my happiness over india-pendence day diminished after reading salon:

Aug. 15, 2004 | NEW DELHI (AP) — A bomb exploded during an Independence Day parade in India’s remote northeast on Sunday, killing at least 15 people, officials said, just an hour after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged to fight terrorism. The outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom was suspected of being behind the attack in Assam state and a second one later in the area, said Assam Inspector General of Police Khagen Sharma.

Dilip Saikia, a local lawmaker, said 15 people were killed in the powerful blast in the grounds of a local college in Dhemaji, where the parade was being held. Most of the dead were school children, who had come to see the parade, Saikia told The Associated Press over telephone from Dhemaji. The remote town is 1,015 miles northeast of New Delhi.

57 years later…we may be free of the brits, but we are still enslaved by hate, terror and violence. sigh.