From Freedom to Justice.

When a person walks across the road, and meets someone, who is exactly behaving or even expressing his opinions in a similar fashion as what the person had already done before, he feels a sense of pride, a sense of company and immediately starts voicing his own opinions himself. He has this sense of courage and ownership as both of them become either common victims or the perpetrators.

Now, I had this same feeling of joy, when I started reading “The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian”, by Nirad C Chauduri. I haven’t completed the book yet and so will talk about it in a more elaborate manner later. But there were two things or rather sentences in it, which immediately grabbed my attention. Things which I’ve felt about and thought about, things which I’ve wondered about, like a child sitting on the sea shore and wondering, where it all ends.

First, there was this mention of how freedom, was fought for earnestly, how it was much yearned for, and yet, when it came, how we hadn’t learnt to respect it. I too had been wondering about the same for quite a long time. How much do we value our freedom ? What is freedom to us ?. When we read about the hardship faced by the gallant freedom fighters, we tremble with transient patriotism, yet have we really learned to respect our freedom and freedom of others.

Freedom, for us, is rather a very misunderstood term or it is piteously overlooked and as youth of the 21st century, we are yet to discern the sweetness of having our own free land. Or, in another way, we do not realize that we are free and take our day to day problems, to be an antithesis of the term ‘Freedom’. Like, let me take a simple example of a dream like thought which has stayed in my mind almost poetically. It is the 14th of August, 1947 and as India, celebrated it’s Independence, an old farmer in rural Andhra Pradesh woke up, amidst the noise of fireworks and realized he was free. He smiled. Then he looked at the dry fields, on which he had to work the next day to earn his daily bread, as usual. He frowned, and cursing the noise of fireworks, went back to sleep.

Even in these very modern times, there is slavery all around in different forms, so all of us are not free yet, maybe that is again one reason, why we still do not respect our freedom. Whatever, the case, thousands have perished in pursuit of freedom, of a better tomorrow, all over the world. Remembering them, respecting their struggle is, I believe one facet of freedom, which we shall cherish and respect, however.

Now, having read this, I kept going through the pages and pages of thoughts and experiences, highlighted in the book, when I stumbled upon this phrase. “Belief in the innate justice of society”, words, which immediately put a frown across my face. Where is justice in the society ? When I say justice, I am not talking about lawsuits, I am not talking about celebrity bashing or Jessica Lall. What about the sense of justice, each one of us, the common man needs to have. How many times have we witnessed fights and verbal duels while waiting to pay an electricity bill and when there’s a long queue. How many times, have we been witnesses to road accidents, just because people don’t believe that the traffic policeman on duty is just.

Recently I boarded a bus, in hyderabad to go to have my lunch on a weekend. At the time of getting down, I had already inched my way to the exit, with great difficulty. I was about to get down, when around six to seven people started boarding the bus, without allowing me to get down first. They kept pushing me back, with a deaf ear to my protests and at last, the bus also started moving and there, I was, all tired and angry. I ended up walking for an hour, to have some food at last.

Why is it that we don’t have that sense of justice inherent in us, so that we give space to others as well, to co-exist in harmony in this world.? It’s not that I am cribbing, about the difficulties of life as such, but trying to find an answer to the question above.


I had felt like shouting at those people. “ Don’t I have the freedom to get down first.?” Or even give a piece of my mind, quoting the age-old saying “ Your freedom ends, where my nose begins “, but I bit my lip. Who knows how they perceive freedom ? Who knows how much they respect their own freedom.

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Freedom and justice are beautiful strong words, but what we lack is the knowledge as to how we must imbibe them as values in our lives.