To Be Free, To Be Unfree
We live in a fearful time, when freedoms are lost every day
He is not free who is not free from fear. Before I could complete that short line, a fear seized me. Fear of a gender minder’s admonition. How can you say ‘He is not…’ ? You should say ‘He or she is not…’. Better still ‘She or he…’ The scolding delivered in a counter tenor was deserved. I had erred. Freedom without equality is a sham. Quick on the heels of that fear came another. This time in a language purist’s sharp baritone. Free from fear ? Where is your language ? Free of fear. I stood corrected. Freedom without quality is a poor thing. And then a third. Fear of india today. Here it is, the voice said in a strong baritone, compiling its Independence Day issue on freedom, meaning by ‘freedom’, political freedom, economic freedom, cultural freedom, intellectual freedom, and you start your piece with an abstraction—fear—sounding like you are some philosopher or sage when you are nothing of the kind… Sorry… You have been binned.
But this time, I held my own. We have become a fearful people, I told my fear of india today’s rejection. We are afraid of speaking out as our instinct tells us to, lest we offend someone, someone high up, someone out there, editors included. We are in awe of the powers that can correct us, pull us up. Not in the awe that makes us admire but the awe that makes us so fearful.
Headpiece filled with awe, each one of our headpieces is. Thank you, T.S. Eliot.
Awe of authority. Fear of power.
And not just of the very high, but even of the meanest kind of authority or power that we encounter, howsoever briefly, near or far, like a cop at a traffic signal or a legislator from the party in power. Why, we would fear even his or her PA.
Political freedoms are imperiled because of fear of The Boss. Not just fear of the country’s but in and within each party. Fear of the state boss, the district, town, panchayat boss and of that boss’s henchmen. Economic freedoms are under challenge because of fear of techno-commercial behemoths, monopolistic strangleholds on our natural resources through that linchpin of ‘development’, the thekedar and his crowbar-gangs. Cultural freedoms are severely undermined because of our fear of the claws of convention, custom, caste. We are afraid of their gatekeepers for they are strong, they are mobile. They don’t just stand guard, they roam, pick their victims, beat, lynch. Exploitation, destitution, abduction, rape happen because we are afraid of reprisals. We hate the criminal, fear lodging a report. He could be in league with the thana via cash, caste or just random collaboration… Intellectual freedom is under threat because we are afraid of local thugs who bear firearms and use them at our doorsteps, burning what we write. We are afraid of digital monsters, the Facebook hacker, computer sneak, cellphone worm who can get to everything, every little thing, the very last thing about us…
Munshi Premchand, the peerless Hindustani novelist, has a short story called Aadhaar. It is about a child becoming a young widow’s sole foundation for living, her aadhaar. But as the unique identity marker that Sanskrit word spells doubt, fear. Is the fear justified? We are assured it is not. I want to believe that. But the fear that someone as spiteful, as powerful, may just do that crack-job will not go away.
Harivanshrai Bachchan, the matchless Hindi poet, has a long-form poem called Madhushala. It is about the limitless boons that the mystic ale-house confers. It is bewitchingly beautiful. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, no less, wrote a sensitive foreword to its translation in English, titled The House of Wine. He did not look over his shoulder when he wrote that. Today, if someone were to organise a public reading of Madhushala, he or she (especially a she) better watch out for the moral police. Morarji Desai was a prohibitionist. But he did not sock girls in bars.
Periyar edited the Tamil journal Viduthalai, which means freedom. He would have said, today, something like this:
To be free is to be unafraid. To be afraid is to be unfree. Vanakkam.
WE ARE IN AWE OF THE POWERS THAT CAN CORRECT US... NOT THE AWE THAT MAKES US ADMIRE BUT ONE THAT MAKES US SO FEARFUL