Seventy-five years ago, when India became an independent nation moulded together in spirit by Mahatma Gandhi and his homespun legions, and geographically consolidated by Sardar Patel, there was no inkling that we were not free yet. We revelled in tricolour euphoria, the footsteps of liberated millions thundering along Rajpath, that great avenue of emancipation which is now being dug up to construct a new pin code of imperium that wears the vanity of power on the stern face of our present democracy.
Semantics does have purpose. Independence does not necessarily hinge on freedom, since stone walls do not a prison make. The liberty to hope, of the daring dreamer of today is a nation’s emancipation tomorrow. But freedom is not a museum of achievements; it is live energy with a conscience. Bulldozing the Sabarmati Ashram to renovate it (with hot and cold running water, perhaps) or turning Parliament House where India’s tryst with history was announced seven-and-a-half decades ago into a museum is not a tribute to nonviolent revolution.
The French Revolution is considered history’s first and greatest popular “cast-the-chains-off” movement. Its slogan—Equality, Liberty, Fraternity—is an immortal war cry. In February 1819, French liberal intellectual Benjamin Constant lectured on “The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns” to contextualise the French Revolution; “freedom” of the ancients was how ancient Greeks defined the citizen’s collective say in state matters while accepting its control over private life, a pattern the French revolutionaries adopted. But the modern concept of freedom is individualistic while adhering to state laws.
Unfortunately, the freedom of the ancient was resurrected in India when the coronavirus infiltrated the national bloodstream, when the individual was left with little say in state matters of conducting private affairs. The biggest enemy of freedom is fear. It is to be remembered that on August 15, 1947, India had vanquished the greatest empire then on earth. It defeated its arch enemy in three wars. It fought, survived and deposed the Emergency. It became an Asian Tiger through Manmohan Singh-led liberalisation. But in 2020, an unexpected invader enslaved us with fear and prejudice. Covid-19 has divided us worse than any Mughal or white invader did, even as it united us in a brotherhood of agony, loss and compassion. It has redefined our politics and religion. It has re-landscaped fraternity and national duty.
The Covid-19 crisis was a cruel opportunity to free our soul from sectarian prejudices, political
opportunism and economic inequality that plagues us. Independence has not protected the mental and physical liberty of Indians online and offline from the tyranny of small men in big rooms, the wrath of caste vigilantes who would lynch a Dalit bridegroom riding a horse through upper caste territory. Neither does Independence assure the physical and psychological safety of a woman in the country’s deceptively pastoral hinterland or the sodium glare of new shining city streets.
Rebellion and freedom are cousins of personal liberty. Hence, the prisoner who protests, unmindful of incarceration, torture and deprivation of emotional sustenance, is free because his mind is independent. The politician who is afraid of losing his throne is a slave to insecurity. The nail-biting solitude of a lost leader in the face of a great crisis is more chilling than the haplessness of the man on the street whose single vote can change the fortunes of a nation.
One of the greatest Indians dreamed of a country where “the mind is without fear and the head is held high,” praying that “into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.” The Indian mind is still a sleeping giant. In his dream, the screams of nightmares and the laughter of happy children coexist as conflicting equinoxes of identity. The new invader has woken up this giant. The final victory will happen only when India is fully vaccinated against fear and hatred.