotism?

The next task was to get the doors opens by the guards. Though on another day the guards would have taken this opportunity to frisk money, perhaps sharing the sentiment of the momentous occasion, they let open the door without the slightest objection. (Or, it could have been that they didn’t necessarily want to challenge raw young patriotic blood of 150 odd men).

Once outside, one of my roommates who hailed from Bengal brought about a twist to the plan, which was immediately hailed by all. He was immediately proclaimed a true “son of soil” and “desh bhakth”.

His suggestion – “We should burn flags of Pakistan too as we raise our flag!”

A few more ideas were improvised then and there: Surprising, how patriotic fervor bought about unity amongst all of us. We would go about our march past, come back, and then we would create a bonfire outside the hostel, burn Pakistani flags, and generally celebrate this occasion.

We started our march past at 11.20pm – it would take us nearly half an hour we had reasoned for our past, but it actually took nearly 50 minutes for us to finish our march. March we did – initially the tempo was down; we were roaming in college, and shouting – the problem was, who would hear us? But as we neared residential colonies, our fervor and shouting got louder, because well, we could make sure people heard us patriots.

I still remember people switching their lights on, shocked on hearing loud shouting “Inqilaab Zindabad”. A couple of people swore at us, others complained about losing their sleep, and still some more actually had smiles on their faces as we passed through the area. Quite a few families smiled and joined in for a shout or two – maybe the fiftieth year celebration had indeed rubbed off on some people. Why we were even let off by a police patrol jeep on duty that night. By the time we had neared our hostel our shouting had gone from “Inquilaab Zindabad” to “Pakistan Murdabad”, making it a specifically India v/s Pakistan affair.

It was quite past midnight when we returned back at the hostel. Though our plans of hoisting and burning Pakistani flags at moment of midnight had passed, it didn’t make a difference to us. Nearing back the hostel, immediately hidden bottles of fire friendly liquids were brought, sticks and stumps gathered, basically anything that could be burnt were gathered and a bonfire was made.

However there was one small problem: Who would have a Pakistani flag anyways to burn?

The sardar simply suggested:

“Koi fikr nahi yaaron – if you have green shirts get them – Pakistan is green – that will be our flag!”

On a sunny day, such an idea would have sounded silly and preposterous, fitting a sardar only, but that night, it was the ultimate stroke of genius. Within minutes there were nearly ten to twelve assorted shirts and tees of various strokes of green. It was funny – those clothes were brought by friends who lived all over India. Though on other days, we would be cribbing about Northies and Southies, Punjus and Gults, perhaps the greater common hatred united us all that night.

Off those clothes went one by one. The choicest of abuses were hurled to Jinnah to almost anyone from Pakistan as the clothes were burnt. At the same time, we had our branch and our Indian paper flag flying high. As the last of the clothes was thrown into the bonfire, the celebration reached its climax – there was shouting, singing and dancing all around the bonfire. The ruckus had got the seniors interested as well, and quite a few of them joined us in the bonfire celebration. That one night, the senior-junior distance didn’t matter as well.

Eventually, the celebrations died down nearly 4.00 am in the morning. The bonfire had almost burnt out, perhaps signaling our end to celebration too. Our voices had gone hoarse and most of us were dead tired from the celebration. It was wee hours of the morning before anyone actually got up from the junior hostel on August 15 that day.

The next day, most of us had missed breakfast (the cook in the kitchen had rambled on and on about throwing a special breakfast as very few people showed up), but a rarity had surprised us – a good special lunch was provided for us by the cook. The adrenalin rush of the night was still there in many people – people recalled the last night, and how it was perhaps one of the best Independence Day celebrations for many of us.

9 years thence, I still believe it was the best Independence Day celebration I’ve been in; it was as if, we had been liberated.

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Today, when I recalled that night, I wondered how a nation must have felt on August 15, 1947.

It must have been a special moment for a generation.