My childhood memories of India’s Independence Day are bittersweet. The strongest memory is of the collective singing of the patriotic song:

“जो शहीद हुए हैं, उनकी ज़रा याद करो कुर्बानी।”

Those who were martyred—remember their sacrifices.

In my school days, history was one of my favorite subjects. Apart from the standard history textbooks, I read several other books, including biographies and autobiographies of India’s freedom fighters, and felt deeply inspired by their immense struggles and sacrifices.

This Independence Day, I happened to be in Gujarat. While Independence Day is celebrated widely all over India, somehow I felt the fervor of the celebration much more strongly here. It brought back memories of my school days with a vividness I had not experienced for nearly two decades.

Over the years, as I have traveled across India and across the world, I have seen how significantly the political atmosphere and the overall political dispensation can shape both our ability to practice spirituality and even our propensity to practice it. This has made me increasingly appreciative of India’s independence struggle, which provided us not only political freedom but also the space in which our spiritual traditions could continue to be practiced and shared.

At the same time, political freedom does not automatically bring cultural, intellectual, or spiritual freedom. A nation may become politically independent while still struggling to understand its own heritage, preserve what is valuable within it, and decide how that heritage should relate to the modern world.

This becomes especially significant when we look at India’s history over a much longer period. While much attention understandably focuses on the freedom India gained from British colonial rule in 1947, the traditions that constitute India’s spiritual and cultural heritage have passed through many centuries of political upheaval, social disruption, and cultural change.

History reminds us that the survival of a civilization cannot be taken for granted. Entire cultural and religious worlds that once flourished for centuries have largely disappeared as living traditions. The religious civilization of ancient Egypt, with its temples, priesthoods, sacred traditions, and distinctive worldview, is no longer a living tradition in anything resembling its ancient form. Other ancient civilizations too have undergone transformations so sweeping that little of their original religious culture survives as a lived tradition.

As I reflected on this today, I found myself appreciating something I had perhaps too easily taken for granted: the fact that the tradition I practice is still alive at all.

Against that historical backdrop, the continuing vitality of India’s spiritual traditions is no small feat. Despite centuries of political upheaval, social disruption, and cultural change, these traditions have not survived merely as artifacts in museums or subjects in history books. They continue to be studied, practiced, celebrated, and transmitted from one generation to another.

That survival strikes me today with particular force because I belong to one such living tradition.

The bhakti tradition to which I belong came to prominence about five hundred years ago in Bengal, a region that centuries later would also become one of the centers of intellectual ferment in India’s independence movement. That I can practice this tradition today means that generation after generation, people whom I will never know preserved something that they considered worth passing on.

As Bhaktivinoda Thakura mentions in his autobiographical letter, Svalikhita-jivani, our traditions have been sustained by innumerable people across generations. Some of their names are remembered; countless others are not. We have millennia of sung and unsung heroes to be grateful to.

That I have received a living tradition that has survived so many centuries of immense challenges humbles me and fills me with gratitude. When I remember the sacrifices of those who gave their lives for the freedoms we enjoy today, I recognize that the list of those to whom I am indebted is far greater than what I know—and perhaps greater than what I can ever know.

Independence, therefore, is not just a right to be exercised or even a responsibility to be discharged. It is also a gift to be cherished and a legacy to be valued with deep gratitude.

And perhaps one of the best ways to express gratitude for a legacy is to pass it on.

The Bhagavad Gita itself emphasizes this principle of transmission. Krishna explains that spiritual wisdom is received and passed on through paramparā, from one generation to another (4.1–3). When that chain of transmission becomes disrupted, the wisdom can become obscured, and it needs to be presented again. A living tradition, therefore, remains living because people do not merely inherit its wisdom; they understand it, live it, and pass it on.

The last several decades have witnessed a significant economic and cultural reawakening in India. Amid that reawakening, it is important that the intellectual and spiritual dimensions of India’s heritage not be neglected. I have the opportunity, however small, through my actions and my words, to be a part of preserving and sharing that legacy.

On this Independence Day, therefore, my gratitude extends beyond those whose names appear prominently in our history books. It reaches toward the many known and unknown people who, through turbulent centuries, preserved and transmitted the traditions that have reached us today.

May the Lord who sustained my known and unknown ancestors and predecessors through difficult centuries, and who guided India through its long journey to independence, guide me in doing my small part to treasure and transmit the timeless legacy that has reached me through them.

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04.01 The Personality of Godhead, Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, said: I instructed this imperishable science of yoga to the sun-god, Vivasvān, and Vivasvān instructed it to Manu, the father of mankind, and Manu in turn instructed it to Ikṣvāku.