"Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they."
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Economie Politique (Discourse on Political Economy)
Freedom means different things to different people. It varies from one individual to another, from one generation to another. Yet, it is a word that is known by all and sundry. And needless, to say, there are different kinds of freedoms. As also, the literal and the metaphorical.
It is rather disconcerting that one should have to perforce choose Independence Day to think of freedom. It is, in fact, something that ought to bug us all through the year. We need to be concerned about it all the time. For, freedom is something that one can never take for granted. Someone, somewhere would always be lurking there to snatch it away from us, to serve their nefarious, vested interests. No, this is not gratuitous, pompous scare-mongering. It is something that we need to be bothered about, especially in this day and time.
When India achieved Independence, the Communists had screamed themselves hoarse about this freedom being a “lie”. They might have had their own good reasons and perspectives. But if we take the assertion away from the context and see it in today’s light, it might not have been that way off the mark. India is now indeed a hostage to the economic policies being dictated by multilateral agencies. It is indeed subservient to the wishes of the United States and its Western allies when it comes to its own foreign policy.
Those are debatable issues for sure, and we could storm our brains and be at each others’ throats through the day over them. But that’s not what ought to be our primary concern.
The situation in the country today is such that we need to watch out for those whose political and financial futures are at stake. Not a day passes by when we hear something new about a politician or a corporate entity being accused of plundering the country. In many cases, the long arm of the law is beginning to catch up with these people. But anyone who is pushed to a corner, will always fight back. And when it is the government of the day which is fighting with its back to the wall, it hits out at everyone in sight and reach. It is this that makes it today’s scenario so grim and disconcerting. The Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance government is not only dogged by charges of corruption, it is beleaguered on other fronts too.
In this backdrop, there are two freedoms that stand in the imminent danger of being curtailed – freedom of expression/dissent, and the right to privacy. It is already beginning to happen. Some might even say that the silent war has been raging on for a few years now. The government is increasingly clamping down on various forms and means of expression and dissent. And it has also thought of the most reprehensible tool possible to sneak into our homes and daily lives with the UID scheme. Trust me on this, for this is a Cassandra’s prophecy.
If this sounds bad enough, wait, there’s worse to be in fear of. What is worse than the prospect of these freedoms being snipped bit by bit is the spectre of this being done with impunity. That’s what the government, which increasingly stands of being accused of being a fascist entity, is doing – it throws democratic norms and practices to the winds, and imposes its own draconian laws on us. This, it is able to do with aplomb because there is no opposition worth the name.
The real Opposition parties are no saints themselves, and when they point accusatory fingers at the government, they well know that three of the fingers are pointed towards themselves. The so-called crusade against corruption is being led by a man who superciliously calls himself a Gandhian, and in the same breath talks of chopping of limbs of criminals. Hardly Gandhian, you might say. No one is squeaky clean, and the mud sticks on everyone. Few have the moral authority today to talk of ethics. Fewer still who have the guts to fight for it.
In today’s India, there are few left who had seen the country wrenching itself from British yoke. For most of us, freedom is something that has been given to us on a platter. We never had to fight for anything, and that’s why few of us value or understand freedom as it should be.
Freedom is not an end in itself – it is a continuous, everlasting process. The more we play a Nero and stay disinterested in the socio-political goings-on, the higher the chances of our freedoms being cracked down upon. We need to stand for civil liberties, assert our democratic rights, and see the fight till the end. We have nothing to lose, but own chains.
