Freedom
2.1 THE IDEAL OF FREEDOM
Before we set out to answer these questions, let us stop for a moment and consider this. The autobiography of one of the greatest persons of the twentieth century, Nelson Mandela, is titled Long Walk to Freedom. In this book he talks about his personal struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa, about the resistance of his people to the segregationist policies of the white regime, about the humiliations, hardships and police brutalities suffered by the black people of South Africa.
These ranged from being bundled into townships and being denied easy movement about the country, to being denied a free choice of whom to marry. Collectively, such measures constituted a body of constraints imposed by the apartheid regime that discriminated between citizens based on their race. For Mandela and his colleagues it was the struggle against such unjust constraints, the struggle to remove the obstacles to the freedom of all the people of South Africa (not just the black or the coloured but also the white people), that was the Long Walk to Freedom.
For this freedom, Mandela spent twenty-eight years of his life in jail, often in solitary confinement. Imagine what it meant to give upone’s youth for an ideal, to voluntarily give up the pleasure of talking with one’s friends, of playing one’s favourite game (Mandela loved boxing), of wearing one’s favourite clothes, of listening to one’s favourite music, of enjoying the many festivals that are part of one’s life. Imagine giving all these up and choosing instead to be locked up alone in a room, not knowing when one would be released, only because one campaigned for the freedom of one’s people. For freedom Mandela paid a very high personal cost.
Exercise
1. What is meant by freedom? Is there a relationship between freedom for the individual and freedom for the nation?
2. What is the difference between the negative and positive conception of liberty?
3. What is meant by social constraints? Are constraints of any kind necessary for enjoying freedom?
4. What is the role of the state in upholding freedom of its citizens?
5. What is meant by freedom of expression? What in your view would be a reasonable restriction on this freedom? Give examples.
Please refer to attached file for NCERT Class 11 Political Science Freedom
