Freedom and Identity, the Right to Be

Context: The aspirational values in the Constitution will make sense only when the average Indian realises the freedom to be.

Realising the true meaning of freedom to citizens

• Cultural Aspects of Freedom:

• Tulsidas described Ram Rajya as a place where everyone felt free to do what they were supposed to do and where there was no fear, sorrow or disease. 
• Mahatma Gandhi recognised the values of Ram Rajya as a shared universal consciousness. 

• Philosophical/Metaphysical Aspects:

• Analogy of Human-body-mind complex: The body is the hardware, the mind is the software and atma is the UPS (uninterruptible and independent power source).
• Knowledge of Self: That which sets a human being free is the knowledge of the self — that spontaneous animating principle which runs the body-mind complex- which is the soul.
• Etymologically, Swarajya means, swena rajate or self-luminous existence.

• Living in the light of atma or self is the true meaning of Swarajya.

• From Ram Rajya to Swarajya is a continuum the journey from the temporal to the transcendental, from the civic to the sacred. 

• Freedom of Identity: Freedom is not about the multiplication of choices, it is rather about identity.

• It is about identifying oneself with a liberated self that refuses to be labelled by the market, polity or society as belonging to a pre-deterministic category.
• The free being that is our self, expresses itself through awareness.

• Fulfilling the Constitutional values of liberty, justice, equality and fraternity requires realisation by the Indian citizens to co-opt freedom or not, with politics of identity or mechanisation of the market.

Conclusion: Swarajya in thought and education that liberates free beings (sa vidya ya vimuktaye) can only rescue India from the myopia of the post-colonial leadership.