ABSTRACT
All discussions about freedom in India usually go back to the time of the freedom struggle, the time when India got independence from the British. While this has been crucial to India’s self-definition as a nation, we still need to map the other practices of freedom which were/are in place in India before/after Independence in order to have a more engaged and critical relationship with the swaraj (self-rule) we fought for, the swaraj we have put together and the swaraj we still need to imagine. The idea of freedom carries much urgency not only in the context of national liberation in India, but more specifically in the face of struggles raised by the Dalits, tribals, women and others in civil society. In an interview in 1984, Michel Foucault made this point about freedom very clear when he said that while a colonized people’s attempt to liberate themselves from their colonizers is indeed a practice of liberation,
this practice of liberation is not in itself sufficient to define the practices of freedom that will still be needed if this people, this society, and these individuals are to be able to define admissible and acceptable forms of existence or political society. (Foucault 2000: 282)
In the particular context of India, freedom has come to mean not only an unceasing commitment to the struggles of caste, community and gender but also an acknowledgement of these struggles since so many practices of freedom are required for imagining acceptable forms of political existence. Thus, in the years following Independence, one saw the consolidation of a liberal welfare state committed to the well-being of the weak and the oppressed sections of the society. The history of this welfare state – which took upon itself the task of addressing caste, community and gender issues, and of dispensing justice through administrative and bureaucratic measures – is now well known as scholars have consistently exposed the quieting effects of these measures taken by the state on voices of freedom and protest in society.1
