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Freedom Political Theory Freedom Now, take another case. Gandhiji’s thoughts on non-violence have been a source of inspiration for Aung San Suu Kyi as she remained under house arrest in Myanmar, separated from her children, unable to visit her husband when he was dying of cancer, because she feared that if she left Myanmar to visit him in England she would not be able to return. Aung San Suu Kyi saw her freedom as connected to the freedom of her people. Her book of essays bears the title Freedom from Fear . She says, “for me real freedom is freedom from fear and unless you can live free from fear you cannot live a dignified human life”. These are deep thoughts that lead us to pause and consider their implications. We must not, her words suggest, be afraid of the opinions of other people, or of the attitude of authority, or of the reactions of the members of our community to the things we want to do, of the ridicule of our peers, or of speaking our mind. Yet we find that we often exhibit such fear. For Aung San Suu Kyi living a ‘dignified human life’ requires us to be able to overcome such fear. From these two books of Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi, we can see the power of the ideal of D o freedom, an ideal that was at the centre of our national LET ’S D O IT struggle and the struggles of the peoples of Asia and Africa against British, French and Portuguese colonialism. Can you think of someone in your village, 2.2 W HAT IS F REEDOM ? town or district who has struggled for his/her A simple answer to the question ‘what is freedom’ is own freedom or the absence of constraints. Freedom is said to exist when freedom of others? Write external constraints on the individual are absent. In a short note about terms of this definition an individual could be that person and the considered free if he/she is not subject to external particular aspect of controls or coercion and is able to make independent freedom which he/she decisions and act in an autonomous way. However, struggled to protect. absence of constraints is only one dimension of freedom. Freedom is also about expanding the ability 19 Reprint 2026-27