Dear Readers,

Welcome to the 23rd edition of Oikyotaan. Personally, it’s my 17th year of association with BAWA, and I’m thankful to the community for giving me the opportunity to help publish this magazine over many years now. I’ve always had great cooperation from everybody involved, but there have also been rare occasions of friction. Through all these ups and downs, there has been one ‘constant’, that is my promise to you all (and to myself) that as long as I’m the editor, this magazine would be a platform of Absolute Free Speech. It might sound cliche, especially in the context of a community magazine, but Oikyotaan has seen it’s (un)fair share of censorship in the past. If there’s one thing that’s most expensive in this world, it is Free Speech. People have sacrificed their lives for it, the most recent example being Charlie Kirk. His mission in life was to debate his opponents on their own turf. He got the bullet because his opponents ran out of words. Another martyr got the bullet for free speech, the one who famously said – “I have a dream”.

‘Dream is not the thing that you see in your sleep, Dream is the thing that doesn’t let you sleep’. It was Martin’s dream, which woke up a whole class of oppressed people. It was Netaji’s dream, which woke up the Indian Soldiers in the erstwhile British Indian Forces, which uprooted the British Empire from our subcontinent. Clement Attlee, the British Prime Minister at the time of India’s independence, said so in no uncertain terms. In his book – “Bose: An Indian Samurai” – General GD Bakshi quotes from a conversation between the British Prime Minister and the then Governor of West Bengal, Justice PB Chakraborty. In 1956, Clement Attlee visited India and stayed in Kolkata as a guest of the then Governor. In PB Chakraborty’s own words – “When I was acting Governor, Lord Attlee, who had given us independence by withdrawing British rule from India, spent two days in the Governor’s palace at Calcutta during his tour of India. At that time, I had a prolonged discussion with him regarding the real factors that had led the British to quit India. My direct question to Attlee was that since Gandhi’s Quit India movement had tapered off quite some time ago, and in 1947 no such new compelling situation had arisen that would necessitate a hasty British departure, why did they have to leave? In his reply Attlee cited several reasons, the principal among them being the erosion of loyalty to the British crown among the Indian Army and Navy personnel as a result of the military activities of Netaji.” That’s not all, Chakraborty adds – “Towards the end of our discussion I asked Attlee what was the extent of Gandhi’s influence upon the British decision to quit India. Hearing this question, Attlee’s lips became twisted in a sarcastic smile as he slowly chewed out the word, m-i-n-i-m-a-l”.

Netaji made the ultimate sacrifice for our right to Free Life and Free Speech. We traded it happily for our politician’s “Cheap Speech”, from reservations to freebees. So, one may wonder, why did he do it at all? Were we worth his sacrifice? My thought on that is, you don’t do good deeds for others, you do it for yourself. There’s a famous saying – “No good deed ever goes unpunished”. A prime example of this is no other than Elon Musk. At the lowest point for free speech in recent history, when the so called Right-Wing affiliated individuals were being hounded off all online and political platforms, he spent 44 billion US Dollars from his own pocket to buy Twitter and release the caged bird. That is enough money to make every Indian – man, woman and child – rich by Rs.2676/-. The backlash has been fierce. There have been 2 known attempts on his life already. Tesla vehicles have been destroyed by wild mobs. His company was selectively debarred by the Biden administration from Government programs. Even SpaceX timeline was sabotaged by the FAA through Red-Tapes. Elon is an Engineer and an Entrepreneur; world’s best at that. Why would he spend such astronomical amounts of money and time on Free Speech, especially when he’s got nothing to gain and everything to lose? He was asked this very question in a CNBC interview. The interviewer asked Elon if he would curtail his Free Speech as advertisers were leaving his X platform, losing him money. Elon paused, looked straight into his eyes and said – “Offer me money, offer me power, I don’t care”. Taken aback, the interviewer asked – “So you just don’t care? You would say what you want to say?” Elon replied – “I’d say what I want to say, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it.” After Trump defeated the Democrats in last election, many CEOs came out in the open, including Mark Zuckerberg, exposing how top Biden White House Officials Coerced Big Tech to Censor Critics of the Biden Administration. Times changed, but principles didn’t. When this same Trump-Administration, which replaced the rabidly anti Elon Biden-Administration, brought out the (“Big, Beautiful”) Bill, Elon became Trump’s fiercest critique. This my friend is “Absolute Free Speech”. It doesn’t bend for friends, doesn’t fear opponents, and doesn’t care about consequences. This year, as we “Freely” celebrate our cultural heritage, “lest we forget” those brave souls (past, present and future) who made this possible through their unfathomable sacrifices. Someone else has paid a big price for your “Free” Speech, value it while it lasts.