FREEDOM...Does it Exist?????

I saw this particular article on a website of a leading daily which talks about people giving their own views about freedom. I know anyways my article is never going to be featured there. So let me put it right here on my own blog.


To start with, “What is freedom?”. Isn’t that a strange question??? You may be wondering what is wrong with me and why I have become so patriotic. Even I don’t know why, but every year this time round I end up writing something like this.

To tell you the truth I really don’t know what freedom is. To realize what freedom is, you must first be in a position to not have it. But thankfully we have been blessed with freedom. We were born in a free country. Our parents gave us total freedom to do whatever we wished.


I took up a profession of my choice. Unlike some of my compatriots who took a particular profession because they had no other choice or their parents forced them, I have been actually blessed.

Now since I have very little idea to what freedom really is I don’t really feel all that confident about blabbing about it, although this blog is meant for that purpose only :). But I feel that independence is about doing what you wish to without hurting or pushing others in the course of your life. Probably in the pre 1947 era our ancestors struggled because there was a barrier for Indians to do everything.

Indians were not allowed in certain coaches or clubs or schools. There was this British club which used to write, "Indians and Dogs not Allowed". Guess where racism has its roots.
To say that we were not racist is technically not correct. We had the so called caste based system in place of the race based system. That’s the same wine in a different bottle.

After 60 years of political abolishment of all these practices, it’s sad to see that people are more inclined towards being called of a certain caste than not. Caste culture has been fueled further by our government. Probably the same government which at one point in history wanted all Indians to move together is classifying people. The Gurjar violence is an offshoot of this seed of caste based reservation.

The closest I have come to not having freedom has been but for Reservation. Well, when I was in Engineering College and I paid close to 50k as fees because I could not get a rank good enough for free seat in an A grade college. But then I saw that I had a classmate who paid less than 10k. I used to reach college by bus while that fellow used to ride his car to college. He was definitely no more brilliant than me nor did he have a rank better than mine. So what did he have…..you would know that.
So am I really blessed with freedom or is it an illusion strong enough to make me believe that I am independent.

WHEN DO WE GET INDEPENDENCE???

Maybe when we ban the caste system or maybe when the government stops using it as election material.
Till then, Freedom is for sure not full. Incompetent people holding important posts based on caste and creed will only lead to complex web of corruption.
There may come a day when all this gets eliminated, till then lets do our bit to remove it which has been ingrained in our system.


Jai Hind.