Rev. Dr. Jason Keith Fernandes –
There is a touching narrative of the impact that independence had on people in Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collin’s Freedom at Midnight – the classic telling of the story of Indian independence. In their recounting, “In the crowd…there were no more rich or poor, Untouchables or masters, lawyers, bank clerks, coolies or pickpockets, just happy people embracing and calling to each other `Azad Sahib – We are free, Sir!’
Further on, they continue: “For many simple Indians, the magic word independence meant a new world was at hand. Ranjit Lal, the peasant from Chatharpur, assured his children that ‘there will be much to eat now because India is free’. People refused to pay bus fares, assuming they should now be free. A humble beggar walked into an enclosure reserved for foreign diplomas. A policeman asked him for his invitation. ‘Invitation?’ he answered, ‘Why do I need an invitation? I have my independence. That’s enough.’”
Very touching, but perhaps this is where it all went wrong for India. Right at the inception of political independence, we understood independence all wrong!
Allow me to explain, Catholic philosophy recognizes that freedom is understood in two ways. One way to understand freedom is positively, the freedom to be able to realise oneself in God. This is the way the Catholic church endorses as the correct understanding. The other is negative, the freedom from something, i.e. a negative freedom, for example a freedom from rules. The anecdotes that Lapierre and Collin’s narrate demonstrate a near perfect example of the second kind of negative freedom.
And it wasn’t just the simple who seem to have understood freedom in this way. Ever since independence the Indian intellectual elite, shored up by their fellows in the West, have systematically undone every system we inherited from the Europeans under the banner of decolonization. Rather than recognizing the unjust and unaccountable exercise of power as the basis of colonialism, they thought that they could reinvent, or recover, a genuinely Indian system if they could only throw away Western rules. The result, as you can see, is that India is now largely a land of a free-for-all, where governance is about the assertion of the state’s power, or simply the state’s (and other non-statal entities) assertion of brute power. At the individual level, rules are seen as obstacles that must be leaped over, or worse destroyed, as each individual cites their material well-being as the object of the freedom they enjoy.
This can we be seen in almost every aspect of daily life. Traffic rules are broken with impunity, because everyone seems to be in a hurry, or believes that they have no right to be restricted in their movement. The violation of traffic norms is often justified on the grounds of having to make a living.
Fortunately, we are not yet without examples to reprieve ourselves. The day that India celebrates its Independence Day, Catholics around the world, and in India, celebrate the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary – who is the patroness of India. This feast of the Blessed Virgin offers us an excellent example of how we should understand freedom, and what it offers us if we pursue it diligently.
Catholics believe that human beings were made to know God and to live with Him forever in paradise. Freedom, therefore, is understood as the ability to realise this potential. The blessed recognize this is best done by cleaving to the rules provided by God. The Blessed Virgin is a great example of such a person. When faced with the horrific idea – given she could have been stoned to death for it – that she would conceive a child outside of marriage, She responded “Thy will be done.” When Her son was crucified on the Cross, this blessed woman murmured “Thy will be done.” When Her Son lifted off into heaven and left Her on earth, She must have accepted with “Thy will be done,” because at the end of Her time on earth, Catholic tradition holds that Her mortal flesh was given an end unknown to man: She was taken up – or assumed – into heaven, body and soul.
It helps if one is Catholic to appreciate the proposal placed before us regarding freedom. In such a case, one believes in a transcendental world, where one is judged, based on the actions of an individual in this world. That this present world is only a staging ground for our true citizenship, which is in heaven.
It helps if one is Catholic, but it is not entirely necessary. One could also apply one’s mind and realise that there is a point well-made here. The moment freedom is seen as the ability to transcend rules, one is committed to the destruction of systems. This is so evident in contemporary India, where the rich are growing richer, the poor poorer, and the incredible wealth that has burgeoned since liberalization, has come at a cost. The markets, the public sphere, are all more vicious, it is a dog-eat-dog world out there, even as public amenities crumble away. There is no safety net for the common man.
Freedom, India must recognize, taking a leaf from its Catholic patroness, is about embrace of the norm, of communion with the wider world, and the suppression of petty interests for the common good. There is something in India’s nationalist DNA, which created space for the spiritual – Gandhi’s politics being a good example. Unfortunately, however, even Gandhi eventually undermined this spiritual, for the cause of serving the Indian nation. In Catholic terms, God was replaced on the altar for the nation. In a Catholic worldview, nation cannot become God, for then, as much as we may love the nation – and we do – we eventually do it a great disservice, since we lack focus and direction.
Every year the commemoration of political independence and the great feast of the Assumption are commemorated jointly. It might be a good idea to contemplate what lessons this feast can offer us for the health of our troubled country. God bless India.
A version of this text was first published in the O Herald on August 13, 2025.
Rev. Dr. Jason Keith Fernandes is trained in law and anthropology, and the author of the award-winning book Citizenship in a Caste Polity: Religion, Language and Belonging in Goa(2020). He was ordained priest in April 2025, and serves in the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman.