India and the West: the meaning of Freedom in a Non-Western Culture

As the concept of freedom is closely related to individual autonomy in the modern west, non-western cultures are often represented by the absence of this category. It is believed that in societies like India, where the community remains an important anchor of individual liberty, there is little or no space for the liberty and autonomy of the individual. The paper problematizes this way of approaching the non-west: i.e., by using western representation of ideas as a universal frame of analysis. In its place it argues that notions of freedom and liberty are very much present in the political discourses of the late 19th and 20th century India, albeit their meaning is re-articulated, often in a way that alludes to an embedded individual.

The paper identifies three conceptions of freedom that gained currency in India during the struggle for independence. Each of these ideas invoked, in different ways, the notion of self-determination and self- governance. If some spoke of the recovery and construction of an authentic Indian, rooted in its own tradition, others saw the moral conscience, guided by reason, to be the critical determinant of free action. All of them spoke of a situated individual, who was called upon to charter her/his own destiny, fighting against what is given, and at times, of what is received through tradition and community wisdom. An individual that is capable of such action was however not a given. To put it another way, it was assumed that the mere exercise of free will or choice, or even the absence of external constraints, would not necessarily engender a critical self-consciousness. The latter requires discipline [physical and mental] and tapasya. Without the latter freedom might easily slide into the pursuit of personal whims or private interests.

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