Are We Really Independent in India

By Deepak Parvatiyar

August 13, 2014

Just surf the internet and you would find how customary it has become to debate our independence every 15th August. How independent are we? Do we really live in an independent society? Are we independent to do what we want… so on and so forth?

Indeed, these oft-repeated questions sound monotonous and cyclical. Yet they are raised every time we celebrate our Independence. To put it simple, why should we celebrate Independence, if we are not free?

Why is our freedom (independence) debatable ?

Yet such questions are important as they examine people’s expectations from a free society on one hand, and reinforce our commitment towards the freedom that was bequeathed to us by our forefathers through their sacrifices. Further, it makes sense evaluating our liberty on the day when we celebrate the spirit of Independence but the evaluation of freedom should be more fiercely debated not just as an annual ritual but on every count and all the time. Yet, we do discuss them in the light of some law that we perceive to be ‘draconian’, a TADA or a POTA!
To our credit, we as a nation have protested and overthrown the despotic tendencies in the past (the Emergency, for instance). Indian elections and electoral process, despite their limitations, have been the greatest vanguard of our freedom. But then, do we really know the meaning of freedom? This leads me to the next question – what should be the threshold of freedom in a democratic society like ours?

You may also like to read

• Importance of Elections in India
• New Trends in Elections in India
• How much do you know about Indian Independence

Before I deliberate further, I wish to refer to the vast expanse of our naxal belt or the Red Corridor stretching from Andhra Pradesh to West Bengal, where there are occasions when the Independence Day or Republic Day celebrations have forcibly been blacked out by the naxals at the point of the gun. There are parallel governments run by the Maoist at many places in the Red Corridor. Only recently these Maoists even banned the national anthem in schools in naxal-stronghold Madh areas in south Bastar district of Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh.

There have often been vigorous debates on ways to tackle the naxal menace and how to win them back to the mainstream. Yet, not very long ago, we had secessionist movements in Mizoram, parallel government in Nagaland, terrorism in Punjab. Kashmir is still in the grip of militancy and secessionist insurgency, and the BJP even considered it a victory by hoisting the tricolour at Lal Chowk in Srinagar!

Threats to our Independence

Insurgencies have time and again tested our democracy and freedom. We have withstood them all. If the threshold of freedom was to keep our democratic credentials intact then we have undoubtedly succeeded in preserving that threshold.  So shouldn’t this be our greatest success?

Indeed in a democracy, freedom is evaluated in terms of the suffrage, ballot, electoral behaviour, and representation. Yet what is more important is how we use our Independence. After all, isn’t it true that misuse of freedom encourages brute power? Don’t insurgencies time and again endorse such a theory?

It is true that often when we talk of freedom, we talk of getting liberated from the things that oppress us – guilt; fear. Sixty eight years on, have we really emancipated ourselves from communal hatred, caste bias, class divide, poverty, corruption, crime…? Don’t our women still live in perennial fear of either being harassed for dowry (or even for birth of a girl child) at home or, teased, molested or raped every time they go out? Aren’t we guilty of female infanticide or even producing the largest number of child labourers in the world? And for that matter, aren’t our politicians guilty of becoming power brokers instead of true torch bearers of healthy democratic practices (Remember the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha bribery case or the more recent Cash for Vote scam)? The rot has seeped into the system.

Freedom is always Conditional

Is there a Limit to Freedom?

Freedom has to be conditional; there is nothing like ‘absolute freedom’ and it will ever be a folly to construe freedom as the right to do whatever one pleases. Yet hasn’t India, as a free nation, taken its independence for granted? On a more cynical note, doesn’t freedom to us mean the micro level freedom to drive recklessly on roads, to litter around, to abuse, to indulge into corrupt practices, etc?

Here I quote Nigerian writer Femi Osofisan that “Freedom without responsibility is a loaded gun in the hand of a maniac”.

Indeed, it is imperative for every society to delineate boundaries of an individual’s freedom with prognostic public good. Let’s look around us. Pakistani history is rife with military coups. China lacks basic individual rights such as due process of law. There are countries such as Iran and Russia which are often criticised for denying fair public trials. There are ‘free’ countries accused of indulging into secret evidence and torture. The United States of America is considered the ‘freest’ country in the world. It is not because it is the richest but because of its philosophy of freedom that assumes that individuals have rights; and a Constitution that limits the powers of a central government to intrude into the people’s lives.

Our Constitution too delineates certain boundaries for us and to our credit we continue to swear by our Constitution. But isn’t it a fact that over the years, our Constitutional offices have been berated and condemned? (Isn’t a recent remark by Chief Justice Justice RM Lodha that there is a misleading campaign going across to ‘defame the judiciary’, a case in point?)

We claim we are responsible citizens but don’t we need more to prove such credentials? Indeed, we have displayed our commitments towards a free democracy time and again, in every election and in every protest. But is this enough?

Indeed, democracy offers great freedom but does not plug the scope for compromise that we have witnessed time and again. The need of the hour is to ask what our freedom is for.

Where the Mind is without Fear

Here I am reminded of Rabindranath Tagore’s poem – Where the mind is without fear. Shouldn’t the poem be the anthem for all those who seek the freedom to hold their head high with knowledge, depth of truth and clear stream of reason, without any fear in their mind?

Till we achieve this, the debate on do we really live in a free India, will continue, every 15th August…on and on!