The other ‘F’ word on the young Indian’s mind

Nosheen Kapoor

If the anxiety overshadowing the 21st-century Indian Zeitgeist was to be deciphered, it might reveal its origins in a concept we are all too familiar with. It is a concept with whose visual metaphors of flying birds and waving flags over the horizons have beautified our drawing books; whose sentiment has painted our dreams and aspirations. It is a concept cherished by all ages but mostly lived by the youth. It is an ideal for some but a living reality for others. Whoever tastes it cannot unknow its liberation, whoever lives it, can never fathom a life without it. It is an ideal reality that has lead societies to battles, civilisations to collide, and nations to embrace violent bloodshed so that the posterity does not have to live through a time where the sceptre of ‘freedom’ is not held high. Thus for a country to reverberate with the shocking lament of ‘bekhauf azadi (fearless freedom)’ in universities and streets, decades after political freedom and autonomy were achieved, is not just anachronistic but also alarming.

The youth in India today recognise the significance of freedom and are conscious enough to distinguish it from its totalitarian manifestation in the form of immoral impositions, political prejudices, and social bigotry. The young Indian today understands that freedom affords us the courage to dream and work toward an aspirational life. Yet it also identifies the obstacles that appear in the form of deep-seeded collective and cultural constructs.

While the young Indian women are breaking free from stereotypes and manipulative traditions and re-writing their destinies in the Indian context, the men are breaking the manacles of traditional masculinity to experience the world and all their relationships in their entirety.

Undoubtedly, the modern Indian society is a haven for the youth standing at the threshold of their fates, yet society at large is still battling living realities that make young Indians more vulnerable and less curious about what actual freedom is.

When did this ‘F’ word gain primary status in everyday parlance or become more prominent as a hashtag rather than a way of life? Till when will the youth be bound by the knowledge of freedom and not be liberated by its experience? Till when will social media trolls and bigoted politics threaten the very existence of those who hold non-congenial world views, let alone make them feel free? Will we, as a society, ever be free of sexist, ageist, and racist ideologies and be calm enough to not violate or snub those who point out at our weaknesses?

For a young Indian, it is simply not enough to define freedom as a chronological moment in the history of the nation or understand it only as a geographical autonomy. It is, like the proverbial understanding of love, supposed to be felt and experienced. Freedom cannot be categorised or singularly determined by the collective euphoria when certain minorities and sections of society have their days mired in dubiety and discrimination. The inherent beauty of freedom lies in its very essence of fulfilling personal aspirations of peace, the state of no fear, and the pursuit of one’s happiness while one navigates the public. And thus to feel free is not an isolated experience but a shared humanity that thrives on the pillars of individual and group responsibility.

Thus for the youth of today, we need social codes and models that reinforce that freedom is an ennobling insight into the universal connections that enables an individual to live with dignity and without fear. True freedom is a realisation of not only an individual’s right to be but also the realisation of the interdependence that persists in a healthy society that upholds the ideal of liberty, but not at the cost of the meek or the suppressed. It is a realisation of inviolable boundaries as well as the prescience of the need for operational boundaries that inspire peaceful and respectful co-existence and not mere tolerance.

Freedom, when experienced and lived in its most authentic essence, will rarely involve violation or a plea where we are encouraged to ‘tolerate’ instead of respect differences. It is not always a passionate cry for battle, it is also an everyday sense of happiness and growth. It is not always a victory that is accomplished by going through an ordeal after ordeal, it can also be a simple moment that allowed you to surpass your fear. It is not only precious to prisoners but to everyone who has felt imprisoned by invisible and, seemingly, invincible challenges. It is both the desperation one recognises in the fetters and the discernment that tells you that you can lose them at any point in time.

The writer is head of the copywriting division of a Chandigarh-based IT firm.