The ideal of freedom: struggles, swaraj and Bose

Detail

1. Freedom as a goal people fought for

• In the 20th century, many people suffered for freedom. NCERT uses two lives to show this: Nelson Mandela (South Africa) and Aung San Suu Kyi (Myanmar).
• Both show that freedom is something people will give up comfort, family and even their lives for.

2. Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (1994)

• Apartheid means a system of legal separation by race. South Africa's white-minority government used it.
• What apartheid did to black people:
• It forced them to live in separate townships (crowded areas set aside for them).
• Pass laws controlled where they could go. They had to carry permits to move around.
• The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949 stopped people from marrying someone of another race.

• All these limits were based only on race. So they were discrimination.

• Mandela's sacrifice:

• He spent 27 years in prison, often in solitary confinement (kept alone in a cell).
• He was held at Robben Island prison from 1964 to 1982 [6].

• The government of President F.W. de Klerk released him on 11 February 1990 [6].

• For whom he fought: the freedom of all South Africans, white people included. Freedom here is universal. It is not revenge by one group against another.

• Later recognition:
• In 1993, Mandela and de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize. They won it for leading South Africa from apartheid to a multiracial democracy [6].
• Nelson Mandela International Day falls on 18 July, his birthday. It was first held in 2009. The UN declared it an annual day later that same year [6].

3. Aung San Suu Kyi: freedom from fear

• She was inspired by Gandhi's non-violence.
• She spent years under house arrest (kept as a prisoner in her own home). She was cut off from her children. She could not visit her husband while he was dying.
• Freedom from fear is the idea in her book Freedom from Fear (1991). It says "real freedom is freedom from fear":
• fear of authority (the state, police, rulers)
• fear of one's community
• fear of peers (people of one's own age or group)
• fear of ridicule (being laughed at)

• The lesson: a person who is legally free can still be unfree if fear stops them from acting.

• UDHR link: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948. Its Preamble calls a world where people have "freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want" the "highest aspiration of the common people" [2].

• "Want" means poverty and lack of basic needs. So the UDHR joins political freedom (no fear) with economic freedom (no poverty).

• Update:

• She was State Counsellor (Myanmar's de facto head of government) from 2016 to 2021.
• She was detained again after the military coup of February 2021. (Verify her current status.)
• Debate point: critics say she failed to defend the Rohingya Muslim minority. Her case shows the gap between a person's stated ideals and what they do in power.

4. What is freedom?

• Freedom has two parts:
• Absence of external constraints: no outside force (state, society, other people) stops you from doing what you want.

• Presence of enabling conditions: you have the conditions to develop your creativity and capabilities (education, health, opportunity).

• A free society lets all its members develop their potential with the minimum of social constraints.

• Why freedom is valued:
• It lets people make choices.

• It lets people use their reason and judgement. A person who cannot choose is not treated as a full human being.

• Individual freedom and national freedom (NCERT Exercise Q1):

• Colonised peoples fought British, French and Portuguese rule.
• A nation ruled by foreigners cannot let its people decide their own future. So national freedom was the first condition for personal freedom.
• But national freedom alone is not enough. Mandela and Suu Kyi fought governments run by their own countrymen.

5. Swaraj: rule of the self and rule over the self

• Swaraj = swa (self) + raj (rule). It has two meanings:
• Rule of the self: political self-government. The nation rules itself, not a foreign power.

• Rule over the self: self-control. A person masters their own desires and actions.

• Swaraj as a political demand:

• Bal Gangadhar Tilak: "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it."
• Purna Swaraj means complete independence. The Lahore session of the Indian National Congress (December 1929) adopted the Purna Swaraj resolution. It rejected dominion status (self-rule inside the British Empire) [3][4].
• On 26 January 1930, people across India observed it as Purna Swaraj Day / Independence Day [3][4].

• Why 26 January is Republic Day: the Constitution came into force on 26 January 1950 to honour this 1930 date. It links the demand for full independence (1930) to formal constitutional self-government (1950) [4].

• Gandhi's Hind Swaraj (1909):

• Gandhi wrote it in Gujarati aboard the ship Kildonan Castle between 13 and 22 November 1909. It was first published in his paper Indian Opinion in December 1909 [5].
• Its English title is Indian Home Rule [5].
• Key line: "It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves."
• For Gandhi, swaraj is not only removing the British. It is a liberation that:
  • restores a person's self-respect
  • builds self-responsibility
  • opens the way to self-realisation (becoming one's best self)
  • frees people from dehumanising institutions (systems that treat people like machines or objects)
  • is guided by justice, so the potential of the individual and the community grows together.
• The book's goal is often summed up as an exploitation-free society where an ordinary person can claim and defend their rights [5].

6. Subhas Chandra Bose's idea of freedom

• Occasion: Bose's presidential address to the students' conference at Lahore, 19 October 1929. This was two months before the Congress Purna Swaraj session in the same city.
• Subhas Chandra Bose's idea of freedom is all-round freedom. It means freedom for:
• the individual and society
• the rich and the poor
• men and women

• all classes

• It is more than political freedom. It also means:

• equal distribution of wealth
• abolition of caste barriers

• destruction of communalism (hostility between religious communities)

• Bose called this the ideal that "alone can appease the hunger in the soul".

• Theory link:
• Negative liberty means freedom from interference by others or the state.
• Positive liberty means freedom to develop oneself, with the social and economic conditions to do so (see §6 of the parent note, Isaiah Berlin).
• Bose's idea is close to positive liberty. Removing the British (negative freedom) is only step one. Poverty, caste and communalism must also go.

Thinker	Key text / event	Core idea of freedom
Tilak	Slogan, "Swaraj is my birthright"	Political self-rule as a natural right
Gandhi	Hind Swaraj (1909)	Self-rule + self-control; moral liberation from dehumanising institutions
Bose	Lahore students' address (19 Oct 1929)	All-round freedom: political + economic + social (caste, communalism)
INC	Lahore session (Dec 1929)	Purna Swaraj, complete independence, not dominion status
Mandela	Long Walk to Freedom (1994)	Freedom from racial discrimination, for all races
Suu Kyi	Freedom from Fear (1991)	Freedom from fear of authority, community, peers, ridicule

Prelims Hooks

• Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act → South Africa, 1949. It banned marriage across races under apartheid.
• Mandela was released on 11 February 1990 under President de Klerk. He shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with de Klerk [6].
• Nelson Mandela International Day = 18 July (first held 2009) [6].
• "Freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want" → UDHR Preamble (1948), not the UN Charter [2].
• Hind Swaraj was written in Gujarati (1909) aboard the Kildonan Castle. It appeared first in Indian Opinion [5]. Trap: it was not written in English, and not in India.
• Purna Swaraj resolution → Lahore session, December 1929. 26 January 1930 was observed as Independence Day [3][4].
• Bose's "all-round freedom" speech → students' conference, Lahore, 19 October 1929. Trap: it was not the INC presidential address.
• Swaraj's two meanings: rule of the self (political) + rule over the self (self-control).
• Freedom from Fear (1991) → Aung San Suu Kyi. Long Walk to Freedom (1994) → Nelson Mandela.

Mains Points

• Freedom is more than the absence of restraint. Mandela, Suu Kyi, Gandhi and Bose all show that freedom needs enabling conditions: no fear, no poverty, no caste or communal barriers. This supports a positive-liberty reading of the Indian Constitution, which joins Fundamental Rights to the Directive Principles.
• National freedom vs individual freedom: anti-colonial struggles (against British, French and Portuguese rule) made self-rule the first condition. But Mandela's and Suu Kyi's struggles against their own governments show that independence does not guarantee personal freedom. Rights and the rule of law are still needed.
• Gandhi vs Bose on swaraj: Gandhi stressed moral self-rule and freedom from dehumanising institutions. Bose stressed social-economic equality (wealth, caste, communalism). Together they foreshadow the Preamble's pairing of liberty with justice (social, economic and political) and equality.
• Ideals vs practice: Suu Kyi's record on the Rohingya shows that a champion of "freedom from fear" can fail to protect minorities in power. This is a case for institutional safeguards (courts, minority rights) over reliance on individual leaders.