Our Freedoms: Essays and Stories from India's Best Writers

by Nilanjana Roy (Editor)

Roshan Ali, Rana Ayyub, Amitabha Bagchi, Gautam Bhatia, Amit Chaudhuri, Priyanka Dubey, Yashica Dutt, Menaka Guruswamy, Raghu Karnad, Akhil Katyal, T.M. Krishna, Aanchal Malhotra, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Suketu Mehta, Perumal Murugan, Karthika Nair, Snigdha Poonam, Gyan Prakash, Vivek Shanbhag, Aatish Taseer, Romila Thapar, Salil Tripathi, Annie Zaidi

As India faces some of its greatest challenges, the country’s most brilliant voices write about what freedom means to them. Inspiring, searching and full of ideas – this is the book of our times.

( Amazon.in)

Genres: Nonfiction, History, India, Essays, Short Stories

254 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 15, 2022

About the author

Nilanjana Roy is the author of The Wildings, published by Aleph Book Company in 2012. This is her first novel and stars a clan of cats in Nizamuddin. A collection of literary journalism, How To Read In Indian, will be published by HarperCollins in 2013.

Her column on the reading life for the Business Standard has run for over 15 years; she has also written columns for the International Herald Tribune and the Kolkata Telegraph on gender issues in India. Over a decade-and-a-half in media and publishing, Nilanjana has been chief editor at Westland/ Tranquebar, edited and contributed to the Outlook Books page, Biblio and several other literary magazines/ periodicals, served on the jury for the Crossword Prize and the DSC Prize among others, and started India’s first literary blog–Kitabkhana, which ran for several years under the pseudonym of Hurree Babu. She has worked extensively on free speech and censorship issues in India.

Her fiction and journalism have appeared in several journals and anthologies, including Caravan, Civil Lines 6, the New York Times’ India blog, The Hindu and Biblio. Some of her stories for children have been published in Scholastic’s Spooky Stories, Science Fiction Stories and BeWitched. She is a champion eater, which much to her surprise, qualified her to be the editor of a 2005 anthology, A Matter of Taste: The Penguin Book of Indian Food Writing. Nilanjana lives in Delhi with two cats and her husband. She can be found at http://nilanjanaroy.com, or @twitter.com/nilanjanaroy, (and would very much like to be found @Belize, @Bhutan or @Barcelona one of these days, not that she’s hinting or anything).

Reviews

[Amulya Arasinamakki · Rating 2 out of 5]

Where do I even begin with this! Let's start with the title: The use of superlatives such as "India's best writers" is so cringeworthy, if clickbait titles were to manifest in the analog world, this is it. How can you put together 20-odd writers from English (Perumal Murugan and Vivek Shanbhag are exceptions, who write in Tamil and Kannada respectively), which is not the language of everyday Indians and bestow the superlative of "best writers"? Also, the line-up is predominantly upper caste/class, as expected. This use of epithet "best writers" is irksome. Now, secondly, the main title "Our Freedoms" - what does this say? Is this a book about the apparent loss of freedom since 2014, when the reign of supreme leader began? Or is it going to be an attempt at self-reflection, where we, the privileged recognize that for many of our brethren, freedom was an alien concept even before 2014? I would have liked the latter, but would settle for something thought provoking on the former.

But, this book does neither. It is all over the place, with no idea what it wants to be. Perfect metaphor for this country, I suppose.

Snigdha Poonam's 'Beauty and the Beast' which chronicles a woman who lost her beauty parlour to the Delhi riots of 2020, is the among the best in the collection. It stayed with me for weeks, such was the crystal clear prose with strong emotional core. Annie Zaidi's 'Bread, Cement, Cactus' which won her the Nine Dots Prize also tackles the question of identity was also memorable. Gyan Prakash's 'Freedom in a different key: The Bhuinyas of Bihar" once again was on the different league all together, a diamond in the rough. Documenting the community and its origin story, Gyan Prakash problematizes "the universalist narrative of bondage-to-freedom". There is of-course lip service to caste by including Yashica Dutt and Perumal Murugan's pieces. But, I would suggest you to read her memoir, 'Coming Out as Dalit' than the piece here. Same goes for Murugan, whose fiction says so much more. Their talent is overshadowed by overhyped "intellectual celebrities" here.

The most irritating part of the whole book is Pratap Bhanu Mehta pontificating on the history of freedom in the afterword. If this book really wanted to contribute something original to the discourse of freedom, Mehta should have written about his own tryst with freedom, as how he supported the supreme leader for the promised economic freedom in 2014, despite knowing that it means loss of political and social freedom for countless Indians. But, expecting honesty in a book that pays lip-service to the idea of freedom is too much, I guess.

As an avid reader, this book was disappointing to say the least. Maybe because I read so much, apart from handful of articles, rest of them felt like opinion pieces from The Print.

[Srishti · Rating 5 out of 5]

What does freedom mean to you?

𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐨𝐦𝐬: Essays And Stories From India's Best Writers

Edited by Nilanjana Roy
Publisher: Juggernaut India @juggernaut.in

मंच पे खड़ी
डोरी से बंधी
रंगीन व आभूषण में सजी,
एक कठपुतली मांगे आजादी।

There are several factors which come into play when we turn our query towards the question– What is freedom?
Our Freedoms is a collection of essays and short stories which illustrate that very question. Brutally honest stories which hit the mark, which answer the question and leave you sitting there and questioning your idea of freedom.

What decides our freedom, is it the mohalla where you live or is it the society or is it the government, more importantly, 'who' decides your freedom? The political and religious space in India is shrinking, to what extent do the promises of secular India hold true? The hatred against minority communities is mounting; once in a while we read in the newspaper about a man lynched to death, or about enforced exile. Snigdha Poonam, Annie Zaidi, Vivek Shanbhag, Aatish Taseer, Perumal Murugan along with others discuss a multitude of themes encompassing the idea of freedom.

India is a 'secular' and 'free' country as written in our preamble. Do look up the meaning of the word secular in the dictionary. You'll find that it is quite a funny story, well less funny more sorry, but it is what it is. The only freedom we have as of now is the freedom to consume; to choose between Dabur and Patanjali, both of which are below the purity standard; we are free to fill the banks of businessmen who are scamming us outright. Isn't hoarding illegal? What's the government doing then? While thousands starve and die of hunger, malnutrition, poor hygiene; and children are uneducated, Tesla is working on delivering firearms in 24 hours to Pentagon.

Liberty, secularity, fraternity and equality– the words you'd recite by rote in your Political Science class are merely words taken for granted. Immediacy and urgency are the need of the hour.

So, what does freedom mean to you? Everybody has a differing image of it.

[Mamunuru Shankar · Rating 4 out of 5]

The urge for freedom seems to be the primordial instinct of the humankind. The entire history of humanity is a relentless struggle for realising freedom from tyranny and oppression ending sometimes in victory and many times in further oppression. We have an uncanny grasp to see through false promises made in the name of freedom and replace them either democratically or otherwise to try with a new dispensation. Though real freedom eludes in many ways, the struggle continues, and the hope never dies. In this, well-curated collection of essays, Niranjana Roy presents twenty-four essays on the theme of Freedom in contemporary India. When Nilanjana edits, it is easy to guess the contributors! They include among others, Roshan Ali, Gautam Bhatia, Amit Chaudhuri, T.M. Krishna, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Suketu Mehta, Perumal Murugan, Vivek Shanbhag, Romila Thapar, Salil Tripathi and others. All the essays are well argued emphasizing the non-negotiable need for freedom.

In his piece” Freedom and Indian Constitution” Gautam Bhatia argues that freedom and liberty as enshrined in the constitution are not alien to Indians as ascertained
by some conservatives. The proximate history of India is replete with social movements for redemption from various types of oppressions including caste, class, gender, and orthodoxy. All the reformist and social movements and demands for gender equity found their way into the constitution. Finally, the constitution is only a document, well-argued and consented. It is for us to implement it. He appeared a little defensive. What if some ideas, even if alien to us, are enshrined in the constitution which help to further the idea of freedom?

For Annie Zaidi (Bread, Cement, Cactus) the question of what it means to be a free individual cannot be separated from the question of where other people think her ‘place’ is, in terms of both her status and the choices she is allowed by the systems that govern her life. In a country where caste and class privileges are well preserved, one’s place is predetermined.

In “Crossover” Perumal Murugan takes this argument further and contends that freedom of any type is limited and circumscribed by the caste. However, he agrees,
that there is a palpable change in our social interactions at least in urban and organizational spaces. But he says that the mindset of caste hierarchy persists and intolerance is pervasive. We cannot criticize religion or express an opinion about a particular caste. We can’t even start a minor debate around religion. We cannot write about language. We cannot write about a character who pursues a particular occupation. We cannot write anything about the customs and rituals followed in our society. This is who we are today- he laments.

“Krantijeevi Tarangini” by Vivek Shanbhag is a very interesting story about mistaken liberalism. Vivek contends that liberal bringing up is no guarantee for liberal outlook and values. If not tempered with social context, liberalism can turn out to be ugly and result in flawed personality and self-centered behavior. For Tarangini, liberalism is instrumental and is a license for indifferent behavior. She has no concern for others in society, and she has no pretensions about it. She is an island in herself with a sense of disdain for others. Vivek brings out how words like consent, freedom, etc get distorted when applied to a life with flawed values.

Rana Ayub in her piece " Why I chose hope?" replies she has no other option!

Roshan Ali in his story “Agendas”, questions what if you don't belong to any religion whose only strength historically lies in hating the other? What if you don't belong to a tribe under a religious banner that is convinced that peace can only be established by destroying another tribe? Though the story is well argued, it is not very convincing because religion is nothing but a lived philosophy. You may reject an organized religion, but the tenets by which you live your life is your religion, though you may not call it one. Further, it is not necessary that people without religion are free of human frailties. What is needed is freedom for oneself and acceptance of other’s freedom.

In his “Exile in the Age of Modi”, Aatish Taseer says that your country is so closely associated with the sense of self, you can realize only when you are deprived of it. When it happens as a result of your identity or because of your beliefs the loss is unbearable. And when the places you seek asylum are turning to tribalism, there is a sense of despondency.

Suketu Mehta in his “Vaishnava Jana to Kone Kahiye?” states he is ashamed of being a Gujarati after having seen 2002 and CAA. He pleads not to judge all Gujaratis by the same metric. There are many who are kinder and more open. This is true of any people. We cannot paint all the people with the same brush. Many of Mehta’s attributes of Gujaratis are true. I can vouch for them as I stayed in Gujarat for six years pre-2002. Never once have we lost a productive day due to civil strife. Never once have I encountered a Gujarati who is pessimistic. They are very friendly and confrontation averse.

Romila Thapar’s “Freedom and Idea of India”, is the highlight of the collection. An eminently readable essay in which she develops with her well-known conception of history, mostly plausible, the rise of Hindu nationalism. It is possible that you like her analysis because, without a doubt, it appeals to your rational sensibility. However, while Ms. Thapar analyses all the aspects of the consequences of the Turkish invasion, for some strange reason, she skirts the issues related to the intolerance and violence perpetrated by Muslim invaders on the Hindu religion and their effect on the Hindu psyche. The influence of Sufism is limited as compared to the violence perpetrated by Muslim rulers. By avoiding some inconvenient questions, Ms Thapar is vulnerable. Surely, one cannot quote Sufism to an RSS man who is reeling out the atrocities of Aurangzeb. She can always argue that the atrocities of Muslim invaders do not justify the persecution of Muslims. We cannot ruin our present and the future by embarking on a mission to settle the scores of the past. But avoiding the facts would not help her argument. It is time we face history as it happened and move ahead. As an eminent historian, she is aware that history is contingent and nothing happens by accident, including the rise of Hindutva.

Gyan Prakash in his “Freedom in a Different Key: The Bhuinyas of Bihar”, explains how the Hindu divine order relegates the Dalits to the status of untouchables and how the legislative diktats cannot charge this condition. What Dalits want is not a freedom granted by law but the dignity that can be realized only by systemic change.

Priyanka Dubey in her excellent piece “Grief and the Freedom of Forgiving”,
argues that forgiveness is the only answer through which we can protect, define, and reclaim the meaning of being a human. It is the only way through which we can reclaim our humanity and compassion, which is otherwise decaying at an exponential rate in this cruel, brutal world. She writes to her journalist friends in case she is raped and killed while on duty, let the killer not be hanged. One extra death will make this world inhuman to that extent. Remarkable thought from a young journalist!

These are a few of the many thought-provoking essays in this collection—an essential read for anyone interested in Liberty and Freedom.

[Saurabh Sharma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whose Freedoms are Our Freedoms? published on The Chakkar

Summary: The book Our Freedoms: Essays and Stories from India’s Best Writers confronts the challenges of the present, with remarks on religion, caste, sexuality, politics, and more. Saurabh Sharma argues that the collection has the elixir to inspire the soul of the nation.

Review
In its report Freedom in the World 2021: Democracy under siege, Freedom House—a U.S.-based non-profit NGO—lamented that India is becoming an “electoral autocracy.” Unlike the mainstream media back home, Freedom House didn’t mince words, writing, “Modi and his party are tragically driving India itself toward authoritarianism.”

The rot runs much deeper than the present ruling regime, as it has hardly been the only one attacking ideas of freedom, and, in turn, ideas of India itself. However, the attempts to curb freedom and to limit the democratic framework of the country under the present government are qualitatively different, akin to Nuremberg laws, and are conducted with impunity in what is a uniquely democratic nation.

While I am writing this, I am arrested by a thought: In times like this, along with the ongoing pandemic, what purpose is served by writing? What can these words do? And I find the answer in A Burning by Megha Majumdar, a book that has captured contemporary Indian reality like no other: “Not very much.”

Yet I write.

Writing can show a path to future generations. It can give something to hold on to. It’s the hope that all is not lost that I write, and the warmth that the written word provides that I go back to reading. And in reading the stories and essays from Our Freedoms: Essays and Stories from India’s Best Writers (Juggernaut, 2020), edited by Nilanjana S. Roy, I felt the same sense of warmth. These writings convince me that, in any situation, words have within them the elixir to transform and inspire even the one who may feel bereft of any agency to function in this brutal world.

Confronting Freedom
The book begins with Snigdha Poonam’s essay “Beauty and the Beast”, her words as arresting as her essays in the remarkable book Dreamers: How Young Indians are Changing Their World (2018). Her essay in the Our Freedoms anthology introduces readers to the ordeals faced by the owner of a beauty parlour in Bhajanpura in New Delhi, who is looking for compensation for the injuries and damages that her business suffered after being torched by the violence that engulfed the city’s northeast areas in February 2020.

I live under the two-kilometer radii of this area. A large number of citizens, including some of my own family and friends, were convinced that the violence in Delhi—enacted chiefly upon the city’s minorities with complete impunity of the state—was justified. It was sickening to hear such insensitive and dangerous remarks, which is why, perhaps, I found hope in the comforting words of this collection.

The themes resonated in more lyrical fashion in the following poem by Akhil Katyal, also contained in the collection:

These Days
the sun
climbs so slowly
even the fallen seeds
throw long shadows.


Above them
the hours spread
like locusts
like hunger
like an illness
refusing to relent.

A government uses
this convenience to
make some arrests.


Elsewhere, Gautam Bhatia writes about his unshakeable faith in the best ‘toolkit’ ever created, The Constitution of India; while Annie Zaidi is reminded how she has never been made to separate “from the question of where other people think my ‘place’ is, in terms of both my status and the choices I am allowed by the systems that govern my life.”

In “Crossing Over”, a translation of N. Kalyan Raman’s work, author Perumal Murugan takes us through the freedom that is “hostage to the caste system.” He writes how “[l]ove allows people to transcend barriers. But our caste system won’t allow crossing over.” Gyan Prakash, in his essay, brings into notice how this “[s]ystemic inequality is the subject of a global conversation today.” But leave alone having this conversation, caste is a reality that every Indian, including I—an oppressor caste person—often fails to confront.

Yashica Dutt evokes the notions of the freedom that she knew “was something that wasn’t mine to take.” She mentions never being able to become that “right kind of Dalit” because she lives in New York. In her essay, “The Freedom Exchange”, Dutt writes about the ‘exchange’ that she got into with her mother, which was “also the template memory that I returned to when I thought about what freedom meant to me—a thin thread, suspended between the limited choices my mother was given and the options I might discover.”

Who can breathe in this New India?
In yet another moving piece, Rana Ayyub writes not only why she hopes, but also enunciates why “[i]t is not easy to live in this New India. It is not easy to live here without the privileges that make it easy to breathe in this democracy.” It’s that same privilege that made many of my family members and friends throw this question at me whenever I’d go to the citizenships protests in the capital: “Tu bhi kagaz nahi dikhayega kya?” (“Will you, too, not show your papers?”) They basked in this glory that they will remain unfazed in this regime—a dream come true for them and others who shared this perspective.

“Agendas”, a short story by Roshan Ali, covers a conversation between a believer and nonbeliever of the same family, set at the backdrop of a riot. In this story, the casualness with which an autorickshaw driver mentions the riots in Delhi is bound to have a chilling effect on its readers: “‘Anyway I am not worried sir,’ he said after a brief silence. ‘Summer is coming. Too hot to do rioting.’” Violence is given almost the same stage as conducting one’s daily routine, an everyday business activity for some. Later in the story, again, an auto driver says this to the protagonist: “‘Delhi is burning and you are upset because you argued with somebody,’ he said. ‘What a life you bade log live yaar.’”

The essays, stories, and poems are both a warning and a comforting reminder. In an atmosphere of contesting histories, this book—which confronts the present without overlooking the shared journeys of Indians—will add to the rich tradition of reflecting on our origins, acknowledging the past and envisioning possibilities for the future.
You are bound to witness a class-divide here, but that’s a surficial reading. The context is that you can’t fully appreciate the depth of this assumption if you don’t know that the protagonist is far from living that life being a Muslim in today’s India.

Salil Tripathi was thirteen when the emergency was declared. In the essay “Emergency and Freedom”, he recalls the announcement—‘The President has proclaimed an emergency. There is nothing to panic about.’—and writes, “I was surprised by the mutual contradiction. If the nation faced an emergency, surely, we should panic? If there was no need to panic, how could we be in an emergency?”

But no one captures the Hindutva agenda in more concise, sharp language than Aatish Taseer in his essay “Exile in the Age of Modi”: “India is an overarching and inclusionary idea; Bharat is atavistic, emotional, exclusionary.”

In an attempt to reclaim the “Gujarati identity from the haters,” Suketu Mehta calls out “the Gujaratis who lead the country now want to turn India into a national Ahmedabad.” While Amit Chaudhuri asks whether there is “no free country for a Kashmiri?”

In her piece, Menaka Guruswamy writes that the country is facing “a different kind of virus—hate and distrust,” which has spread its tentacles far and wide. She laments the fact that last year, in March, “as India’s poor marched, ministers posted pictures of themselves in pyjamas, socially isolating at home, relaxing and watching the Ramayan serial on TV.” She believes that COVID-19 demands “a different solidarity” and “a citizenry that will not countenance the use of a pandemic to enable the crushing of a free, constitutional fraternity.” Amid the pandemic, while everyone is cautioned to maintain social distancing, Raghu Karnad reminds us of an idea that we mustn’t get socially distanced from political togetherness, “the gift to India from the garden of Shaheen Bagh.”

In a different tone from the rest of the essays, and something that’s close to my heart, Priyanka Dubey writes of discovering “perhaps the most fundamental form of freedom is the freedom of seeking forgiveness and the freedom to forgive, what drives me and so many women outside the tiny and often privileged world of the big cities to become journalists is often so deeply personal that it is hard to write about it, but to write it is also a kind of freedom and reclamation.”

The nation we never wanted
“Hatred gives identity,” Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in his gut-wrenching creative nonfiction work Between the World and Me. Here was a Black man recounting personal anecdotes, telling his son that his Black body is breakable. In this tiny book are weaved histories and memories of atrocities. It is unlike anything I had read before.

But as much as I was hung onto the racial divide in the west, I’ve grown up reading little or nothing about the casteist society at home that has made me who I am. Only as a queer person did my ideas of freedom locked horns with my non-queer friends. Only when something that seemed undeniable to my friends and family was taken from me, I realised the value of agency of this trivial term called ‘freedom’. Not realising that denial of everyday things like water, a space to walk, and a lesser privilege like having a portion of land in one’s own name is a reality for many in India. And the currency of that divide is hate, which is now being channeled with brutal efficiency by the government in power that aims to limit India to a land of Hindus—and Hindus alone.

In the foreword of this book, Roy writes that revolts against the (British) Raj were driven “by a deep love and claim over the land,” and not the love of a nation that didn’t exist. She also writes that “hatred can feel liberating—it frees people from the constraints of having to work at love for the stranger, kindness toward those not your kin, fraternity to those whose ways are not yours,” but it’s slavery, too, as “[i]t traps first haters and then entire countries, shriveling their souls as they lose their guiding angels, their djinns of benevolence, and shoving them into a narrow case. You can either build a Republic of Inclusion or a Republic of Exclusion.”

It’s this hatred that will make this country an authoritarian one, something that it has already begun becoming. Begun, but it hasn’t become one.

In this sense, the essays, stories, and poems in this book are both a warning and a comforting reminder. In an atmosphere of contesting histories, this book—which confronts the present without overlooking the shared journeys of Indians—will add to the rich tradition of reflecting on our origins, acknowledging the past and envisioning possibilities for the future. Roy, as an editor and compiler, ensures to keep the outlook fairly diverse. I felt, however, that the collection would’ve been further strengthened with stories from the Northeast, Adivasi tribes, etc. adding another important perspective to the idea of freedom in India.

I write with the hope that we realise that it’s never our dream to be an exclusionary nation. Else we would become, as Priyanka Dubey cautions, a nation that “keep[s] dismembering their own histories, forgetting and erasing too much.”

[deepak · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays, stories and poems by mostly contemporary writers. In the context of present Hindutva wave that has been supported and fueled by the BJP and its supportive wings or ideologues that vouch for it, the freedom of expression of one’s view has been compromised a lot. There is always a sword of anti-sedition law hanging over the heads of those who dare to dissent and stand for the ideas that the Constitution of India upholds: secularism, fundamental right of freedom of expression and to practice any religious belief or even to adhere to atheism. With the rise of Hindu nationalism, the process of othering has also got an insane unleash. The CAA and NRC are those tools that the present BJP government has taken up and used ruthlessly against the Muslims of India.
It is against this backdrop of repression, of the dictates to govern the citizens’ thoughts, beliefs and even eating preferences that the present book has been planned. The idea of India as pluralistic, inclusive and secular place is under threat. These voices that find place in the book are those few sane voices that still hold aloft the flag of freedom despite every effort on the part of the majoritarian party in power to snuffle them with misuse of the institutions such as ED, CBI, courts and many of the Acts and the laws that are outdated and colonial.
This book, thus, upholds the freedom in all its manifestations: political freedom, women freedom and even the freedom from one’s ego. Nostalgia, sentimentalism and feeling of loss are reflected in these writings. It is though natural: sanity tends to be so in the times of crises.

[Karthik Ram · Rating 4 out of 5]

20 odd well-known writers reflect, and tell stories of freedom and courage in the wake of India's winter of protests in 2019-20. Some well intentioned rants, some recycled drivel and indeed many that tugged at my heart strings.

My favourites (in the order in which they appeared in the book):
1. Snigdha Poonam - I want to write like that! Loved Dreamers too
2. Yashica Dutt - Does anyone tell a personal story quite like her?
3. Vivek Shanbhag - Has been on my list for a while, and his story about Tarangini certainly whetted my appetite
4. Raghu Karnad - Invoked the emotions we all felt in Shaheen Bagh so well. Also for my favourite line in the book ("Necessity stayed on the street. Privilege went home" - Naomi Barton)
5. Rana Ayyub - Raw and brilliant as ever. Made me cup my mouth in horror
6. Aanchal Malhotra - For reminding us of another remarkable female hero of independence who we've somewhat forgotten - Usha Mehta (Congress Radio)
7. Gyan Prakash - For his clear commentary on caste system and the oral tradition we would regret losing
8. Menaka Guruswamy - Thoughtful critique and narration of the events that defined 2020 - Jamia, and in greater detail, the handling of Covid
9. Priyanka Dubey - Powerful, heartfelt and beautiful essay on her work, life, and motivations as a woman growing up outside metropolitan India

Finally, this book presents more evidence that voices from small town, vernacular India deserve more mainstream representation. For their sake, and ours. Truism-spewing big surname columnists have had it good for a long time.

[Rajiv D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don’t pick up “Our Freedoms” to help you land on one definition of freedom in the Indian context. Pick it up to see how the definition, application and realisation of freedom differs across the nation, through the op-ed-style essays and stories of many famous modern-day Indian writers. Let these various angles complement that of your angle on freedom.

The various chapters help amplify the meanings of individual liberties and group oppression. They demystify what it means to have freedoms listed on official papers like the Constitution and what the reality is for millions on the periphery of society and the country’s borders. The collection looks at the building of freedom historically and the ways in which freedoms are being used, misused and abused more recently, at all levels of government and society.

Collectively, the book is like a literary lab report of various blood metrics, shining light on the health of freedom across the nation’s body of people. And to me, as a DEI practitioner, the key messages of this book also speak to DEI work - from an equity lens; how do we ensure everyone has equal and equitable rights and freedoms?

As Chapter 20 mentions, “We love freedom: ours. We fear freedom: that of others.”

[Iqra Tasmiae]

The print-https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerp...

The tribune- https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.trib...

The wire- https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.thewir...

Scroll.in (vivek shanbhag)-https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.scro...

Live mint-https://www.google.com/amp/s/lifestyl...

[Disha Naik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent collection of essays by some of India's greatest writers. Aanchal Malhotra has written an inspiring story about Usha Mehta and the underground secret radio she started during the freedom struggle. Raghu Karnad has written an essay on the CAA & NRC protests at Shaheen Bagh, Snigdha Poonam's story is about a beauty parlour owner, set in the backdrop of the CAA-NRC protests & the pandemic. Salil Tripathi has compared the Emergency with BJP's current regime.

[Nitin Nadig · Rating 5 out of 5]

What does freedom mean? What does freedom mean to you personally? What does freedom mean in today's India?

These questions and more are answered from various perspectives in this collection of essays, stories and poetry by some of India's finest writers.

Reflecting on my read, the only way to reclaim our freedom is by re-examining the very idea of freedom itself , engage in discussions around it and try and practice it everyday, in whatever little way we can.

[Shivam Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

The various hues of Freedom

What is Freedom?
A question that our country is grappling with.
And this book takes one on a journey of discovery of the meaning of the word as seen from the eyes of different people.
A journey which is bound to lead one to discover new nuances about freedom.
Great book.
Must read in today's times.

[Soumya Prasad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Shanbhag's 'Krantijeevi Tarangani' from this and quite enjoyed it. The way the story spanned the past and the present and the main character of Tarangini was interesting. She chose to live life her way, the way she wanted to, not caring about what anyone has to say. If that is not freedom, then what is?

[Natasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a must read. It holds hope. Ti contextualizes fear. It puts things in perspective. It cautions us not to lose sight of the goal of equality. It reminds us that while freedom means different things to different people, we shouldn't ever lose sight of it.
You could question the selection of contributors- they are almost all upper class- but they do speak of the voiceless Indians.

[Pri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant read.

[Ujval Nanavati · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of essays on what freedom means from some really good writers.

[Abhishek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Freedom with exchange is a good chapter. Rest is elite jargon.