Freedom

Our relationship with freedom is a very ambiguous one; it is never easy to define its contours. We all like to believe we are free. After all we gained our independence in 1947, and we are a democratic state now!
However, many would say that in this fast changing world, we have become slaves of technology. It is easier to be free of technology that be free of the state, institutions, language, culture and society, and the media.
Right from the moment of our birth, we are entangled in the web of the state. We have an identity because of our Voter’s ID! Even our name marks our religion and caste. We can’t drive without a Driver’s Licence; also given to us (after many hours of queues) by the state. And if we do venture to drive without one, we have to suffer the consequences if caught!
Our entry into the world is also marked with one into language and culture. I’m sure many of us have heard how we can’t do something because our culture and society are ‘not like this’ and do not permit this. The hegemony of the English language is visible enough from the fact that some of us got hit on th head, or fined out of our pocket money, in our school for speaking in our local tongue. And of course, one’s value as an employee goes up if one knows English; one gets a more lucrative job then.
From school begins our time of ‘discipline’ while we study a course/syllabus decided for us by those ‘who know better’, and our answer scripts are marked/graded by those who ‘teach’ us. From the time we step into school, our freedom is tinted by what will be allowed us within these institutions. How rebellious can one be without getting expelled, and what kind of punishment do you suffer for bringing crackers at diwali time to school?
College is more fun of course. You can do a lot more than bring crackers, and grow within an institution, if it permits so. Yet we study a course — as they call it — ‘tailor-made’ for us, and we are trained in being productive members of society in terms of material intellectual wealth, just as we had been taught to be morally sound and responsible members of society.
The entertainment media has played an important role all this while through movies and cartoons, by bringing to us notions of family, love, crime, revenge — basically the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ — while also keeping us upto date with the fashion of the times. After all, we can choose our clothing from those available at the showrooms, or get it stitched according to the caliber of the tailor. The journalistic media has sought to condition our ideas of corruption and justice, and has brought to us either incomplete news, or news with an agenda at hand. Every newspaper is either left-wing or right-wing, choosing which (and whose) agenda they want to push.
By the time we are part of the productive section of society, we have learned to forget our instincts and impulses, and to give precedence to our work. We realise the responsibility attached to it, for, ‘work is worship’, I remember someone had taught us sometime in life. By the end of it all, we realise that all of our choices were decided beforehand, that somebody decided what we will study and learn, and unlearn, and what we will become — which is a part of society, and that too, a productive member of society.
Our freedom got lost somewhere on the way while we did what others decided for us. But then, maybe out freedom we lost the moment we enetered into the world, for, that entry was also the entry into the world of institutions, language, culture and society, the state and above all, other people’s expectations of us.